Innovator. Educator. Author.
Bio
From a young age, I’ve always had a sense of motivation and passion driving me forward. Whether it’s exploring unique opportunities, learning additional skills, or meeting new people, I bring these values to every experience throughout my life on a personal and professional level. To learn more about me, keep exploring my site or reach out directly.
Publications
The ABC's of Diversity: Helping Kids (and Ourselves) Embrace Our Differences (June 2020)
How do we deal with the growing pains of rapid cultural and ethnic change in our country? This practical resource helps parents and teachers of children, youth , and young adults navigate conversations about cultural differences and diversity, so they can raise up individuals committed to respectful civic engagement.
A New Frontier (2017)
This article advances the urgency of a migratory epistemology. Christianity is a religion constantly moving through cultural contexts. I attempt to portray migration as a new frontier to studies in world Christianity, relating current shifts in migration patterns to the need for greater emphasis on intercultural communication. Speaking from a U.S. perspective, I pay particular attention to the need for churches in host cultures to learn more effective ways of intercultural communication.
Book Review of Gender and Pentecostal Revivalism: Making a Female Ministry in the Early Twentieth Century (2016)
Many women in ministry today continue to engage the residue of challenges from historical and current religious limitations. Leah Payne in Gender and Pentecostal Revivalism: Making a Female Ministry in the Early Twentieth submits the lives of Maria Woodworth-Etter and Aimee Semple Mcpherson for consideration. Specifically, Payne shows readers the ways in which Woodworth-Etter and McPherson navigate their ability to rise and garner fame despite cultural religious challenges they faced establishing a ministry as women in a male dominated profession.
Spiritual Health Identity: Placing Black Women's Lives in the Center of Analysis (2016)
This chapter aims to identify the ways in which spirituality, religion and the Black Church help to shape a spiritual health identity in a group of Black women by placing their lived experiences at the center of analysis using methods that are epistemologically consistent with how they understand the world. A spiritual health identity refers to the recognition and consciousness that a healthy spiritual life is essential to one's existence. It effects how they see themselves and their relationships to other people. Black women's ways of knowing are often pushed to the margins and lacking validation in mainstream society. Utilizing a womanist epistemological framework allows Black women to define themselves and lifts up the ways, spaces and places that help them make meaning.
Prolegomena for "Theology and Race" (2009)
Social constructions of race and critical theological modes of thought come together in this fall issue of the Princeton Theological Review, inspired in part, by J. Kameron Carter’s work Race: A Theological Account. Carter’s book is a clarion “voice crying out in the wilderness (Jn. 1:23, Matt. 3:3, Mk. 1:3)” in this post-modern era. Through his own fecund interpretation, Carter challenges Western Christian theological thought for privileging one group over and against another. Carter’s interpretation serves to foster dialogue on these subjects and expose the unhealed wounds of many people’s past and present realities.
Education
September 2010 - May 2013
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
Howard University
Washington, DC
September 2007 - May 2010
Masters of Divinity (M.Div.)
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, NJ
February 2004 - June 2006
Master of Science in Education (MS.Ed.)
St. John's University
Queens, NY
August 1995 - May 1999
Bachelor of Arts (BA)
Hobart & William Smith Colleges
Geneva, NY
Currently Teaching
Business Communication
This course is designed to present principles common to all communicating situations but which apply predominately to business. The applicability and construction of letters, memos, reports, telephone messages and E-Mails are considered. Relationships of creative, logical, and critical thinking of the problem-solving nature of business communication is explored. The course is directed to helping students develop their ability to think, to express themselves in business situations and to use the most effective methods in the most effective way.
Intercultural Communication and the Church
This course will examine the ways in which culture interratles and affects communication processes. Culture is dynamic and communication is always occuring. Students will explore theories, principles and challenges of intercultural communication in a religious setting. With intercultural communication as the frame, students will develop approaches for teaching, preaching and working a changing and culturally diverse church context. Weekly lectures and workshops will address the need for intercultural communication competence in today's church communities.
Speech Communication in Ministry
Weekly one-hour workshops on speech communication in the context of ministry emphasizing critical and empathic study of biblical and other literature as encountered in the spoken word. Exploration of principles inovlved in perceiving and expressing denotative and connotative meaning through verbal, vocal and physical gesture. Development of skill in technical and theoretical evaluation of one's own work and the work of others.
Public Speaking/Human Communication Theory
Public speaking has become an important force for modeling and shaping society. In an increasingly complex world, the need for articulate public speakers, that is, those who can present relevant, and clear ideas to listeners in a direct, open and convincing manner has become even greater. This course is designed to provide students with principles and skills necessary for effective public speaking in a variety of contexts.
"The best way to predict the future is to create it"
Abraham Lincoln
