Meet Sepi Djavaheri, Director, Community Mobilizers at the UJA Federation of New York. Having fled the Iranian revolution at an early age with her family, landing in Germany and eventually the U.S., Sepi has channeled her Jewish faith and the experience of being “other” into a focus on building connection and community to combat the social isolation and loneliness that so many in our communities experience.

Meet Rev. Dr. Gabby Cudjoe Wilkes, Inaugural Director of the Technology, Innovation & Digital Engagement Lab (TIDEL) Fellowship at Union Theological Seminary, as well as pastor, author, public theologian, coach, brand strategist, and more. Faith, leadership, and innovation have been threads through Dr. Gabby’s numerous and impressive endeavors, and continue to guide her in her latest role supporting faith sector leaders to creatively use technology to help address critical challenges.

Meet Dr. Rucha Kaur, Managing Director of Education and Community Development for the Sikh Coalition and social justice champion. Rooted in her Sikh values, Rucha really puts the community in community organizing, connecting with people across the country who are tapping into their own faith values to create change. Rucha lives in New Jersey but feels at home in many places thanks to all the relationships she has nurtured through her work.

Meet Nate Harding, founder of the Global Flourishing Catalyst Coalition. Nate, who is currently starting his MBA at Oxford University, has been a social impact strategy consultant with Bridgespan, an international education and exchange program leader with World Learning, a leadership coach, and various other roles, including Contributing Editor at innoFaith. Raised in an interracial Christian family while influenced and nurtured by a diverse religious community in Los Angeles, Nate channels all of these diverse influences toward his vision of a world where everyone flourishes.

Meet Victoria Strang, who holds the first full-time position at Human Rights Watch focused on building faith partnerships. Passionate about helping secular organizations develop authentic relationships with faith communities to advance work to create a more just world, Victoria previously did faith outreach for the Humane Society and organizing for the Rhode Island Interfaith Coalition to Reduce Poverty. Victoria, who lives in Rhode Island, is also an innoFaith Contributing Editor.

Meet Kimberly Daniel, Co-founder and Project Director of DO GOOD X and talented Brand and Communications Consultant. Kimberly, who hails from a small city outside of Myrtle Beach, SC, and has lived for over 16 years in and around Atlanta, GA, passionately uplifts and supports underrepresented innovators. She is also co-author of A Way Out of No Way: an Approach to Christian Innovation and an innoFaith Contributing Editor.

Meet Yasmine Tujjar, university student, art lover, and interfaith changemaker. Growing up in a Syrian family in the US, practicing Islam but also attending a Christian school, she developed a passion for decreasing polarization among religious communities. Yasmine, who goes between her home in Maryland and her university in Montreal, Canada, is also an innoFaith Contributing Editor.

Meet Francesca Reznik, Program Manager at the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center and committed climate activist based in Boston. Influenced by both her Jewish values and her own non-theistic spiritual practice, Francesca recently completed her Master of Theological Studies at Harvard Divinity School and is focused on creating climate transition solutions that benefit everyone. Fun facts: Francesca is half Mexican and fluent in Spanish and co-founded an ecotheology fellowship while at Harvard Divinity. She is also an innoFaith Contributing Editor.

Meet Gopal Patel, committed environmental advocate who is elevating the relevance and power of faith to help address the world’s challenges through his new initiative FutureFaith. Gopal previously founded the Hindu environmental organization, Bhumi Global, and has been mobilizing faith communities in support of climate and environmental goals for over fifteen years. Based in the New York metropolitan area (specifically, New Jersey), Gopal formerly served as co-chair of the United Nations Multi-faith Advisory Council and has served as advisor to numerous organizations as he works to bring faith voices to policy tables around the world.

Meet E.N. West, Lead Organizer for the Faith Land Initiative at The Church Council of Greater Washington. An innovative community organizer, E is building bridges between communities in Seattle to help use church property assets to address community needs. In listening to churches, E and their colleagues spotted an opportunity to support white faith communities discerning what to do with congregational land by connecting them with the needs and vision of Black faith communities and other groups wrestling with issues of displacement from their communities. As a result, religious assets are now being stewarded to address the challenge of affordable housing and advance economic and racial justice.

Meet Allison Ralph, PhD, leader and consultant on pluralism and belonging. Allison formerly helped build interfaith collaborations as Associate and Interim Director at the Aspen Institute Religion & Society program. She now applies her expertise to supporting funders and organizations to promote pluralism through her consultancy, Cohesion Strategy. Allison, who grew up among musicians in Fernandina Beach, Florida, now loves living in Washington, DC.

Meet Rayce Lamb, Founder of Faithonomics and Baptist pastor seeking to inspire wild imagination. Rayce, who is also a certified financial education instructor, is passionate about supporting faith-rooted leaders to flourish spiritually and financially while pursuing creative ideas for good. He has just launched the Doers Creative, a digital community for faith-inspired creators, and also leads the Wild Imagination Fund, which seeks to eradicate poverty in his home city of Winston-Salem, NC.

Meet Marcia Dinkins, Founder and Executive Director of Black Women Rising and creator of the Black Appalachian Coalition. Based in Ottawa Hills, OH, Marcia is elevating Black voices to help drive positive change. In Appalachia, where Black stories are particularly invisible in the narrative of poverty in the region, Marcia is engaging the Black community to tell their stories and advocate for solutions to regional issues like air pollution and healthcare access.

Meet Kerry Brodie, Founder of Emma’s Torch, a growing social enterprise that empowers refugees through culinary education. Inspired by the Holocaust survivors and immigrants in her own family, and concerned by the growing refugee crisis, Kerry set off to culinary school with the idea that food could be a tool to enable people who have experienced forced migration to thrive in their new communities. Kerry now lives in Potomac, MD, having recently expanded Emma’s Torch from NY to DC.

Meet Ray’Chel Wilson, CFEI®, personal finance teacher and Founder and CEO of ForOurLastNames, a financial education platform launching in February 2024 that bridges the gap in financial literacy and investment opportunities for underrepresented groups. Ray’Chel beautifully applies her values of collective liberation to the work of financial wellness, asking how building wealth can be not just about individual benefit but value for the whole community.

Meet Rev. Dustin Mailman, who is redefining what church looks like with his ministry Deep Time in Asheville, NC. Dustin created Deep Time as a faith community with and for those impacted by incarceration. Whereas many churches have a social ministry, Dustin flips the script, showing us what church as a social ministry can be. Part prison ministry, part coffee roastery, part workforce development effort, part violence prevention initiative, and more, Deep Time models a new vision of faith in action.

Meet Umar Hakim-Dey, board chair for LA Voice, a PICO California federation in the Faith in Action network  and founder of Inkerij, a social enterprise that provides advisory services for social impact organizations. Originally from, and still residing in, Compton, California, Umar is an innovative community organizer, committed bridge-builder, and deep-hearted advocate for social justice.

Meet Abigale Haug, who we are thrilled to introduce as innoFaith’s new Communications Manager. We are grateful to have Abbie’s passion, skill, and beautiful spirit supporting the innoFaith mission. Originally from Minnesota, Abbie just moved from Washington, DC, to Somerville, Massachusetts, where she is working on a Masters of Theological Studies at Harvard Divinity.

Meet Kelly Moltzen, co-founder and convener of the Interfaith Public Health Network and food systems advocate and innovator. Guided by her Catholic roots, Franciscan commitment, and interfaith engagement, Kelly is a wealth of knowledge and action about all things related to food, health, nutrition, equity, and justice.

Meet Tameeka Washington, founder of the Interfaith Coalition of Bowie, Maryland. Though she has a full-time job with the Department of Defense, Tameeka devotes her free time to building interfaith bridges in her community. We are excited to be supporting Tameeka’s organization and another partner, The Giving Square, to bring innovative programming to Tameeka’s creative Vacation Interfaith School this summer.