Speakers, Panelists, and Moderators
keynote address
Opening and closing keynote addresses by Harriet A. Washington and Judge Wendell Griffen.
Opening
As a medical ethicist, Harriet Washington has a unique and courageous voice and deconstructs the politics around medical issues. In addition to giving an abundance of historically accurate information on ‘scientific racism’, she paints a powerful and disturbing portrait of medicine, race, sex, and the abuse of power by telling individual human stories. Washington also makes the case for broader political consciousness of science and technology, challenging audiences to see the world differently and challenge established paradigms in the history of medicine.
Harriet Washington is an award-winning medical writer and editor, and the author of the best-selling book, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. In her work, she focuses mainly upon bioethics, history of medicine, African American health issues and the intersection of medicine, ethics and culture.
Medical Apartheid, the first social history of medical research with African Americans, was chosen as one of Publishers’ Weekly Best Books of 2006. The book also won the National Book Critics Circle Nonfiction Award, a PEN award, 2007 Gustavus Myers Award, and Nonfiction Award of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. It has been praised in periodicals from theWashington Post and Newsweek to Psychiatric Services, the Economist, Social History of Medicineand theTimes of Londonand it has been excerpted in theNew York Academy of Sciences’ Update. Experts have praised its scholarship, accuracy and insights. Medical Apartheid was the #1 best-seller in medical ethics on Amazon.
In her latest book, Infectious Madness, Washington looks at the connection between germs and mental illness, revealing that schizophrenia, obsessive- compulsive disorder, Alzheimer's, and anorexia also may be caused by bacteria, parasites, or viruses. Weaving together cutting-edge research and case studies, Washington demonstrates how strep throat can trigger rapid-onset OCD in a formerly healthy teen and how contact with cat litter elevates the risk of schizophrenia. Infectious Madness was released in October 2015.
Washington wrote Medical Apartheid while she was a Research Fellow in Ethics at Harvard Medical School. She has worked as a Page One editor for USA Today,as a science editor for metropolitan dailies and several national magazines, and her award-winning medical writing. Her work has appeared inHealth, Emerge and Psychology Today, as well as such academic publications as the Harvard Public Health Review, the Harvard AIDS Review, Nature, The Journal of the American Medical Association, The American Journal of Public Health and the New England Journal of Medicine. Her awards include the Congressional Black Caucus Beacon of Light Award, two awards from the National Association of Black Journalists and a Unity Award from Emerge. She is the founding Editor of The Harvard Journal of Minority Public Health and has presented her work at universities in the U.S. and abroad.
In her book, Deadly Monopolies: The Shocking Corporate Takeover of Life Itself, Washington takes an in depth, eye-opening look at the 40,000+ patents on human genes and their harmful, even lethal, consequences on public health. Her other books include, Parkinson’s Disease, a monograph published by Harvard Health Publications, Living Healthy with Hepatitis C and she is co-author of Health and Healing for African Americans.
Ms. Washington has taught at venues that include New School University, SUNY, the Rochester Institute of Technology, University of Rochester, Harvard School of Public Health and Tuskegee University. She has sat on the boards of many organizations, including The Young Women’s Christian Association, the School Health Advisory Board of the Monroe County Department of Health and the Journal of the National Medical Association, to name a few.
Ms. Washington has also worked as a laboratory technician, as a medical social worker, as the manager of a poison-control center/suicide hotline, and has performed as an oboist and as a classical-music announcer for WXXI-FM, a PBS affiliate in Rochester, N.Y. She lives in New York City with her husband Ron DeBose.
Harriet a. washington
Closing
Wendell Griffen is Circuit Judge for the 5th Division in the Sixth Judicial District of Arkansas, Pastor of New Millennium Church in Little Rock, Arkansas, and CEO of Griffen Strategic Consulting. He is a native of Delight (Pike County), Arkansas, and a graduate of the University of Arkansas (B.A., Political Science, '73) and the University of Arkansas School of Law (J.D. '79).
Rev./Judge Griffen is a U.S. Army veteran, a 1975 graduate of the Defense Race Relations Institute (now the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute), and was awarded the Army Commendation Medal for meritorious service in work concerning race relations and equal opportunity. His writings about faith, social justice, public policy, cultural competency and inclusion can be found on his blogs: 'Wendell Griffen on Cultural Competency' and 'Justice Is a Verb!"
Wendell Griffen
scholars roundtable I
Phillis Isabella Sheppard is Associate Professor of Religion, Psychology, and Culture at the Divinity School and Graduate Department of Religion of Vanderbilt University. Her research in Religion, Psychology and Culture engages the intersection where the social and the intrapsychic meet. In Self, Culture and Others in Womanist Practical Theology (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) she argued for the necessity of fostering a psychoanalytic dimension to womanist approaches to practical theology. The book was the focus of a panel discussion at the American Academy of Religion’s Womanist Approaches to Religion and Society session.
phillis i. sheppard
Jonathan Metzl is the Frederick B. Rentschler II Professor of Sociology and Psychiatry, and the director of the Department of Medicine, Health, and Society, at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He received his MD from the University of Missouri, MA in humanities/poetics and psychiatric internship/residency from Stanford University, and PhD in American culture from University of Michigan. Winner of the 2020 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Book Award, the 2020 APA Benjamin Rush Award for Scholarship, and a 2008 Guggenheim fellowship, Dr. Metzl has written extensively for medical, psychiatric, and popular publications about some of the most urgent hot-button issues facing America and the world. His books include The Protest Psychosis, Prozac on the Couch, Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality, and Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland.
jonathan metzl
Dorothy Roberts is the 14th Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor and George A. Weiss University Professor of Law & Sociology at University of Pennsylvania, with joint appointments in the Departments of Africana Studies and Sociology and the Law School, where she is the inaugural Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights. She is also Founding Director of the Penn Program on Race, Science & Society. An internationally recognized scholar, public intellectual, and social justice advocate, Roberts has written and lectured extensively on the interplay of race and gender in U.S. institutions and has been a leader in transforming thinking on reproductive justice, child welfare, and bioethics. She is author of Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (1997) Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (2001), and Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century (2011) and more than 100 articles and book chapters, as well as co-editor of six books. She has served on the boards of directors of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Black Women’s Health Imperative, and National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, and her work has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, National Science Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Fulbright Program, Harvard Program on Ethics & the Professions, and Stanford Center for the Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity. Recent recognitions of her work include 2019 election as a College of Physicians of Philadelphia Fellow, 2017 election to the National Academy of Medicine, 2016 Society of Family Planning Lifetime Achievement Award, 2015 American Psychiatric Association Solomon Carter Fuller Award, and 2011 election as a Hastings Center Fellow.
dorothy roberts
Dr. Reynolds is the Medical Director of the Rochester General Hospitalist Group. the Chair of Ethics Committee for Consultations, and a Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine. He was inspired to go to medical school by the "brain candy" of clinical medical ethics; once there, Dr. Reynolds fell in love with the intensity of hospital-based internal medicine. The complex interconnected medical illnesses that require patients to be hospitalized and the rapid pace of inpatient care allows him to engage deeply with patients at critical points in their lives. Dr. Reynolds has numerous publications and awards as well as an impressive list of lectures and presentations.
Carl “Chris” Henry Reynolds
Dr. Li is associate professor at University of Houston-Downtown. He teaches East Asian Politics, U.S. Foreign Policy, Politics and Animal Rights, Contemporary China, and international relations.
His research focuses on China’s animal law and policies a time of rapid social transformation. Dr. Li’s publications cover subjects related to wildlife trade, culture/politics of wildlife exploitation, the political and institutional obstacles to China’s animal protection legislation, human-animal relations in contemporary China, and animal agriculture and food security. His “Enforcing Wildlife Protection in China” is one of the most cited of his works. “Explaining China’s Wildlife Crisis” (https://works.bepress.com/peter-li/17/) is a more recent overview of the political and institutional challenges of China’s wildlife protection and the obstacles to law enforcement against wildlife trafficking.“The Covid-19 pandemic and China’s wildlife business interest” sheds light on the oversized influence of China’s wildlife business interest in the country’s public discourse and public policy-making related to wildlife (https://theasiadialogue.com/2020/03/12/the-covid-19-epidemic-and-chinas-wildlife-business-interest/).
Dr. Li appears in a large number of media interviews on the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic, China’s responsibility, racial discrimination targeting Chinese Americans, media misrepresentation of Chinese dietary culture and other related topics.
Dr. Li’s book Animal Welfare in China: Crisis and Politics of Development (University of Sidney Press) is forthcoming.
Dr. Li has worked in the last ten years as consultant for Humane Society International (HSI) on issues and collaborative programs with China.
Peter Li
scholars roundtable II
Rev. Dr. Teresa L. Smallwood, Esq. was born in Windsor, North Carolina.
She is the daughter of the late Harry and the late Mattie Cherry Smallwood. Dr. Smallwood graduated from Bertie Senior High School with honors in 1978. She attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for undergraduate studies where she majored in Speech Communications and Afro-American Studies and graduated with a B.A. Degree. She received the Juris Doctor Degree in 1985 from North Carolina Central University School of Law.
Dr. Smallwood began her legal career with Legal Services of the Southern Piedmont in Charlotte, NC. She also work as a staff attorney for the Children’s Law Center in the same city. In 1989, she served as an Assistant District Attorney until she commenced her private practice that spanned more than two decades.
Dr. Smallwood currently resides in Nashville, Tennessee having graduated with the PhD degree May, 2017 from Chicago Theological Seminary in the areas of Theology, Ethics, and Human Sciences. She now serves as Postdoctoral Fellow and Associate Director of the Public Theology and Racial Justice Collaborative at Vanderbilt Divinity School.
Dr. Smallwood was licensed and ordained to public ministry while serving Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church in Lewiston, NC. She is a member at New Covenant Christian Church in Nashville under the pastoral leadership of Rev. Dr. Judy Cummings.
teresa l. smallwood
Herbert R. Marbury researches the Bible’s textuality—that is how biblical texts come to meaning both in the ancient world and in the contemporary worlds of modern U.S. communities. Although he turns to cultural studies, he grounds his work in both historical-critical and hermeneutical methods.In the ancient world, he focuses on Judah under Persian and Hellenistic imperial domination, which are the societies from which much of the literature of the Hebrew Bible emerged. In his first book, Imperial Dominion and Priestly Genius (Sopher Press, September, 2012)he focuses on Ezra-Nehemiah and asks,“What meaning(s) might Ezra-Nehemiah have held for elites in Persian Jerusalem?” He investigates the Second Temple community’s counter-narratives of resistance against imperial domination.Since 2012 Marbury has served as co-chair of the African American Biblical Hermeneutics section of the Society of Biblical Literature. There, he raises the question of meaning for African American communities. In Pillars of Cloud and Fire: The Politics of Exodus in African American Biblical Interpretation (New York University Press, 2015), he uses cultural studies as a mode of inquiry and builds on the method developed in Imperial Dominion. Pillars of Cloud and Fire recovers trajectories of counter-history in examples of African American biblical interpretation heretofore unexamined by biblical scholars. Focusing on figures such as Absalom Jones, David Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, Frances E. W. Harper, Adam Clayton Powell, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Albert Cleage, Marbury asks, “What meaning(s) has the exodus story held for successive African American communities in the U.S. fromthe antebellum period through the era the Black Power Movement?”Prior to his tenure at VDS, Marbury served as pastor of Old National United Methodist Church in Atlanta, GA and as University Chaplain at Clark Atlanta University where, in 2004, he was named the Chaplain of the Year by the United Methodist Higher Education Foundation. He has taught at American Baptist College and has served as a mentor in the Doctor of Ministry program at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio for the program group "TheBlack Church and Social and Civic Empowerment.” For Marbury, joining the faculty at VDS follows the long arc of a call that has led him to pastoral and teaching forms of ministry, two commitments that he continues to maintain.
Herbert Marbury
Juan M. Floyd-Thomas Ph.D. is Associate Professor of African American Religious History at Vanderbilt University's Divinity School and Graduate Department of Religion. In addition to having written numerous journal articles and book chapters, he is author of The Origins of Black Humanism: Reverend Ethelred Brown and the Unitarian Church (2008) and Liberating Black Church History: Making It Plain (2014) as well as co-author of Black Church Studies: An Introduction(2007) and The Altars Where We Worship: The Religious Significance of Popular Culture in the United States (2016). Most recently, Floyd-Thomas co-edited Religion in the Age of Obama with Anthony B. Pinn (2018). His research has been funded by fellowships and grants from the Louisville Institute, the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion, and most recently the Robert Penn Warren Center for Humanities at Vanderbilt University. Currently, he serves as the Executive Director of the Society for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion (SRER), a co-founder and Executive Committee member of the Black Religious Scholars Group (BRSG), and an Associate Editor for the American Academy of Religion's Reading Religion website.
Juan Floyd-Thomas
Lisa L. Thompson, a native of Cedar Grove, NC, is Associate Professor and the Cornelius Vanderbilt Chancellor Faculty Fellow of Black Homiletics and Liturgics at the Divinity School and Graduate Department of Religion of Vanderbilt University. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy and a Master of Arts in Religion from Vanderbilt University, and prioritizes discussing the ways religion can be used for the destruction or uplift of our life together. Her most recent publication is entitled Ingenuity: Preaching as an Outsider (Fall 2018). She was awarded the Louisville Institute First Book Grant for Minority Scholars for her forthcoming book entitled Preaching the Headlines. As an ordained Baptist minister, she holds a Master of Divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary and has served in university and parish settings. Prior to pursuing the study of theology and religion full-time, she majored in both psychology and communication studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and worked in case management. She continues to consult, speak, and lead workshops on self-leadership and cultural change in the public and private sectors. Full bio available here: https://divinity.vanderbilt.edu/people/bio/lisa-l-thompson
lisa l. thompson
The Reverend Eboni Marshall Turman, Ph.D. teaches theology, ethics, and African American religion at Yale University Divinity School in New Haven, CT. A first-career concert dancer and ordained National Baptist preacher, her research interests span the varieties of 20th century US theological liberalisms, most especially Black and womanist theological, social ethical, and theo-aesthetic traditions.
She co-chairs the Black Theology unit of the American Academy of Religion, serves on the executive committee of the Society for the Study of Black Religion, and is a founding member of the Black Church Collective for which she served as lead author of the recent “On Black Lives Matter: A Theological Statement from the Black Churches.”
Dr. Turman is currently completing her second monograph tentatively titled, Black Women’s Burden: Male Power, Gender Violence, and the Scandal of African American Social Christianity, and she has recently begun preliminary research for her third monograph titled, In My Flesh Shall I See God: Black Womanist Theological Aesthetics. Through her research and scholarship, Dr. Turman is transforming the way we frame the Black experience, the contemporary movement for Black lives, and the moral significance of the Black community specifically the 21st century black church.
A trailblazer in the church and academy, she is the youngest woman to be named Assistant Minister of the historic Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City (2002-2012), and the second woman to preside over the ordinances in its 212-year history. She formerly served as Director of Black Church Studies at Duke University Divinity School (2013-2016).
She is the only womanist theological ethicist on faculty at Yale Divinity School; the recipient of the 2018 Yale University Bouchet Faculty Excellence award for research and teaching; the 2018 Inspiring Yale award; a 2017-18 Yale Public Voices fellow; one of Ebony Magazine’s Young Faith Leaders in the Black Community; included on the Network Journal’s prestigious 40 Under 40 List; named as one of the “Top 5 Young Preachers in America” by ROHO; and Auburn Theological Seminary’s 2017 “Lives of Commitment” honoree.
She lives in New York City with her wonderful spouse, Rossie E. Turman III, Esq., and their beautiful daughters, Haarlem and Kroux.
Eboni Marshall Turman
intergenerational panel
Elisabeth Maaike Geschiere is a descendant of Dutch, Protestant, working class, immigrants who were mostly farmers. She is a passionate facilitator, activist, and community organizer focused on dismantling white supremacy through embodied healing, truth-telling, and economic justice. Elisabeth is trained and experienced in facilitation, anti-white supremacy education, peer counseling, and the restorative justice practices of Circle Keeping and Mediation. From 2012-2016, she worked in youth dropout prevention and promoted equity through student, family and community engagement in Minneapolis Public Schools. In 2013, Elisabeth co-founded the Twin Cities Social Justice Education Fair. She is a former ministerial intern and active member at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashville and plans to become an ordained minister in the Unitarian Universalist tradition. Elisabeth is currently pursuing a Master of Divinity at Vanderbilt Divinity School with concentrations in Spirituality and Social Activism as well as Religion and Economic Justice.
Elisabeth Geschiere
Ordained for 30 years in the Episcopal Church, Susanne Watson Epting began work in the church in 1981 as a campus ministry assistant and lay coordinator of a small congregation near the University of Iowa.
After completing graduate work, studying the Social Gospel era in America, along with causes and understandings of social inequality, she was ordained in 1989. At that time she became both coordinator of an HIV counseling and testing program at a free clinic and the director for the Diocesan Institute of Christian Studies.
Active over many years in ministry development, she eventually became Canon to the Ordinary (an assistant to the bishop), working in that area with individuals and congregations, as well as in deployment and discernment. She remains involved in ministry development doing occasional consulting and teaching.
Susanne served on the Primates’ Task Force on Theological Education in the Anglican Communion (2003-2007), as well as a similar task force on theological education in The Episcopal Church called Proclaiming Education for All (PEALL). From 2005-2008, she was part of the Anglican Communion delegation to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. She also edited a “Beijing Circles Resource Booklet” which addresses issues for women worldwide in a theological reflection context. For several years she taught online courses with the Church Divinity School of the Pacific. In retirement, she has co-founded the Beloved Community Initiative for racial justice, healing and reconciliation. As part of that work, she is part of the first cohort of the Public Theology and Racial Justice Institute at Vanderbilt Theological Seminary. She continues to create word images and has been learning the wonders of operating a letterpress, as well as book binding.
She has published in Women’s Uncommon Prayers, the Anglican Theological Review, and Currents in Theology and Mission (published by the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago). Her book, Unexpected Consequences – the diaconate renewed was released by Morehouse Publishing in the spring of 2015. She is also a contributor to The Diaconate in Ecumenical Perspective (Sacristy Press, 2019.) She served as a board member of the Association for Episcopal Deacons for eight years and as its director for ten. Susanne lives with her spouse, Christopher, and a small menagerie in Iowa City, Iowa.
Susanne Watson Epting
Quentin Cox is a full-time student at Vanderbilt Divinity School, where he expects to graduate with a Master of Divinity degree in 2021. His academic inquiry centers on issues of economic justice, the Black community, and the Black church. Quentin is a former Air Force officer and retail leader. In those roles, he led large and small, local and geographically separated teams in fulfilling their missions. Today, Quentin seeks opportunities to bring his academic, business, and leadership experiences and skills to bear in a way that supports the overall health and well-being of Black people, the Black community, and the Black church.
quentin cox
Viisha P. Souza is Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) from Kailua, Hawai’i. She is a Master of Divinity 2020 graduate of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY. At commencement she received the Blue Lyles Award; an award that recognized the graduating senior who contributed the most to student life. Her organizing and activism reflects and combines her passion in areas related to mental health and how it interconnects with justice. Her recent research considered the mental health of Kanaka Maoli women and how cultural historical trauma is a vast part of Hawaiian history that isn’t told. Her ambition is to one day be a professor and a life-long researcher regarding the mental health of Kanaka Maoli. She is a member of the first cohort of the Vanderbilt Public Theology and Racial Justice Collaborative Summer Institute.
Viisha P. Souza
Jacques Boyd is a native of Nashville, Tennessee. Since August of 2019 he has served as the Senior Pastor of The Historic Mount Bethel Baptist Church of Nashville, Tennessee.
Reverend Boyd confessed belief in Christ and was baptized at the Foster Chapel Baptist Church December of 1998. January of 2011 with the Call of God on his life and a zest for knowledge he enrolled at the American Baptist College; graduating with a bachelor’s degree majoring in Bible & Theology (Cum Laude); while there he was Who’s Who Among Students in American Universities & Colleges. He’s also a graduate of Lipscomb University with a master’s degree. In addition to his undergraduate and graduate degrees he has completed additional courses at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary (2018). December of 2018 he successfully defended his dissertation “Increasing the Knowledge of Making Christ Known in the Local Church Through Missions” to earn a Doctor of Ministry degree graduating May of 2019 as a Leonard N. Smith Fellow at Virginia University of Lynchburg.
Reverend Boyd served as Youth Pastor of Greater Revelations Baptist Church May of 2014 until August of 2019; not only faithful to the ministry of the local church he also has served as President for the Youth and Young Adults of the West Nashville District Association, Dean of Christian Education of the West Nashville District Association, and Advisor for the Youth and Young Adults of the Missionary Baptist State Convention of Tennessee.
Reverend Boyd believes in educating all people in the areas of personal responsibility, leadership potential, and community service. His unique, charismatic, expository approach has allowed him to share the good news of Christ locally, statewide, nationally and internationally.
Reverend Boyd is married to Kelly and together they have three wonderful children. He’s also a member of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. His life and ministry are guided by Psalms 118:8
Jacques Boyd
interfaith panel
Professor JoAnn Terrell is an ordained elder in the Michigan Annual Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.
Professor Terrell’s current research interests are interreligious in scope, and focus on soteriological principles in Taoism, Buddhism and Christianity, the genre of spiritual autobiography, and the power of the visual and performing arts to effect personal, social, and cosmic transformation.
“The world’s unfolding narrative reveals too many burdensome predicaments that wreak personal, familial, social, and cosmic destruction, strain belief, challenge religious communities and demand prophetic witness. As a black, womanist, spiritually eclectic theologian, my response has been to delve into the sustaining theological traditions, look to the arts, privilege creativity in the classroom and utilize drama as public pedagogy. I have done so for as long as I have been a teacher, because I understand that through art the Ineffable can be broached and push us towards new thoughts, new habits, new ways of being with and for each other. Despite the wretched conditions humankind continuously faces, I believe in the beauty that is, and it is my scholarly and pastoral duty to pursue and find it.”
JoAnne Terrell
Nicole Malveaux is the Associate Director of the Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center. A native of Houston, Texas, Nicole attended Fisk University where she received a B.A. in English. Nicole graduated from Vanderbilt Divinity School with a Master of Divinity in 2016, where she was a Cal Tuner Fellow. During her tenure at the Divinity School, Nicole spent two weeks in Brooklyn, NY conducting ethnographic research that focused on the Black aesthetic and Black women throughout the Diaspora where she explored intersection of sexual identity and spirituality. In addition to her interest in ethnography, Malveaux has spent years documenting Black women through portraiture. She is a proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. In her spare time, Nicole enjoys traveling, collecting sneakers, and watching arthouse films. She is an avid photographer, enjoys writing short stories, and is a voracious reader. Most recently, Nicole was awarded the Intersectional Advocate of the Year Award from the LGBTQI Life Center at Vanderbilt.
Nicole Malveaux
Tracy Tveit is a lifelong member of the Baha’i Faith, a religion emphasizing Unity, the Oneness of Humanity, and Equality as core principles of its theology. As the daughter of an Airforce officer, she moved throughout the country, gaining exposure to a variety of American subcultures. Working with her mother, an educator and social activist, during the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, Tracy spent her childhood learning and gaining a passion for social justice. Following in her mother’s footsteps, she has since worked at the grassroots level in social activism and quiet revolutionary acts for the causes of equity and social change in her personal and professional community life. She is passionate about taking diversity, equity & inclusion ideologies outside of the realms of theoretical and intellectual discussion, and translating them, instead, into action, personal daily practice, community building, and deep relationship building.
Tracy received her Associate of Arts degree in Communication from the University of Maryland, Munich Germany Campus, in 1982 and her BSN degree from Northern Illinois University in 1986. Tracy served as an RN in the Chicago and Nashville areas from 1986-2007, specializing in Adult and Adolescent Psychiatric medicine. For the last 12 years, Tracy has worked as a Program Coordinator and Event Planner at Vanderbilt University. Recently she was a Logistical Coordinator for the Nashville Pupil of the Eye Conference, a conference with over 300 attendees focusing on the Spiritual Reality and Station of Black People in the Baha’i Faith.
Tracy Tveit
Rabbi Laurie hails from Los Angeles, California. She completed her Bachelor of Arts at Northwestern University, as a dual major in History and Slavic Languages and Literatures. She was ordained by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 2001, having received her Masters in Hebrew Letters in 1999. Prior to coming to Congregation Micah in Nashville, she served congregations in Los Angeles and Visalia, California; Westchester, New York; and Woodinville, Washington. She also has experience working as a chaplain at the Cedar-Sinai Medical Center of Los Angeles, California, and as a research assistant to Dr. Eugene Borowitz, the Reform Movement’s pre-eminent theologian. She believes in the doing of justice, the loving all people with compassion, and walking with humility as often as possible. When not on the pulpit, you can find her running the roads of Percy-Warner park or walking with her family anywhere outdoors.
Laurie Rice
Geran Lorraine grew up on the lands of the Haudenosaunee and currently lives on historic Powhatan land. He has grown up in the Christian faith and is also guided by his Indigenous spirituality. He has been organizing around economic justice, racial justice, health equity, and worker’s rights issues since 2008. He is also an ardent advocate for environmental justice having grown up with a continual awareness of harmful environmental policies affecting his people. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Union Presbyterian Seminary and a Bachelors degree in Psychology from Penn State. Geran is actively involved in several local non-profits, most recently helping to establish an affordable preschool in Richmond, Virginia’s East End.
Rashed Fakhruddin is an engineering supervisor with Nashville Electric Service (NES), where he has been employed the last 25 years. Rashed is also one of the leading proponents for service, inclusion and cultural diversity within Nashville’s ever-changing and growing community through his many roles in the city including director of community partnerships at the Islamic Center of Nashville.
Rashed spends a tremendous amount of his time speaking to thousands of high school students every year on professional and life skills, preparing them for success in high school, college, the workplace & life. Rashed also serves on the Nashville Chamber’s Engineering Partnership Council for Metro Nashville Public Schools, having recently chaired it. Rashed mentors high school students through job shadowing and internships at his work. Rashed has also served on the chamber’s Education Report Card Committee and is presently serving on the advisory board for the inaugural Leadership Public Education. Rashed is also an honorary alumni of Teach for America.
Rashed is passionate about eliminating racism, empowering women, and promoting peace and justice. He is an advocate of ending domestic violence toward women. Accordingly, he serves on the boards of You Have The Power and the YWCA, where he is an ambassador of the AMEND Together program which empowers men and young boys to help end the cycle of violence towards women & girls. He brings the AMEND message to thousands of high school students every year while speaking on life skills through his work, along with sharing this message also to the Muslim community through sermons every year.
Over the past two decades, Rashed has made an important impact on the Nashville community by serving in various leadership roles at the Islamic Center of Nashville, including past president. For the last 2 decades, Rashed has been coordinating and providing presentations on Islam to universities, schools, leadership groups and other organizations upon request in order to help develop a better understanding of Muslims, while building bridges and fostering stronger relationships within the community. Rashed has helped put a caravan faith tour together for Nashvillians to allow the opportunity to visit the different places of worship in Nashville. Rashed has helped build partnerships with organizations and non-profits throughout the city to help work for social justice.
Geran Lorraine
rashed Fakhruddin
Rev. Hammonds, a native of Nashville, Tennessee, answered her call to the preaching ministry in 1996. She served on the ministerial staff of St. John African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, Nashville, until September of 1999, when she was ordained an Itinerant Deacon in the Tennessee Annual Conference of the 13th Episcopal District of the AME Church. In September of 2000, she was ordained an Itinerant Elder. Her ministerial gifts and emphases are Christian education and grief care.
Rev. Hammonds earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Administration, with a minor in Marketing, from Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. This prepared her for a successful and multi-faceted career in consumer lending. She also trained and was licensed to sell ordinary life insurance to individual and family markets.
In 2000, Rev. Hammonds received her Masters of Divinity degree from Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville, Tennessee. While there, she engaged in diverse theological studies. She also participated in a global immersion program, observing ministry in other countries. Traveling to South Africa, Rev. Hammonds gained the distinction of becoming the first woman to preach at Jabavu African Evangelical Church in the city of Soweto.
Rev. Hammonds’s ministry is concerned with rightfully dividing God’s Word with practical applications speaking to today’s social issues. She believes the church plays a pivotal role in addressing oppression and seeking justice by demonstrating God’s example of love and community. To further her spiritual commitment, in October of 2007, she traveled to Israel, tracing the footsteps of Jesus from Nazareth to Jerusalem, as the recipient of a Holy Rest grant sponsored by the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Cousins Family Foundation.
Rev. Hammonds enjoys traveling and self-identifies as a “foodie,” always open to try new restaurants and cuisines. In May of 2017, she fulfilled a life-long dream when she was initiated into Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., Nu Kappa Omega Chapter, in Clarksville, Tennessee. She is also a founding member of and officer in the Nashville chapter of the National Consortium of Black Women in Ministry.
Rev. Hammonds preaches throughout Nashville and surrounding areas and exercises her ministry in numerous capacities. She serves on the staff of the AMEC Finance Department as an assistant to Treasurer/CFO Richard A. Lewis. Furthering her work in bereavement, Rev. Hammonds is a graduate of John A. Gupton College and is a licensed Funeral Director in Tennessee. She serves on the staff at Lewis & Wright Funeral Directors. Continuing her commitment to erudition, she works on numerous publications, lending her compiling, proofreading, and editing skills. In 2016, she became the Assistant Editor for The Christian Recorder, the oldest existing periodical published by African-Americans in the United States and the AME Church’s official news organ. Notwithstanding her many obligations, Rev. Hammonds’s priority is to the pastorate. She has served congregations in Columbia, Nashville, and Clarksville. In March of 2018, she assumed responsibility as the senior pastor of her home church, St. John AME Church in Nashville, Tennessee, the Mother Church (oldest) of African Methodism in the state of Tennessee, an appointment and opportunity for which she is most excited!
Lisa Hammonds
Medical Panel
Dr. Christina Bailey is the program director for the General Surgery Residency and the Assistant Professor of Surgery, Surgical Oncology and Endocrine Surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Prior to joining VUMC, Dr. Bailey served as a Complex General Surgical Oncology Fellow, in the Department of Surgery at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas. Her primary clinical interests are in GI malignancies including gastric cancer, small bowel cancer, colorectal cancer, gastro-intestinal stromal tumors (GIST), retroperitoneal sarcomas, and neuroendocrine tumors. Dr. Bailey received the Lotzova Research Award and MD Anderson Trainee Excellence Award during her fellowship.Dr. Bailey’s research focuses on disparities in cancer diagnosis, treatment and outcomes in regards to age, socioeconomic status, and race as well as quality of life after cancer treatment. Her research articles have recently been accepted and published in JAMA Surgery, Journal of Oncology Practice, and Journal of Gastrointestinal Surgery.
Rhea Boyd MD, MPH is a pediatrician, public health advocate, and scholar who writes and teaches on the relationship between structural racism, inequity and health. She has a particular focus on the child and public health impacts of harmful policing practices and policies. She serves as the Chief Medical Officer of San Diego 211, working with navigators to address social needs of San Diegans impacted by chronic illness and poverty. And she is the Director of Equity and Justice for The California Children's Trust, an initiative to advance mental health access to children and youth across California.
Dr. Boyd graduated cum laude with a B.A. in Africana Studies and Health from the University of Notre Dame. She earned a M.D. at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and completed her pediatric residency at University of California, San Francisco. In 2017, Dr. Boyd graduated from the Commonwealth Fund Mongan Minority Health Policy Fellowship at Harvard University’s School of Public Health, earning an M.P.H.
My presentation will explore various theological and racial justice implications relating to economic stability and investment in the Black community. This discussion will include the following: historical context for the economic issues affecting the Black community, relevant data and statistics, spiritual connections to the Christian faith and Black Church, reflections from the first financial literacy and estate planning event I hosted, impacts of the tornado and pandemic on my project, and my plan to move forward with this work.
Christina Bailey
Rhea Boyd
Lloyda Williamson
Dr. Rachel R. Hardeman is a tenured Associate Professor in the Division of Health Policy & Management, University of Minnesota, School of Public Health. She is a reproductive health equity researcher whose program of research applies the tools of population health science and health services research to elucidate a critical and complex determinant of health inequity—racism. Dr. Hardeman leverages the frameworks of critical race theory and reproductive justice to inform her equity-centered work which aims to build the empirical evidence of racism’s impact on health particularly for Black birthing people and their babies. Dr. Hardeman’s research includes a partnership with Roots Community Birth Center, in North Minneapolis, one of five Black-owned freestanding birth centers in the United States. Her work also examines the potential mental health impacts for Black birthing people when living in a community that has experienced the killing of an unarmed Black person by police. Published in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the American Journal of Public Health, Dr. Hardeman’s research has elicited important conversations on the topics of culturally-centered care, police brutality and structural racism as a fundamental cause of health inequities. Her overarching goal is to contribute to a body of knowledge that links structural racism to health in a tangible way, identifies opportunities for intervention, and dismantles the systems, structures, and institutions that allow inequities to persist.
Dr. Hardeman is the recipient of several award for her work as an early career investigator including the Dr. Josie R. Johnson Human Rights and Social Justice Award from the University of Minnesota (2019) the 2020 recipient of the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASSPH) Early Career Public Health Research Award. She was recently named a McKnight Presidential Fellow awarded for her excellence in research and scholarship, leadership and recently received the AcademyHealth Alice S. Hersh Emerging Leader Award for the impact her research has had on health policy. She is also active locally and nationally with organizations that seek to achieve health equity such as the Minnesota Maternal Mortality Review Committee and the Board of Directors for Planned Parenthood of the North Central States.
Dr. Hardeman earned an undergraduate degree in chemistry and Spanish from Xavier University of Louisiana, an MPH in Public Health Administration and Policy and a PhD in Health Services Research and Policy from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.
Dr. Eduardo Medina is a board-certified family physician at the Park Nicollet Clinic Minneapolis and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School Department of Family Medicine and Community Health. Published in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Dr. Medina has worked throughout his career and education to advance health equity and high-quality healthcare for all communities. Dr. Medina’s previous work includes engaging with under-resourced communities to improve access to pain, palliative and hospice care in New York City. He has also examined obesogenic environments associated with food deserts and socioeconomic inequity. Dr. Medina completed his MPH at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health and his MD and Family Medicine Residency at the University of Minnesota Medical School. Dr. Medina earned an undergraduate degree in Latin American Studies with a concentration in sociology from Wesleyan University. He is a proud Alumnus of Prep for Prep 9.
Eduardo Medina
Rachel E.Hardeman
racial justice panel
Rev. Rochelle S. Andrews serves as the Assistant Director of The Center for Public Theology at Wesley Theological Seminary. At the center, they help people navigate the intersection of faith and public life. Rochelle has a BS in Management from Rutgers University, an MBA from Vanderbilt University and a Master of Divinity from Wesley Theological Seminary. She is the CEO/President of The Vizion Group, which works with businesses, churches and non-profits helping them to fulfill their mission.
Rochelle is an Ordained Elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Currently, Rochelle serves as the Associate Pastor at Oak Chapel UMC in Silver Spring, MD and with the local United Methodist Church district on affordable housing. She is also the co-director of Amos Social Action Committee at her home church Real Power AME Church in Upper Marlboro, MD. She spends much of her time working on policy, advocacy, and social justice activities to create educational and economic opportunities for the underserved communities. She is also a foodie, loves to read and travel and a gadget geek.
Rochelle Andrews
The Rev. Dr. Jerrolyn Eulinberg is a recent graduate of Chicago Theological Seminary with a Doctor of Philosophy in theology and ethics. Her dissertation is entitled – A Lynched Black Wall Street: A Womanist Perspective on Terrorism, Religion, and Black Resilience of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre. She earned her Master of Divinity from Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University. Rev. Eulinberg is an itinerant elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. She served Greater Institutional A.M.E. Church in Chicago as associate minister for the previous nine years. As a ministerial professional she served as project director at Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference for two national Lilly Endowment initiatives - “Economic Challenges Facing Pastoral Leaders” designed to address financial challenges, and “Called to Lives of Meaning and Purpose,” designed to provide a space for church congregations to more critically discern their vocational callings and address issues of injustice.
Dr. Eulinberg focuses, through a womanist lens, on social injustice and the discrimination that continues to pervade this so-called “post racial” America. As a scholar, theologian, and community activist she is concerned with the structural racism which pervades the oppressive social structures in society. Her research interests include how race, gender, and class function at the intersection of terrorism, politics, economics, health, and law in our society. Her guiding inquiries raises these questions: how do the structures of society continue to inscribe oppression and suffering in the life experiences of African American people? What is the social role and ecclesial response to this injustice? Rev. Dr. Eulinberg is an independent scholar working on her first book.
Jerrolyn Eulinberg
Rev. Terence Mayo is a scholar-activist passionate about the work of racial justice, the liberation of the African Diaspora, and the Black Queer Radical Tradition. He is a Ph.D. student at Chicago Theological Seminary (CTS), where he focuses on Theology, Ethics, & Culture and serves as the President of the Bayard Rustin Society. He also serves as a Racial Justice fellow with Vanderbilt Divinity's Racial Justice Collaborative and is on the Antiracism Transformation Team at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. He has also served as a Public Humanities fellow at Georgetown University and was the first Faith & Public Policy Intern in the District of Columbia's Mayor's Office. He has also served as a community leader on many social justice focused boards within the DC metropolitan area and nationally, including the DC Interfaith Leadership Summit, New Economy Maryland, the Poor People's Campaign, and the Pan-African Young Adult Network within Bread for the World. Terence has spoken locally and nationally on issues such as racism within Christianity, religion & public policy, and young adults' work in social movements.
Terence Mayo
Charlene Sinclair is a facilitator and organizational development specialist with over three decades of experience in strategic communications, organizational development and community organizing. Most recently, in addition to her work with grassroots organizations across the country, Charlene worked with Groundswell Action Fund where she helped mobilize new funding and capacity-building resources to grassroots electoral organizing led by low-income women, women of color, and transgender people. A community organizer for over 30 years, Dr. Sinclair is committed to fostering the lived wisdom of liberation where questions of democracy and its discontent are engaged and articulated within struggles for justice using advocacy, activism, organizing, and the legal system as tools for change. Charlene is a highly sought after meeting designer and facilitator for many social justice efforts and serves as consultant, speaker, trainer, and advisor for leading social change organizations. She is the Principal of InSinc Consulting, a consulting firm that provides strategic and organizational development assistance to social justice organizations and progressive grantmakers and the founding director of the Center for Race, Religion, and Economic Democracy, a non-profit organization committed to the development of strategies for engaging a liberationist approach to faith and spirituality within struggles for justice.
Charlene Sinclair
Timothy Hughes is a native of Baton Rouge, LA, and an honors graduate of Fisk University in Nashville, TN.
In addition to his roles as a branding & image consultant, guerilla marketing maven, burgeoning political strategist, & serial entrepreneur, he has a true passion for public service as demonstrated by his involvement with several national & international organizations including Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.; the NAACP; & the National Urban League.
An activist, advocate, blogger, commentator, columnist, community organizer, educator, innovator, & intellectual, he works at the intersection of public policy & social justice & is actively engaged w/ local, community-based, grassroots organizations & statewide coalitions including but not limited to Black Lives Matter - Nashville; Black Voters Matter Fund; The Brother's Roundtable; Community Oversight Now! Nashville; Gideon's Army; The Equity Alliance; Metro Nashville Community Oversight Board; The Movement School; the Nashville Justice League; Nashville Unchained; New Leaders Council - Nashville; Nashville People's Budget Coalition; & the Urban League of Middle TN.
Timothy Hughes
Ethics Panel
Dr. Marcia Y. Riggs has an undergraduate degree in Religion from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, a Master of Divinity degree from Yale University Divinity School and a PhD in religion/ethics from Vanderbilt University. In April of 2006, Dr. Riggs was inaugurated as the first professor to hold the J. Erskine Love Chair in Christian Ethics at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. She teaches in the Master of Divinity, Doctor of Ministry, and the Master of Theology Programs at the seminary. Dr. Riggs was awarded a 2017-2018 Henry Luce III Fellowship from the Henry Luce Foundation and the Association of Theological Schools; her research project was entitled: “Envisioning and Practicing Beloved Community in the 21st Century.” She receivedthe “Distinction in Theological Education” Award from Yale Divinity School in 2012 and the Alumnae Achievement Award from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in 2006. Dr. Riggs has served on the Editorial Boards for the Encyclopedia on Women and Religion inNorth America, the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, and the Feasting on the Word Lectionary Commentary Series. She has also chaired the Womanist Approaches to Religion and Society Group and has chaired or served on committees of the American Academy of Religion, the Association of Theological Schools, and The Fund for Theological Education (currently, the Forum for Theological Exploration). Dr. Riggs is currently writing a book on an ethical theory and practice called religious ethical mediation. Religious ethical mediation (REM) prepares leaders to address religion, conflict, and violence in a transformative manner. She is the founder of an educational non-profit: Still Waters: A Center for Ethical Formation and Practicesthat offers training in REM.
Dr. Emilie M. Townes, an American Baptist clergywoman, is a native of Durham, North Carolina. She holds a Doctor of Ministry degree from the University of Chicago Divinity School and a Ph.D. in Religion in Society and Personality from Northwestern University. Dr. Townes is the Dean and Carpenter Professor of Womanist Ethics and Society at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, becoming the first African American to serve as Dean of the Divinity School in 2013. She is the former Andrew W. Mellon Professor of African American Religion and Theology at Yale University Divinity School and in the fall of 2005, she was the first African American woman elected to the presidential line of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and served as president in 2008. She was the first African American and first woman to serve as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the Yale Divinity School. She is the former Carolyn Williams Beaird Professor of Christian Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Social Ethics at Saint Paul School of Theology. Editor of two collection of essays, A Troubling in My Soul: Womanist Perspectives on Evil and Suffering and Embracing the Spirit: Womanist Perspectives on Hope, Salvation, and Transformation; she has also authored Womanist Ethics, Womanist Hope, In a Blaze of Glory: Womanist Spirituality as Social Witness, Breaking the Fine Rain of Death: African American Health Issues and a Womanist Ethic of Care, and her groundbreaking book, Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil. She is co-editor with Stephanie Y. Mitchem of the Faith, Health, and Healing in African American Life. Her most recent co-editorship is Womanist Theological Ethics: A Reader done with the late Katie Geneva Cannon and Angela Sims was published in November 2011. Townes was elected a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009. She served a four-year term as president of the Society for the Study of Black Religion from 2012 to 2016.
Victor Anderson is the Oberlin Theological School Professor of Ethics and Society at the Divinity School. He is also the Professor in the Program in African American and Diaspora Studies and Religious Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. He holds degrees from Calvin Theological Seminary including the Master of Divinity and Master of Theology in Philosophical and Moral Theology. He earned the M.A and Ph.D. in Religion from Princeton University in Religion, Ethics, and Politics (1991, 1992). Anderson has published three books: Beyond Ontological Blackness: An Essay in African American Religious and Cultural Criticism (1995), Pragmatic Theology: Negotiating the Intersection of an American Philosophy of Religion and Public Theology (1999), and Creative Exchange: A Constructive Theology of African American Religious Experience (2008). He teaches courses in philosophy of religion, philosophical, theological and social ethics, African American religious studies, and American philosophy and religious thought.
Marcia Riggs
Emilie M. Townes
Victor Anderson
Dr. Stacey Floyd-Thomas is E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Associate Professor of Ethics and Society at Vanderbilt University Divinity School and College of Arts and Sciences and past Executive Director of the Society of Christian Ethics (SCE), co-founder and Past President of the Society for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Religion (SRER), founding executive director of the Black Religious Scholars Group (BRSG) and American Academy of Religion (AAR) Board Director-at-large. Floyd-Thomas’ research trajectory envisions the challenge for constructive ethics in making liberationist discourse and theologies more viable. Drawing upon socio-historical methods and liberation ethics, her work in Christian social ethics has a threefold focus—race, gender, and class—and she is equally interested in the challenges of religious pluralism, social justice and the political world. She is concerned with what she calls "the why crisis" of faith. This is exemplified in her numerous publications including numerous articles, book chapters, and seven books, most recently including, The Altars Where We Worship: The Religious Significance of Popular Culture.
Christophe D. Ringer is Assistant Professor of Theological Ethics and Society at Chicago Theological Seminary in Chicago, IL. He received his Ph.D. in Religion, Ethics and Society from Vanderbilt University. His research interests include social ethics and public theology, African American religion and cultural studies, religion and politics. Ringer has published articles in Black Theology: An International Journal and the Journal of Africana Religions and presented his research nationally as well as internationally including the American Academy of Religion (AAR). Ringer has taught courses at American Baptist College, New Brunswick Theological Seminary and Christian Brothers University. He is the author of the forthcoming Necropolitics and the Religious Crisis of U.S. Mass Incarceration.