Gabriel García Román is a multi-disciplinary artist and craftsman who examines and decodes the politics of identity through intricate and process-based work. Born in Zacatecas, Mexico and raised in Chicago’s northwest side, García Román received his BA from The City College of New York, where he studied Studio Art, and currently resides in New York City.

His art has been acquired by the International Center of Photography and has been shown at the Museum of Latin American Art (Long Beach, CA), Galería de la Raza (San Francisco, CA), Cathedral of St. John the Divine (New York, NY), the Center for Photography at Woodstock (Woodstock, NY), BRIC (Brooklyn, NY), and numerous other institutions and galleries. García Román was a 2018 recipient of the National Association of Latino Arts & Culture’s artist grant. In 2019, he was commissioned by the Leslie-Lohman Museum to bring his Queer Icons series into the streets, where 100 Queer Icons flags were marched down the World Pride route, for the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. In 2020, Garcia Roman was one of 10 artists in residence at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council for Workspace, their flagship residency program.

Dr. Kristy Nabhan-Warren is Professor and the inaugural V.O. and Elizabeth Kahl Figge Chair in Catholic Studies in the Departments of Religious Studies and of Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa. Her teaching and scholarship focus on the lived, daily experiences of American Christians and their communities, with research interests that include: American Religions; Ethnographic approaches to the study of religion; Catholic Studies; and Latinx Studies. Dr. Nabhan-Warren holds a BA in Religious Studies and Political Science, and a PhD in Religious Studies, both from Indiana University; she also holds an MA in Religious Studies from Arizona University.

Dr. Nabhan-Warren is a member of The American Academy of Religion, serving as Co-Chair of the Religion and Social Science (RSS) unit. She is the elected Vice-Chair of the Council of Graduate Studies in Religion (CGSR) and serves on the Steering Committee of the journal Spiritus: A Journal of Christianity. Dr. Nabhan-Warren is the author The Cursillo Movement in America: Catholics, Protestants, and Fourth-Day Spirituality (2013) and Meatpacking America: How Migration, Work, and Faith Unite and Divide the Heartland (2021), both published by The University of North Carolina Press, where she is also the creator and editor of Where Religion Lives, a book series on innovative ethnographies of religion. Her other books include The Virgin of El Barrio: Marian Apparitions, Catholic Evangelizing, and Mexican American Activism (New York University Press, 2005); Américan Woman: The Virgin of Guadalupe, Latinas/os, and Accompaniment (Loyola Marymount University Press, 2018); and The Oxford Handbook on Latinx Christianities in the United States (Oxford University Press, 2022).

Cleyvis Natera was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New York City. She holds a BA from Skidmore College and an MFA from New York University. Natera is the author of the novel Neruda on the Park (Ballantine Books, 2022), and her fiction, essays, and criticism have appeared in Alien Nation: 36 True Tales of Immigration, TIME, Gagosian Quarterly, The Washington Post, The Kenyon Review, Aster(ix), and Kweli Journal, among other publications. She has received honors from PEN America, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation (VONA). Natera teaches creative writing to undergraduate students at Fordham University and to graduate students at the Writer’s Foundry MFA Program at St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn, New York. She lives with her husband and two young children in Montclair, New Jersey.

Rev. Dr. Lakisha R. Lockhart is Assistant Professor of Christian Education at Union Presbyterian Seminary. Her research interests are in the areas of religious education; practical, liberation, and Womanist theologies; ethics and society; multiple intelligences; embodied faith and pedagogies; theological aesthetics’ theopoetics; creativity, imagination, and play. Her teaching takes seriously the benefits and necessity of play, movement, aesthetics, creative arts, and embodiment. For Dr. Lockhart, the body is a locus for doing theology and theological reflection. She holds a BA from Claflin University, an MA from Vanderbilt University, and a PhD from Boston College. With an MDiv from Wesley Theological Seminary and ordained to ministry in the non-denominational tradition, Dr. Lockhart recognizes the importance of teaching Christian education for the strengthening of the church. Her focus on practical pedagogy is not only to develop more committed and knowledgeable educators and ministers, but also more committed and knowledgeable congregants.

She has authored and co-authored numerous publications and book chapters, including United Against Racism: Churches for Change: Facilitator’s Guide (Friendship Press, 2018); “Enfleshing Catechesis Through Embodied Space” in Together Along the Way: Conversations Inspired by the Directory for Catechesis (Crossroad, 2021); “Let’s Dance: Zumba and the Imago Dei of Beautiful Black Bodies” in The Other Journal: An Intersection of Theology & Culture; and “My Wildest Dream: A Letter to My Black Son” in Religious Education. Dr. Lockhart also was featured in the Just Womanist Series for The Katie Geneva Cannon Center for Womanist Leadership. Her awards and honors include “Millennial Womanist to Watch” from The Millennial Womanist Project, “Images of Success” from Claflin University, and a First Wornom Innovative Grant from the Religious Education Association Project.

Lupita Tonantzin Castañeda-Liles is Co-Founder & Chief Inspirational Officer, with her mother, of Becoming Mujeres a firm that helps Latina teens and their female caregivers to translate cultural expectations into opportunities. Lupita is the author of the forthcoming children’s book I Now Smile More. The book is about the positive aspects of having divorced parents. I Now Smile More not only tells the story about a young girl and her experience of having divorced parents but it also illustrates how she handles the experience. Besides writing, she also enjoys the outdoors, cooking with her abuelita, and playing with her dog. Lupita is a first-year student in high school. Her goal is to foster positivity among teens.

Dr. María Del Socorro Castañeda is Co-Founder & Chief Education Officer, with her teenage daughter Lupita, of Becoming Mujeres, a firm that helps Latina teens and their female caregivers to translate cultural expectations into opportunities. Dr. Castañeda is a sociologist and ethnographer. She holds a BS in Sociology from Santa Clara University and MA and PhD degrees in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Castañeda is a Ford Foundation Fellow and the award-winning author of Our Lady of Everyday Life: La Virgen de Guadalupe and the Catholic Imagination of Mexican Women in America (Oxford University Press, 2018). Before co-founding Becoming Mujeres, she was Assistant Professor at Santa Clara University in the Religious Studies Department. Dr. Castañeda is a sought-out speaker and expert in the areas of Mexican popular Catholicism, Our Lady of Guadalupe devotion, LatinX cultural expectations, mother-daughter communication, and teenage girls and social pressures. Her research has been funded by the Ford Foundation, The Louisville Institute, Hispanic Theological Initiative, UC Mexus (University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States), Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, and The Ignatian Institute for Jesuit Education. Her work been featured in local and national newspapers, including the San Jose Mercury News and the National Catholic Reporter. She was born in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, México and immigrated to the United States, undocumented, as a child. Dr. Castañeda’s goal is to teach Latina teens and women how to transgress oppressive gendered cultural expectations and become the mujeres they were meant to be.

The career of José Esquivel has spanned over 50 years in the graphic and fine arts in San Antonio, Texas. The Chicano socio-political movement of the 1960s and 1970s was a major influence on his early work and provided a direction that continues to this day. In 1968, Esquivel co-founded El Grupo in San Antonio, Texas. One of the earliest Chicano collectives in the country, El Grupo evolved into Con Safo in 1971. Esquivel’s work has been included in national and international exhibitions. 

Danny R. Peralta was born in The Bronx in 1978 and raised in the Inwood section of upper Manhattan. After earning a BSA in Social Studies Education from New York University, he began his work as a youth educator and community developer. While searching to expand upon his love for art and storytelling, he formally began attending black-and-white photography workshops at ICP @ THE POINT in the South Bronx and was awarded the first ever Jocelyn Benzakin Fellowship for documentary photography. He went on to earn an MFA from the International Center of Photography (ICP-Bard). With his camera focused on immediate family and community, he completed projects like Ma (winner of a 2007 BRIO Award), LOVE LIVES (a call for trauma relief in Hunts Point), and ‘Bout that Life (featured in BX200’s Bronx Now exhibit). In 2008, he returned to THE POINT CDC as Director of Arts and Education, and in 2015 became Executive Managing Director. He co-founded Peasant Podium Music in 2009, curating live musical showcases and visual art experiences for local and international artists, and was a 2019 En Foco Photography Fellow. Peralta currently lives in the Pelham Parkway section of The Bronx with his wife and two sons, who inspire his every endeavor.

John Olivares Espinoza is the author of the poetry collection The Date Fruit Elegies (Bilingual Press Review, 2008), a finalist for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. His other honors include a grant from The Elizabeth George Foundation, a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, a residency at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., and several Pushcart Prize nominations. His poetry has been translated into Spanish and published in Spain and Latin America. He lives in San Antonio, Texas with his wife and children.

Dr. Mark D. Jordan, Richard Reinhold Niebuhr Research Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School, is a scholar of Christian theology, European philosophy, and gender studies. He spent his childhood in Ajijic, Mexico, where his parents lived in a community of expatriate artists. He currently teaches courses on the Western traditions of Christian soul-shaping, the relations of religion to art or literature, and the prospects for sexual ethics. Dr. Jordan holds a BA from St. John's College, and MA and PhD degrees from University of Texas at Austin. Over the last three decades, he has written extensively on sexual ethics, producing books that are widely regarded as opening important new conversations. But he has also continued to explore longstanding topics at the boundaries of philosophy and Christian theology. 

His latest book Transforming Fire (Eerdmans 2021) tells a brief history of the imagined scenes of theological education. He is at work on another manuscript about the neglected languages of queer spirituality. Dr. Jordan has received a number of grants and fellowships, including a John S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, a Fulbright-Hays grant (Spain), and a Henry Luce III Fellowship in Theology. With support from the Ford Foundation, he led a seminar on public debates about religion and sexuality for rising scholars from the United States and abroad. In 2019, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Mayra Rivera is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Religion and Latinx Studies at Harvard University. She is the president of the American Academy of Religion. Dr. Rivera works at the intersections between continental philosophy of religion, literature, and theories of coloniality, race and gender—with particular attention to Caribbean postcolonial thought. Her research explores the relationship between discursive and material dimensions in shaping human embodiment and socio-material ecologies. She holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from University of Puerto Rico, and MTS (summa cum laude) and PhD degrees in Theological and Religious Studies from Drew University. Her most recent book, Poetics of the Flesh (Duke University Press, 2015), analyzes theological, philosophical, and political descriptions of “flesh” as metaphors for understanding how social discourses materialize in human bodies. Her book The Touch of Transcendence: A Postcolonial Theology of God (Westminster John Knox Press, 2007) explores the relationship between models of divine otherness and ideas about interhuman difference. She is also co-editor, with Stephen Moore, of Planetary Loves: Spivak, Postcoloniality, and Theology (Fordham Press, 2010) and, with Catherine Keller and Michael Nausner, of Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire (Chalice Press, 2004). Dr. Rivera is currently working on a project that explores the relationships between coloniality and climate change through Caribbean thought.

Rev. Dr. Elizabeth Conde-Frazier is a multicultural educator, theologian, writer, and expert in the history and development of Biblical Institutes and pastoral training programs. She is the Director of the Asociación de Educación Teológica Hispana (AETH), as well as the creator of its Network of Theological Entities (ReDET, for its name in Spanish), and served as Vice-President and Dean of Esperanza College. Previously, Rev. Dr. Conde-Frazier was a professor of religious education at the Claremont School of Theology and taught Hispanic theology at the Latin American Bible Institute in California. Rev. Dr. Conde-Frazier was also the first director of the Orlando E. Costas Latin American Ministries Program at Andover Newton Theological Seminary. Dr. Conde-Frazier holds a PhD in theology and religious education from Boston University, and an MDiv from the Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary. She is the author of many publications in areas of multicultural education, Latin feminist theology, academic spirituality, and education for justice, including Hispanic Bible Institutes: A Community of Theological Constructions (University of Scranton Press, 2005); Listen to the Children: Conversations With Immigrant Families / Escuchemos a los niños: Conversaciones con familias inmigrantes (Judson Press, 2011); and Atando Cabos: Latinx Contributions to Theological Education (Eerdmans, 2021).

Dr. Mary E. Hess is Professor of Educational Leadership, and Chair of the Leadership Division at Luther Seminary, where she has taught since 2000. She holds a BA in American Studies from Yale, an MTS in theological studies from Harvard, and a PhD in religion and education from Boston College. As an educator straddling the fields of media studies, education and religion, Dr. Hess has focused her research on exploring ways in which participatory strategies for knowing and learning are constructed and contested amidst digital cultures. She is particularly interested in dialogic forms of organizational development, and the challenges posed to communities by oppressive systems such as racism, classism, sexism, and so on. Her most recent book, co-written with Stephen S. Brookfield, is Becoming a White Antiracist: A Practical Guide for Educators, Leaders and Activists (Stylus Publishers, 2021).

Dr. Marjorie Agosín is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Spanish at Wellesley College. She holds a BA from the University of Georgia and MA and PhD degrees from Indiana University. Raised in Chile and the daughter of Jewish parents, Dr. Agosín is a poet, human rights activist, and literary critic interested in Jewish literature and literature of human rights in the Americas; women writers of Latin America; and migration, identity, and ethnicity. Both her scholarship and her creative work focus on social justice, feminism, and remembrance. Dr. Agosín is the author of numerous works of poetry, fiction, and literary criticism. Her collections include The Angel of Memory (2001), The Alphabet in My Hands: A Writing Life (2000), Always from Somewhere Else: A Memoir of my Chilean Jewish Father (1998), An Absence of Shadows (1998), Melodious Women (1997), Starry Night: Poems (1996), and A Cross and a Star: Memoirs of a Jewish Girl in Chile (1995). Dr. Agosín has received numerous honors and awards for her writing and work as a human rights activist, including a Jeanette Rankin Award in Human Rights and a United Nations Leadership Award for Human Rights. The Chilean government honored her with a Gabriela Mistral Medal for Lifetime Achievement.

Poet, storyteller, and essayist Roberto Carlos García is a self-described “sancocho […] of provisions from the Harlem Renaissance, the Spanish Poets of 1929, the Black Arts Movement, the Nuyorican School, and the Modernists.” Rigorously interrogative of himself and the world around him, he conveys “nakedness of emotion, intent, and experience, and writes extensively about the Afro-Latinx and Afro-diasporic experience. García is the author of three collections of poetry: Melancolía: Poems (Červená Barva Press, 2016), black / Maybe: An Afro Lyric (Willow Books, 2018), and [Elegies] (Flower Song Press, 2020). His poems and prose appear in various publications, including POETRY Magazine, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT, Bettering American Poetry Vol. 3, The Root, Those People, Rigorous, Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Gawker, Barrelhouse, The Acentos Review, and Lunch Ticket. He is founder of the cooperative press Get Fresh Books Publishing, A NonProfit Corp. A native New Yorker, García holds an MFA in Poetry and Poetry in Translation from Drew University, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Reyes Ramírez is a Houstonian, writer, educator, curator, and organizer of Mexican and Salvadoran descent. Reyes won the 2019 YES Contemporary Art Writer’s Grant, 2017 Blue Mesa Review Nonfiction Contest, 2014 riverSedge Poetry Prize and has poems, stories, essays, and reviews in: Indiana Review, Speculative Fiction for Dreamers: A Latinx Anthology, Cosmonauts Avenue, december magazine, Arteinformado, Texas Review, Houston Noir, Gulf Coast Journal, The Acentos Review, Cimarron Review, and elsewhere. He is a 2020 CantoMundo Fellow, 2021 Interchange Artist Grant Fellow, 2022 Crosstown Arts Writer in Residence, and has been awarded grants from the Houston Arts Alliance, Poets & Writers, and Warhol Foundation’s Idea Fund. His short story collection The Book of Wanderers (2022) is part of the University of Arizona Press Camino del Sol series.

Dr. Justo Luis González, retired professor of historical theology and leading voice in the field of Hispanic theology, grew up in Havana as a Methodist. He attended United Seminary in Cuba, where he earned a a Bachelor of Sacred Theology, and was the youngest person to be awarded a PhD in historical theology at Yale University. He went on to join the faculty at the Evangelical Seminary of Puerto Rico and later at the Candler School of Theology at Emory, where he was virtually the only Latino scholar in a U.S. Protestant seminary at the time. Over a span of 50 years as a church historian, Dr. González has focused on developing programs for the theological education of Hispanics and has received four honorary doctorates. He helped found three pivotal organizations—the Hispanic Theological Initiative (HTI), the Hispanic Summer Program, and Asociación para la Educación Teológica Hispana (AETH). In 2011, the AETH inaugurated the Justo and Catherine González Resource Center, along with a lecture series of the same name, in honor of the contributions he and his wife Catherine Gunsalus González have made to the AETH and to the field of theology. He is also the recipient of the Distinguished Service Medal from the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) and the Ecumenism Award from Washington Theological Consortium. Dr. González is the main narrator for the video lessons of the Christian Believer study course from Cokesbury publishing. He is the author of numerous books, some of which are commonly used as college and seminary textbooks, including A History of Christian Thought (three volumes), The Story of Christianity (two volumes), Santa Biblia: The Bible Through Hispanic Eyes, The Story Luke Tells, Essential Theological Terms, and Mañana: Christian Theology from a Hispanic Perspective.

Rev. Dr. Daniel O. Aleshire has served the Association of Theological Schools since 1990 and was its executive director from 1998 to 2017. Rev. Dr. Aleshire holds a BS from Belmont University, an MDiv from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and an MA and a PhD in psychology from George Peabody College for Teachers (now the Peabody College of Vanderbilt University) in Nashville, Tennessee. An ordained minister, he has written extensively on issues of ministry and theological education. His books include Being There: Culture and Formation in Two Theological Schools (Oxford University Press, 1997), co-authored with Jackson W. Carroll, Barbara G. Wheeler, and Penny Long Marler; Earthen Vessels: Hopeful Reflections on the Work and Future of Theological Schools (Eerdmans, 2008); and Beyond Profession: The Next Future of Theological Education (Eerdmans, 2021).

Miguel A. Escobar is Executive Director of Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary (EDS at Union). There, he works with the Very Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas, Dean of EDS at Union, to build a Master of Divinity in Anglican Studies program aimed at forming social-justice faith leaders for The Episcopal Church. Previously, Escobar served as managing program director for leadership, communications, and external affairs at the Episcopal Church Foundation. He earned a Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary in 2007 and served as the communications assistant to then-Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori from 2007 to 2010. Escobar is chair of the board of directors of Forward Movement and serves as secretary of the board of directors of Episcopal Relief & Development. He grew up in the Texas Hill Country and attended Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas, where he studied the Roman Catholic social-justice tradition, Latin American liberation theologies, and minored in Spanish. He joined the Episcopal Church in New York City through St. Mary’s in West Harlem, drawn by the congregation’s diversity and commitment to social justice. Escobar divides his time between two parishes–St. Mary’s and San Andres Episcopal Church in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Cecilia Ballí is a cultural anthropologist and a journalist who has written about the US-Mexico border and Mexican Americans in Texas for more than twenty years. She holds a BA in American Studies and Spanish from Stanford University and a PhD in cultural anthropology from Rice University. Her work has appeared in Texas Monthly, Harper's Magazine, The New York Times, Columbia Journalism Review, and other state and national publications. She is presently a Visiting Scholar at the University of Houston's Center for Mexican American Studies.