I am a wife, mother, grandmother, and a community grassroots organizer/advocate. My most recent active engagement has been completely restoring an African American Historical Home and repurposing it as the Greene County African American Museum, Inc. After twenty-five years of commitment to this project, the museum opened late 2021. Living in a rural southern community, honoring and celebrating the historical narrative of African Americans is very significant. For this, I am grateful. As I often say, wherever we are, it should be better because we are there. I firmly believe that each of us is gifted with purpose, to make a life-giving impact in the betterment of our world. For we are God’s hands and feet.

A core value that impacts my approach to social healing is to treat one another as you desire to be treated.

Pronouns: he, him, his

I was born 13 months after the death of my parents’ first child, who was only four months old, so I was conceived in grief. My parents bought a little four room mill house with money inherited from my mother’s father, which was stolen from them before I was five. My longing for justice runs deep. My father never learned to read, but worked hard at low wages and provided for his family, until one day he crawled under the house and disappeared into mental illness. The intersection of depression and oppression innervates me. My mother’s life was changed in a pandemic when she had polio as a teen. She had to learn to walk again and never stopped. She loved to laugh and tell stories, gifts that have sustained me to this day. 

I studied at a consortium of nine schools in Berkeley, California, among Baptists in North Carolina, and Presbyterians in Georgia. I served as Parish Minster at First Baptist in Washington, DC, for seven years, and pastor of Oakhurst, a (oxymoron) liberal Baptist church in Decatur, Georgia, for 28 years. After retiring four years ago, I was a hospice chaplain for a while and am now a free range minister, a person of Baptist Christian tradition on an interfaith pilgrimage. 

My wife just retired after 30 years of teaching children to love music at the Atlanta International School. We have a son who is a rapper in Atlanta and a son who is a digital nomad living in Colombia.  A core value that impacts my approach to social healing is the belief that every person’s story is a God story. Deeply listening to another’s story and sharing intimately one’s own can be a means to build community, overcome division, and bring healing.

Pronouns: she, her

Apollonia Piña is an interdisciplinary researcher of Mvskoke, Xicana, Scots-Irish, and French lineage. Apollonia’s life as an indigenous activist started with her Native and Xicano parents and informs her work in academia and community involvement in Northeast Oklahoma. Presently, she is the Tulsa chapter organizer for the Matriarch organization and developer of an Indigenous-centered STEM camp for Native youth. Her research interests include non-Western perspectives in science and math, Indigenous sexuality and womanism, and promoting Natives in STEM. She is the founder of Green Corn Medics, a street medic crew that provides care to those in need during direct actions. She enjoys scouting rare books, rock and roll, origin stories, and connecting the dots. She resides on the Mvskoke reservation in Tvlse, Okla Humma with her son.

A core value that impacts my approach to social healing, put simply: liberatory/pluralistic science and medicine for all. This guides me in all facets of my community engagement, whether it’s teaching Indigenous youth our peoples major contributions to math, science, and medicine, or, in the more literal sense of social healing, in the intentional ways I engage with my patients when I am working at the hospital.

Pronouns: she/her

Malika is the author of the Flourish OKC Restorative Justice Learning Curriculum. She has been involved in human rights advocacy, peacebuilding dialogue, restorative justice practices, and ecumenical clergy work. She has been to the “Killing Fields” of Cambodia, spent time in Rwanda during the Gacaca courts, lived in post-conflict Belfast, and has been to the Israel/Palestine region multiple times.

Malika is currently working on her Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy at Tufts Fletcher School focusing onHuman Security. She received her Master of Philosophy in Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation at Trinity College Dublin, Irish School of Ecumenics in 2017, and a Master of Arts in Practical Theology in 2016 at Regent University.

She jointly won the James Haire Dissertation Award for her peacebuilding research on Palestinian and Israeli dialogue in cyberspace, #PEACETECH. Malika is the Pastor of Justice and Spiritual Formation of The Table OKC, an organic movement attempting to embody the radical, inclusive, self-sacrificial love found at the table of Jesus, and a co-host of the Table Collective Podcast.

Malika is devoted to cultivating restorative relationships and honoring the beauty and intrinsic worth of every human being. Her core values are justice, equality, and the human flourishing of all people.

A core value that impacts my approach to social healing is kindness. I love the Jewish practice of Tikkun Olam, ‘mending the world through acts of kindness.’ I believe that kindness on a macro level is working towards truth and societal healing through transitional justice practices such as truth and reconciliation commissions, reparations, and commemoration. 

Pronouns: he, him

I’m from a Southern working-class family and small town in the Sandhills of North Carolina. Whatever good that I am and have done is because of the many strong Black women leaders in my extended family, church, and community. I am a life and love partner to Erica, a resilient Black woman, mother, organizer, singer, and educator. Together we are the proud parents of two young Black boys who love the outdoors, music, to read, laugh, wrestle, and cuddle! I am the son of a Black woman who taught me to love God, learning, people, and justice. I carry my daddy’s name and the sense of hard work and responsibility that he instilled in me. This story of my origins and identity is core to any of my work and accomplishments. My life’s mission is to catalyze local circles of spirit and action that cultivate personal and social change. I’ve tried to live this mission out faithfully. Here’s some of how that’s gone for me:

Brandon is a minister, organizer, writer, and trainer. He works across the US within faith, higher education, and non-profit sectors at the intersections of decolonizing church, contemplative activism, and local presence to build beloved communities. With neighbors and friends, he started The Good Neighbor Movement, a multiracial, queer-affirming, Black-centered faith justice community based in Greensboro, NC that is a network of contemplative activist groups. Brandon is an ordained elder in the Western North Carolina Conference of The United Methodist Church. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Religion from UNC-Chapel Hill, a Master of Divinity from North Park Theological Seminary, and completed post-graduate studies in theology and ethics from Duke Divinity School. Brandon has two forthcoming books in 2022 — Liberating Church: A 21st Century Hush Harbor Manifesto (Wipf & Stock and The Voices Publishing) and Buried Seeds: Learning from the Vibrant Resilience of Marginalized Christian Communities (Baker Academic).

I’m honored to be among this fierce and compassionate group of social healing fellows. My prayer is that who I am and my work are a testament and a seed to a freer and more loving me and world!

A core value that impacts my approach to social healing is Leader-full. I am at my best when I am curating and writing content with and for my community, catalyzing new creative collaborative projects, sharing power for new and different leadership to emerge, gathering new people together to form pockets of community and organization, and collaborating with neighbors, leaders, and organizations to make change.

Pronouns: she/her

Chalice is a spiritual practitioner steeped in the Black church tradition. Her ministry aims to make The Divine accessible, especially to those who find themselves on the margins of mainstream Christianity. She thrives in the areas of spiritual direction, conflict transformation and preaching, and has a strong interest in culturally authentic spiritual practices.  Chalice is currently the co-Program Director for the To Heal the Wounded Soul project–a collaboration of the Clergy Health Initiative and the Office of Black Church Studies at Duke Divinity School–and also serves on the ministerial staff of Pullen Memorial Baptist Church in Raleigh, NC. Lately, she thinks a lot about how the church needs to evolve to support individuals and communities along a journey of healing and transformation.

Chalice enjoys skiing and swimming, and loves daylight and fresh air. Her greatest aspiration is to navigate this world as authentically as possible by showing up as herself, everyday and in every space. She hopes that, in doing so, she can fulfill her assignment in the time she has in this realm.  

A core value that impacts my approach to social healing is Authenticity/honesty. We’re not likely to pursue healing if we’re not honest enough to admit that some things are broken in our world. So we need honesty to even start the process, and we need to prioritize it throughout. When people come from a real place, we can address the real issues. When people come from a performative place, we squander the time and energy of everyone involved. 

Pronouns: she, her

Paige Ingram (she/her) is a nomadic, Midwest-based organizer, strategist, facilitator, and creative person. She currently serves as a driver and designer of a process to frontload the strategy, culture, story, and structure of a national mass movement a Truth and Reconciliation process and Reparations in America. She also supports the Movement for Black Lives with strategy and partnerships, leads a cohort of Americana artists of color with the Western States Center, and serves as a lead trainer with the Momentum Community. 

Locally, she is committed to uplifting the dreamy, creative ways that we make abolition irresistible to our communities, starting with her own personal practice. Paige believes her calling is to curate experiences where people can connect in ways that heal, encourage the re-imagining of their communities, and make tenable changes that are an outgrowth of spiritual practice, authentic relationships, and intentional engagement in community.

Committed to weaving together global liberation struggles, she earned a Master’s in Middle East Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 2015. Paige’s favorite emotion is gratitude and favorite thing to do on earth is laugh. 

Find her on instagram or twitter (@seriouslypaige) or on her website (impaige.com).

A core value that impacts my approach to social healing is truth-telling. This can be the most liberating or frightening act, and everything in between. I have found in relationship to self and community (in the many ways we define it), that the root of break-down is typically linked to the misunderstanding or concealment of truth. To put it in a different way, truth-telling is critical to healing. In my work, I root myself in fostering opportunities for folk to get to know their truth, express it, and embody it.

Pronouns: she, her

I was born in Seoul, Korea to parents who met and married in New York City as international students in the 1950s. They returned to Korea for several years, but then immigrated to the U.S. permanently when I was a baby, seeking greater economic and political stability here. I grew up in Muscatine, Iowa where I learned to love the big midwestern sky and the kindness of neighbors, and where I also learned a great deal about racism and misogyny as a young woman of color. My theologian mother and dentist father raised my two brothers and me to be reflective, competitive, and practical at the same time. Our home was energetic and boisterous, and filled with intense and heated debates about everything from national politics to whether Bach or Beethoven was the superior composer.

My early experiences of organized religion revealed a lot of racism, sexism, and anti-immigrant sentiment, even as I loved singing in the choir. I felt a strong pull towards faith, but often found churches to be both exclusive and transactional. I returned to the church via the choir as a younger adult, though I had to be paid (as a soprano section leader) to do so. I fell in love with the liturgy, inclusive theology, and radical feminist priests of The Episcopal Church, as it felt like a place where I could show up with hard questions and find grace and prophetic witness in return. The church has been a place of both trauma and healing, and I remain hopeful and prayerful about our call to be a source of wisdom and love in bringing about racial healing and justice making. My vocational call remains very much a work in progress.

Most of my professional life has been in education, the church, and in the world of classical choral singing. I’ve been blessed by many colleagues and teachers along the way, who have reminded me that finding and honoring one’s voice is an integral element of knowing and honoring our personal and collective Belovedness.

Heidi J. Kim has engaged in racial healing work in The Episcopal Church as well as in higher and secondary education, focusing on the stories of the survivors and disrupters of oppression and marginalization. She is particularly committed to creating space for the struggles of people of faith to speak across difference while remaining in community. Her passion is working with curious, diligent, and loving people to sustain strong and inclusive communities. She currently serves as the Director of Talent and Organizational Culture at Propel Nonprofits in Minneapolis, MN. She also serves as an independent consultant for faith-based communities with a focus on conflict transformation, culture change, and formation for racial reconciliation and healing.

A core value that impacts my approach to social healing is curiosity — I think that polarization arises when we sit comfortably in our places of certainty that we are right and everyone else is wrong. I find that when I am triggered by something that feels dehumanizing, staying in a place of curiosity can often get to the story behind the story, and uncover the “shorthand” that people often use to describe their own experiences. Curiosity has helped me find connection and empathy with people whose perspectives and experiences are vastly different from my own.

Pronouns: she, her

I am an ever-curious soul that thrives within spaces that value the power and art of gathering together. Raised in the heart of Texas with a southern rooted family on both sides (Louisiana and Arkansas), I’ve somehow managed to live and thrive in New York City for the last six years. Probably because I come from a family that, although they suffered generations of pain, found the best in what they had. A family that laughed hard sometimes just to mask their crying. A family that worked its best to stay connected as we moved across the country over time. I’m aware of the unhealthy peace we often upheld, but I appreciate the outlook they gave me of the world — to just keep trying to find appreciation in the little things. Because of this, I often go where the excitement, creativity, and joy resides.

You can say a major hobby of mine is watching Astrology Tik Tok (hehe), but otherwise I love traveling, connecting with others, and seeking out any live show on the planet — comedy, music, theatre, etc. My favorite album is The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Some of my most frequented podcasts are Unlocking Us, Criminal, Science Vs, and Bottom of the Map — a podcast that explores and critiques southern hip-hop at the intersection of social impact. Once again, you can’t get rid of the southern girl in me.

In everything I do, I enjoy testing out the limits of what healing looks like. I’m currently transitioning from a nonprofit career of eight years in the gun violence prevention movement, where I worked to uplift impactful stories and connect intersectional issues to both coalition-build as well as address the root causes that perpetuate gun violence in America. My new, and very exciting journey involves being creative through social impact campaigns and experiential events, as well as meshing the belief that art, empathy, and storytelling are powerful in changing culture. This all fuels my passion for empowering, healing, and connecting communities around the world.

A core value that impacts my approach to social healing, and my main approach for life: lead with empathy, and be intentional and curious about the journey ahead. This really just means all we can do is try to manifest the world we want to see around us while also understanding that we’ll have to pivot with the ever-changing world. This helps us be more empathetic to life’s journey and more open to connecting with each other in a real way. 

Pronouns: she, her

Ora Wise is a chef, community connector, speaker, and facilitator focused on collaborative culinary and cultural production. She lives in Brooklyn and works as an organizational consultant, mentor, program director, and interdisciplinary producer in New York, Detroit, Puerto Rico, and beyond.

Grounded in Popular Education as a movement building model, she spent over a decade designing curriculum for projects connecting local and global struggles for abolition, decolonization, and collective liberation, including Slingshot Hip Hop, Detroit Future Media, and The Knotted Line.

Coming from people with a passionate relationship to food and a deep reverence for the processes and people that produce it, Ora has turned to food as a vehicle for self determination and collective healing. At the heart of Ora’s approach to leadership is the practice of radical hospitality: creating spaces for celebration, creativity, intimacy, and nourishment.  As Culinary Producer for the Allied Media Conference in Detroit, she directed The Dream Cafe, an experimental pop-up restaurant centered around Black, migrant, and Indigenous chefs and farmers. Drawing from this, as well as her experience co-founding and operating a queer catering company, she guides businesses and nonprofits in operationalizing  principles of equity, accessibility, accountability, and sustainability.

Ora is a founder and director of FIG, a collective of people working in and around food sharing resources for self transformation and collective action. Through FIG’s partnership-based Food Security Program, she is co-creating a laboratory for solidarity economics and cross-sector systems of support.

Ora is interested in collaborations that allow her to weave together her passion for communication, culture, education, hospitality, and collective ownership.

A core value that impacts my approach to social healing is communalism/collectivism — Whatever creative projects, organizations, businesses, social spaces, or events I am a part of founding, leading, or producing, I approach them collaboratively and committed to shared ownership and equity (structurally, conceptually, and fiscally).