Dr. Lightsey has been a cutting-edge church and academic leader in many ways. She is currently the Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs and Associate Professor of Professor of Constructive Theology at Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago. She will continue to serve in that capacity while serving at Urban Village. 

Following service in the US Army and work as a civil servant, Dr. Lightsey received her academic and theological training at Columbus State University (BS), Gammon Seminary of the Interdenominational Theological Center (M.Div.) and Garrett-Evangelical Theological School (PhD). After ordination, she served first as a United Methodist congregational pastor and then as a theological school educator, scholar and administrator. Throughout her vocational life, she has been a leading social justice activist, working with local, national and international organizations focusing primarily on the causes of peacemaking, racial justice and LGBTQ rights.

Dr. Lightsey’s publications include the book, Our Lives Matter: A Womanist Queer Theology (Wipf and Stock), "He Is Black and We are Queer" in Albert Cleage Jr and the Black Madonna and Child (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), “Reconciliation” in Prophetic Evangelicals: Envisioning a Just and Peaceable Kingdom (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company), and "If There Should Come a Word” in Black United Methodists Preach! (Abingdon Press).

Kentina Washington-Leapheart is an independent facilitator, and consultant. She has dedicated nearly 15 years to causes related to Reproductive Justice, and has a deep appreciation for, and commitment to, the causes of bodily autonomy and freedom for Black and brown people broadly, and Black women specifically, particularly in healthcare settings, as well as in faith spaces. 

Kentina serves as Lead Trainer and Curriculum Support Consultant for the Spiritual Alliance for Reproductive Dignity (SACReD), a national alliance of multiracial, multifaith, multiethnic, mixed gender and sexual identity religious leaders, congregations, movement organizations, activists, academics, and directly impacted communities collaborating to advance Reproductive Justice through congregational education, culture change, community building, and direct service.

Kentina is ordained via The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries (TFAM), a proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, and a self-professed public radio nerd who loves travel, live music, devouring memoirs via audiobooks, and spending quality time laughing with people who make her heart sing. Kentina finds great joy in her identities as a Black, queer, womanist whose lived experiences inform every aspect of her work and play. 

Rev. Aundreia Alexander, Esq. is a social justice advocate, activist and consultant. As the former Associate General Secretary for Action and Advocacy for Justice and Peace with the National Council of Churches she led the organization in all of its domestic public policy initiatives including mass incarceration, policing, voting rights and reparations for people of African descent. She facilitated and led the organization’s truth and racial equity campaign: A.C. T. (Awaken, Confront, Transform) Now to End Racism. She has preached, lectured and facilitated workshops throughout the United States and around the world including Egypt, South Africa, Turkey, Mexico, and South Korea. She also helped facilitate delegation trips to Israel-Palestine with NCC partners.

Rev. Alexander is the Founder and Principal of Redemption Songs Unlimited, LLC working with organizations, governmental entities and corporations on creating and implementing policies, procedures and practices with a racial equity lens. She is an ordained minister with the American Baptist Churches and also a lawyer. Rev. Alexander received both her JD and B.S. in Accountancy from the University of Missouri in Columbia and also has a M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey.

Rev. Lamont Anthony Wells (he, him, his) is the Executive Director, Network of Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Colleges and Universities (NECU). He is the immediate past National President of the African Descent Lutheran Association (the largest ethnic population in ELCA-Lutheranism).

 Pastor Wells is a graduate of Morehouse College and the Interdenominational Theological Center, both in Atlanta, Ga; and has completed certification programs at Harvard University, Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania, and Cornell University. In 2021, he became a United Nations Fellow amplifying his work as an international human rights activist.

 As a dynamic speaker, Rev. Wells is frequently called to share insightful and inspiring messages of ecumenism, interfaith plurality, queer identity, social justice, inclusion, and belonging  which motivates him as a leader and community organizer.

Dr. Phillis Isabella Sheppard holds the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Chair and is Professor of Religion, Psychology, and Culture at Vanderbilt University Divinity School. She is a womanist practical theologian, ethnographer, and psychoanalyst and a frequent consultant on personal transformation and institutional transition. 

She is the founder of Set-a-Spell: Womanist Spaces for Integrative Transformation (https://tinyurl.com/Set-a-Spell-Womanist-Spaces). Her vision for Set-a-Spell is to hold spaces where people can do the deep introspective and socially engaged work necessary to live meaningful lives and to contribute to the thriving of communities. 

She draws on rich cultural wisdom, psychological dimensions of experience, and womanist perspectives to create spaces to process change.

She is the author of two solo authored books. Self, Culture and Others in Womanist Practical Theology is her first and her second book is Tilling Sacred Ground: Interiority, Black Women, and Religious Experience. She is completing a third, “Poking and Prodding with a Purpose” Womanist Ethnography in Practice and Method. Her scholarship centers Black women’s lives, religious experience, and gender, and sexuality.

Dr. Sheppard is a Black lesbian woman deeply committed to womanist ways of being in the work of justice and wholeness for all. She is an ordained priest with the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests.