About Us

Sharon Welch served as Provost and Professor of Religion at Meadville Lombard Theological School (Unitarian Universalist) for ten years. She has held positions as Professor and Chair of Religious Studies, Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Adjunct Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Missouri-Columbia. She was assistant and associate professor of Theology and Religion and Society at Harvard Divinity School. She received her Ph.D. in theology from Vanderbilt University in 1982.

In 2019 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Meadville Lombard Theological School, and was named Alumna of the Year by Vanderbilt University Divinity School and the Graduate Department of Religion. Welch is currently a member of the Unitarian Universalist Peace Ministry Network, a Fellow of the Institute for Humanist Studies, and serves on the Board of the Chicago League of Women Voters.

Welch is the author of After the Protests Are Heard: Enacting Civic Engagement and Social Transformation (NYU Press, 2019), Communities of Resistance and Solidarity: A Feminist Theology of Liberation (Orbis Books, 1984, Wipf and Stock, 2017), Real Peace, Real Security: The Challenges of Global Citizenship (Fortress, 2008), After Empire: The Art and Ethos of Enduring Peace (Fortress, 2004), Sweet Dreams in America: Making Ethics and Spirituality Work (Routledge, 1999) and A Feminist Ethic of Risk (Fortress, 1989, and Revised Edition, 2000). She is a contributor to The Oxford Handbook on Humanism (editor Anthony B.Pinn),  The Oxford Handbook on Professional Economic Ethics (edited by George D. Martino and Deirdre N. McCloskey) and The Oxford Handbook on Feminist Theology (edited by Mary McClintock Fulkerson and Sheila Briggs).

Elmer Soriano is an instructor a the National College of Public Administration at the University of the Philippines. He has been involved in leadership development in Southeast Asia, working with non-profits, government, and leaders of faith-based organizations. By setting up co-creation labs in universities, he has introduced new approaches to teaching and learning among students and faculty. He was recently Impact Fellow at the Asian Institute of Management and Innovator-in-Residence at Lehigh University's program on Creative Inquiry. He received his Masters in Public Administration at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government and Masters in Development Management from the Asian Institute of Management. 

He wrote the article Moderating the Impact of Climate Change: One University at a Time in Journal of Management for Global Sustainability in 2016.

Willie Jennings is currently Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Africana Studies at Yale Divinity School, an ordained Baptist minister, and has served as interim pastor for several North Carolina churches. He is in high demand as a speaker and is widely recognized as a major figure in theological education across North America.

Writing in the areas of liberation theologies, cultural identities, and anthropology, Jennings has authored more than 40 scholarly essays and nearly two-dozen reviews, as well as essays on academic administration and blog posts for Religion Dispatches. Dr. Jennings has also recently published a book that examines the problems of theological education within western education, entitled After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging.

A Calvin College graduate, Jennings received his M.Div. from Fuller Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. in religion and ethics from Duke.