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.

Like every institution in the 21st century, religion today confronts existential questions about its future, uncertain of its place in an era where trust in institutions has eroded and traditional hierarchical organizational structures have started to flatten. The formerly reliable foundations of our religious life feel insecure–for no one more than clergy, who are largely trained to be solo, prophetic leaders of congregations. But in this uncertainty lies possibility. A new book by two religious leaders, Rev. Kathleen McShane and Rabbi Elan Babchuck, will help clergy, and all faith-rooted leaders, embrace the liberating opportunity this current moment provides. It’s time to adopt a new form of leadership, free of the burdens of pyramid-shaped empire that have shaped our past. 

Houston, we have a problem. The complexity of the issues we face, both global and local, are simply too great for any one person or organization to take on alone. And yet, the systems in which we operate tend to incentivize heroic leadership, organizational competition for funding, and transaction over relationship. The good news? There's a different way if we shift our frameworks, incentives, and approaches: cultivating networks.

Meet Stephen Lewis, President of the Forum for Theological Exploration, co-founder of DO GOOD X, and co-author of A Way Out of No Way: An Approach to Christian Innovation, and Another Way: Living and Leading Change on Purpose. Stephen is a committed and thoughtful leader and developer of leaders, always thinking deeply about, and helping cultivate, the types of innovative, changemaking leadership that the challenges of our time require. We are grateful to have him as a friend and advisor to innoFaith.

Meet Rabbi Sid Schwarz, interfaith leader and serial entrepreneur. Rabbi Sid is a Senior Fellow at Hazon and has birthed and led numerous initiatives in the field of Jewish life, leadership, education, and community, including PANIM: The Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values, the Clergy Leadership Incubator, Kenissa: Communities of Meaning, and many more. Sid is a relentless visionary, perpetually pushing the boundaries of what faithful leadership can and must be in a changing world, always with humility, grace, and humor.

Even before the pandemic abruptly disrupted the entire planet all at once, our world had become a place of constant change and accompanying uncertainty. It’s a new game, different than the one many of us have been taught to play - the one that plotted a linear, generally secure path from education to job to career. And to power, for those with the ambition and privilege to land in positions of leadership. The game has changed, and how we equip ourselves for it is the question at the heart of a new book by Henry De Sio, Changemaker Playbook: The New Physics of Leadership in a World of Explosive Change. Hint: everyone leads.