Jessica Davenport
Assistant Professor of Religion at Colgate University
Jessica B. Davenport is a scholar of black religion, aesthetics and visual culture. She earned an MA and a Ph.D in religion from Rice University where she completed a dissertation entitled, Appositional Black Aesthetics: Theorizing Black Religion in the Visual Art of Carrie Mae Weems. Her interdisciplinary research interests are broadly concerned with examining how visual depictions of black interior life in art and architecture reflect expansive conceptions of race, gender, sexuality, space and place. Such depictions, she contends, hold significance for how we understand the nature and meaning of black religion. Jessica was a doctoral fellow with The Fund for Theological Education and a Civic Humanist Fellow in Art and Cultural Heritage with the Rice University Humanities Research Center. Currently, Jessica is preparing her first manuscript for publication while coordinating Religious Studies Review, a quarterly journal comprised of reviews of publications across the field of religious studies and related disciplines
William Dickerson II,
Co-Executive Director of Massachusetts Communities Action Network
I am passionate about training and development first and foremost. There's a principle that is you can't hold people accountable for what they don't know. And so training and development is about creating a level playing field for ordinary people in community so that they can be powerful in rooms where decisions get made about their lives.
I see my role as really seeing and understanding the health of all the organizations inside the network and supporting the conditions for that health to be thriving and also supporting our centralized staff and their development of becoming their most beautiful, most bold, most powerful selves and the fundamental way that I do that is through meeting people where they are, but not leaving there through conscious invitation into their power.
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When I was growing up one of the strongest distresses I had was not belonging to community. Being a black little boy, in a white context, made it clear to me that I didn't always belong to the spaces that I was in and that some of that had to do with the color of my skin and the ideology that comes along with that. My vision of MCAN is to create the conditions for community where everybody has the ability, the option to belong to it. That is connected to our deep investment in seeking to see each other wholly.
Terri Ofori
Founder of Womanist Freedom School for Girls, Dean of Diversity Equity & Inclusion at the Brooks School
The Reverend Terri Ofori comes to Brooks from Ursinus College, where she served as chaplain, professor and director of religious and spiritual life. Reverend Ofori is an ordained minister of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church, USA and has served the academy as a chaplain and lecturer at Harvard University, Brown University, Wellesley College, Emerson, Simmons, and Bloomfield College. Reverend Ofori received her Th. M. in Education and Spiritual Formation from Princeton Theological Seminary, the M. Div. degree from Harvard University and B.A. from the Mississippi University for Women. She received a certificate in executive leadership from McCormick Theological Seminary and is currently authoring her doctoral dissertation on ethnography and women's spirituality at Fordham University.
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Reverend Ofori engages the psychological, sociological, theological and cultural worldviews of the community through narrative theory and what she calls the "hermeneutic of listening," in her approach to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. "This method involves deep listening to the individual and collective narratives of those who live and learn together," she said. Reverend Ofori "encourages the examination of ontological questions while providing a non-anxious presence and non-judgmental space to reflect on those questions," she added. Using the West African and South African lens of Sankofa anthropology, Ubuntu philosophy and theology, Reverend Ofori said she strives to "help communities to revision and reframe their individual and collective narratives to transform themselves, their communities and the world."
Chantay Love
Co-Founder/Director of EMIR Healing Center, Pastor at Janes Memorial United Methodist Church
Chantay Love, Co-Founder and President of EMIR Healing Center is an innovative leader in healing communities one family at a time. Chantay was raised in the Abbotsford Projects where most of her exposure to violence occurred. She is a survivor of incest and a witness to domestic violence. On March 26, 1997, Chantay’s only brother Emir Peter Greene was shot seven times in the back. The trauma from her loss and exposure to violence became Chantay’s blueprint for her tireless work to save her city. EMIR Healing Center with the visions of Chantay, has created models for schools, families, and communities to support them with their healing and to uncover their trauma to break the cycle of future violence. Chantay has a master’s in human services administration from Lincoln University. She is a Certified Crisis Response and Restorative Justice Trainer. She is a Christ Servant Minister for the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference of the United Methodist Church. Chantay is appointed to the Governor Homicide Review Team and Advisory Commission on African American Affairs. EMIR Healing Center’s three publications, EMIR Healing Center Curriculum on Trauma Informed Healing, Trauma Informed Policing, and Walk in My Shoes have been registered with the United States Copyright Office. Chantay is married to her best friend, Chuck.
​Kelly Brown Douglas
Visiting Professor of Theology (HDS)
The Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas, PhD, is Visiting Professor of Theology at Harvard Divinity School for the 2024-25 academic year. While at HDS, she will teach one course in the fall and one in the spring.
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From 2017 to 2023, she was Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Theology. She was named the Bill and Judith Moyers Chair in Theology at Union in November 2019 where she is now Dean emeritus. She served as Interim President of Episcopal Divinity School from 2023-24. During the 2023 fall term, she served as Honorary Professor of Global Theology at Emmanuel Theological College in Liverpool, England.
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Ordained as an Episcopal Priest in 1983, Douglas currently serves as the Canon Theologian at the Washington National Cathedral and Anglican Communion Canon at Newcastle Cathedral in Newcastle, England.
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Prior to Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary, she served as Professor of Religion at Goucher College where she held the Susan D. Morgan Professorship of Religion and is now Professor Emeritus. Before Goucher, she was Associate Professor of Theology at Howard University School of Divinity (1987-2001) and Assistant Professor of Religion at Edward Waters College (1986-87). Douglas holds a master’s degree in theology and a PhD in systematic theology from Union.
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Douglas is the author of many articles and several books including the 2023 Grawemeyer Award winning book, Resurrection Hope: A Future Where Black Lives Matter. Her academic work has focused on womanist theology, racial justice issues as well as sexuality and the Black church. Her current research interest involves expanding the moral imaginary in fostering a more just future.
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Douglas proudly serves on the New York City Homeless Coalition Board and the Public Religion and Research Institute Board.
Melissa Wood Bartholomew
Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Belonging (HDS)
Melissa Wood Bartholomew (she/her), MDiv ’15, is the Associate Dean of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging and Lecturer on Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at Harvard Divinity School. She is a Christ-centered minister and a racial justice and healing practitioner committed to a multifaith, multidisciplinary, Afrocentric approach to healing justice rooted in the African philosophy of Ubuntu, restorative justice, and love.
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Melissa’s passion for racial and social justice was cultivated at Howard University where she received her undergraduate and law degrees. She is an attorney with nearly a decade’s experience in public interest law. Through her experiences in Seattle practicing law as an Assistant Attorney General, as a legal aid attorney with the Northwest Justice Project, and working as a mediator in King County Superior Court, it became clear to Melissa that the law could not facilitate the heart changes required to eradicate racism and oppression from individuals and systems. Her call to ministry led her to pursue her MDiv at HDS. Melissa is earnestly committed to eradicating racism and oppression and advancing healing and societal transformation through spiritually-engaged, heart-centered multifaith and multidisciplinary strategies rooted in love. She is a restorative justice practitioner and has studied restorative justice in Rwanda, transformational leadership in Ghana, and has published various articles exploring racial justice and healing. Melissa received her MSW from Boston College where she received her PhD in social work. Her research interests include the impact of racism, incarceration, and other systems of oppression on the mental health of Black people and the role of religion and spirituality in their resistance. She serves as part-time faculty at Boston College where she teaches restorative justice at the School of Law and has taught diversity in the School of Social Work.
David Ragland
Co-founder of Truth Telling Project, Lecturer on the Spirituality of Reparations (HDS)
Dr David Ragland is a writer, scholar, and activist with a focus on racial justice, reparations and abolition. He is a co-founder and co-executive director for Culture, Organizing and Reparations at the Truth Telling Project and is currently the director of the Grassroots Reparations Campaign. David Ragland is also a special advisor to Congresswoman Cori Bush and a number of progressive political candidates throughout the U.S.
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In the aftermath of Mike Brown Jr.’s murder in Ferguson, Mo., David, and Congresswoman Cori Bush founded the Truth Telling Project to help community members control their own narrative, document abuses by law enforcement, uplift stories of those who experience police violence and heal from past and ongoing trauma through truth telling. Additionally, he serves as Director of Reparations at Jubilee Justice, an Impact Investment Firm supporting regenerative agriculture throughout the South eastern seaboard and critical education for traditional wealth holders.Most recently, David is a founding member in the creation of the Kibilio Community and Farms Collective, a Queer Black-Led Intentional community focused on healing and reparations.
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Georgetown University’s Advocacy lab included Dr. Ragland’s research, which was named among the “most important research on advocacy” in the last forty years. David was recently inducted into Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Collegium of Scholars at Morehouse College. In the past, David served as the Senior Bayard Rustin Fellow at Fellowship of Reconciliation, board member for the Peace and Justice Studies Association and the United Nations representative for the International Peace Research Association.
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Among his published works, David’s peer-reviewed article on Truth-Telling and Decoloniality appeared in a recent issue of the International Journal of Human Rights Education. He has recently completed a series of articles on reparations for Yes! Magazine.
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David currently teaches the Building a Culture of Reparations and Transitional Justice through the Grassroots Reparations Campaign and the Truth Telling Project. He has taught in Depth Psychology, Eco-Psychology and Community Liberation at Pacifica Graduate Institute. He has previously taught Educational Theory, Multicultural Education, Education for Peace and Human Rights, Peace and Conflict Studies, Social Movements at Bucknell University, Vassar College, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, and Juniata College.