Panelists & Keynote Speakers
Rev. Dr. Yvette Flunder, a San Francisco native, has served her call through prophetic action and ministry for justice for over thirty years. In 2003, Rev. Dr. Flunder was consecrated Presiding Bishop of The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries, a multi-denominational coalition of over 100 primarily African American Christian leaders and laity. She is a graduate of the Certificate of Ministry and Master of Arts programs at Pacific School of Religion and received her Doctor of Ministry from San Francisco Theological Seminary. She is an award-winning gospel music artist and author and has served as an Adjunct Professor and speaker at Pacific School of Religion and numerous seminaries and universities including Auburn, Brite Divinity, Chicago Theological, Columbia University, Drew, Duke, Eden, Howard, Lancaster, New York Theological, and Yale.
Rev. Lynice Pinkard is a pastor, teacher, writer, activist, movement chaplain and spiritual director. Her work is dedicated to decolonizing the human spirit and to freeing people from what she calls "empire affective disorder." Rev. Lynice, recently moved from Oakland, CA, and now lives with her wife in Efland, NC.
As a composer, conductor, educator and music director, Brandon Waddles enjoys a multifaceted career spanning the musical gamut. Dr. Waddles, a Detroit native, is an Assistant Professor of Choral Conducting & Music Education at Wayne State University. He was recently appointed as Artistic Director of the Rackham Choir, Detroit’s oldest choral organization. Prior to these appointments, he served on the Conducting and Sacred Music faculty at Westminster as conductor of the Westminster Jubilee Singers. Recently serving as Music Director for Grammy award-winning recording artist Ledisi, he has collaborated with the celebrated singer on multiple occasions, including her Nina & Me concert series, the LEDISI: THE LEGEND OF LITTLE GIRL BLUE show-run at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, and Ledisi Live: A Tribute to Nina Simone as seen on PBS. Dr. Waddles holds professional memberships with the American Choral Directors Association and the National Association of Negro Musicians, Inc.
Dr. Alisha Lola Jones is an associate professor in the faculty of music at the University of Cambridge. She is a board member of the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM), a member of the strategic planning task force for the American Musicological Society (AMS), and a co-chair of the Music and Religion Section of the American Academy of Religion (AAR). Additionally, as a performer-scholar, she consults museums, conservatories, seminaries, and arts organizations on curriculum, live and virtual event programming, and content development. Dr. Jones’ book Flaming?: The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance (Oxford University Press) breaks ground by analyzing the role of gospel music-making in constructing and renegotiating gender identity among black men. Dr. Jones' book has been awarded the 2021 Ruth Stone (SEM), Music in American Culture (AMS), and Philip Brett (AMS) Prizes. A little-known fact is that Dr. Alisha Lola Jones and her sister Rev. Angela Marie Jones are co-owners of Paradise Media Group, a Black women-owned radio company based in Oxford and Henderson, NC.
Fredara Mareva Hadley, Ph.D. is an ethnomusicology professor at The Juilliard School in the Music History Department. Hadley teaches courses on jazz history, African American music, and ethnomusicology, and her research centers on the diverse musical legacies and impact of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Her publications include the ICTM Yearbook and Journal of Popular Music Studies as well as outlets including The Washington Post and Billboard Magazine. She's presented her research at academic conferences both domestically and abroad. Hadley’s other area of research focuses on Shirley Graham DuBois and the influence of musical pan-Africanism in her opera Tom Tom and her ongoing political engagement. Hadley earned her undergraduate and Masters’s degree from Florida A&M University and Clark-Atlanta University, respectively, and her Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from Indiana University. Her forthcoming book is a survey of the musics that HBCU campuses nurture and the broader cultural impact of those musics.
Rev. Naomi Washington-Leapheart is a Black-queer church girl, preacher, teacher, and activist. She develops spaces of spiritual candor, disruption, reflection, transformation, and action. Rev. Naomi is an adjunct professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University and is the founder of Salt | Yeast | Light. She also serves the city of Philadelphia as the Director for Faith-Based and Interfaith Affairs in the Mayor's Office. She shares life with her wife, their teenage daughter, and a hound dog girl and a black cat boy.
Dr. Deborah Smith Pollard is Professor of English Literature and Humanities at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. She has served as Chair of the Department of Literature, Philosophy, and the Arts; Director of African and African American Studies; and co-chair of the Strategic Planning Committee. She has lectured nationally and internationally on gospel music--from Hawaii to New York, and from Japan to South Africa and England. Her research, including praise and worship in the urban church, Christian rap, and the changes in attire in gospel music, has been published in several academic and popular journals as well as in her first book, When the Church Becomes Your Party: Contemporary Gospel Music, which was named a Notable Book by the Library of Michigan. Her most recent article, “`All I See Is Your Booty and Cleavage’: Sex and the Contemporary Gospel Song (1988-2017),” was published in the Journal of the Society for American Music in December of 2021. Among the many honors she has received are the “Gospel Announcer of the Year” from the Stellar Awards and the 2021 Michigan Heritage Award in recognition of her decades of academic, media, and community work in gospel music.
Ciarra received her B.A in American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley and her Master of Theological Studies from Harvard University. At Harvard, she studied African and African American Religions with an emphasis in gender and sexuality.
Ciarra identifies as a Black Queer Womanist. She believes that God is concerned with justice, wellness, and inclusion. She is a freelance writer, keynote speaker and DEI consultant whose work contends with religion, sexuality, gender, and race. Her writing and work has been featured in BBC, Huffington Post, Elite Daily, Zora, and FoxSoul TV.
Currently, she is working with the organization Pride in the Pews to create a symposium that centers the life and experiences of Black LGBTQ people of Faith.
Kent R. Brooks (he/his/him) has dual roles at Northwestern University as the director of Religious and Spiritual Life, where he works within a team dedicated to creating an inclusive space supporting the quest for meaning and purpose, and as an assistant professor of instruction in the Department of Performance Studies, where his work focuses on the language, execution, and social/historical implications of Black Gospel Music. A seasoned church music director, worship leader, and educator, Kent is a BMI-affiliated composer who was twice the recipient of the Waljo Gospel Music Award. He was commissioned to compose and perform Heal the Land, the theme for the Raleigh-Durham area’s first observance of the Black Churches Week of Prayer for the Healing of AIDS. To mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, he arranged an old battle song, Hoist Up The Flag, for a special concert performed by the Springfield Symphony Chorale and Orchestra. Before coming to Northwestern, Kent was the director of music and worship for High Street United Methodist Church in Springfield, Ohio, and he taught voice, conducted the Imani Gospel Choir, and served as chapel organist at Wittenberg University. Kent is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he studied music composition and music theory with Drs. Ingrid Arauco and Allen Anderson. He also studied classical piano, jazz piano, and voice with Dr. Linda Holtzer, Dr. Scott Warner, and Professor Stafford Wing, respectively.
Dr. Pernessa Seele is Founder and CEO of The Balm In Gilead, Inc., a not-for-profit organization, celebrating 30 years of providing technical support that strengthens the capacity to faith institutions in the USA and in Africa to promote health education and services that contribute to the elimination of health disparities. Dr. Seele is well-known for her extraordinary vision and ability to create national and global partnerships among leaders of various cultures and religious doctrines in areas of health promotion and disease prevention. She has worked with three US presidential administrations on issues of health in the United States and abroad. Dr. Seele was an invited guest of former President and First Lady Laura Bush for the State of the Union Address as a symbol of President Bush’s commitment to fight HIV/AIDS in the world. In 2010, Dr. Seele was invited to participate in the Fortune TIME CNN Global Forum in Cape Town, South Africa, along with President William “Bill” Clinton and a host of international leaders and Fortune 100 chief executive officer to focus on challenges and solutions in the developing world. Dr. Seele is the author of Stand Up to Stigma! How to Reject Fear & Shame. She is an honorary member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. Dr. Seele received a Bachelor of Science degree and Master of Science from Clark Atlanta University in 1976 & 1979 respectively, and a Doctorate of Humane Letters from the College of New Rochelle, NY in 2007. She is a native of Lincolnville, SC.
Robert L. Miller, Jr., Ph.D., M.Phil., LMSW is an Associate Professor with tenure, teaching in the clinical sequence in The State University of New York (SUNY), University at Albany (UA), School of Social Welfare since 2000. His program of research explores African and African American life. As the director of The US Africa Partnership to Build Stronger Communities, he concretizes international social work education in eastern, southern, and western Africa. Through classroom teaching and his faculty-led study tours, he examines African social policies that undergird social work services in the areas of HIV, gender rights, and child welfare. He has been to Africa more than 30 times traveling to 24 countries. He participated in the White House Office of National AIDS Policy Summit. Dr. Miller is The Inaugural Research Fellow with the Desmond Tutu Center for Spirituality and Civil Society at the University of The Western Cape in Cape Town, South Africa. Dr. Miller has held visiting professorships at The Addis Ababa University, The University of Gondar, The Bahir Dar University (Ethiopia), the University of The Western Cape in the Departments of Social Work and Religion and Theology (South Africa), The Organization for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa in Tanzania, and The University of California, San Francisco Medical School - Center AIDS Prevention Studies (USA). He is currently a Faculty Affiliate with The SUNY UA School of Public Health Center for Collaborative HIV Research in Practice and Policy in The School of Public Health. Dr. Miller earned a Ph.D., Masters of Philosophy and Certificate in Health Policy and Administration from Columbia University in The City of New York. He completed a certificate in Psychiatry and Religion from The Union Theological Seminary. He earned a Master's of Social Work from The University of Pennsylvania and is a proud and grateful alum of The Xavier University of Louisiana. In his downtime, he enjoys white water rafting and cooking.
Marshall Green is an Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality studies at Williams college. They are a poet, filmmaker, and an interdisciplinary scholar that explores questions of Black sexual and gender agency, health, creativity, and resilience in the context of state and social violence. They employ Black feminist theory, queer of color critique, critical race theory, performance studies, media studies, and trans studies to investigate forms of self-representation and communal political mobilization by Black LGBT persons in the urban context. They earned their Ph.D. from the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity with specializations in Gender Studies and Visual Anthropology at the University of Southern California. They combine scholarship, art and activism in their research on race, gender, and sexuality in Black LGBT communities and cultural production. A former postdoctoral fellow in Sexuality Studies and African American Studies at Northwestern University and winner of the Ford Foundation Pre-Doctoral Fellowship and the Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowship Dissertation Award, Dr. Green, has been published in numerous scholarly journals including GLQ, South Atlantic Quarterly, Black Camera, and TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly.