Project Staff

Rev. Sarah Ann Bixler, PhD

Program Director and Co-Principal Investigator

 

Rev. Almeda Wright, PhD

Co-Principal Investigator

Almeda M. Wright (PhD Emory University, MDiv Harvard Divinity School, MAT Simmons College, BS Massachusetts Institute of Technology) is the tenured Associate Professor of Religious Education at Yale Divinity School. Her research focuses on African American religion, Womanist practical theology, adolescent spiritual development, and the intersections of religion, education, and public life. Almeda recently launched Communitas, a young adult ministry innovation hub at Yale.

Almeda’s most recent book Teaching to Live: Black Religion, Activist-Educators and Radical Social Change (Oxford, 2024) explores religion, education, and radial social change among African Americans through the stories of eight educators across the twentieth century. She is also the author of The Spiritual Lives of Young African Americans (Oxford, 2017) and the editor, with Mary Elizabeth Moore, of Children, Youth, and Spirituality in a Troubling World. Almeda contributed to the exciting student bible, the Common English (CEB) Student Bible.

Almeda is an ordained minister of the American Baptist Churches and has worked with young people for over 25 years, including as a 5^th and 6^th grade teacher, as a youth minister, and the Assistant Director of the Youth Theological Initiative at Emory University.

 

Gregory Czyszczon, PhD, LPC

Restoring Connections Lab Professor

 

 

 

 

Debra Pardini

Administrative Assistant

 

 

 

 

Kathy Smith

Finance Administrator