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.
What faith(s), if any, do you practice? How does your tradition and/or spiritual practice inspire or influence you as an innovator?
Unitarian Universalists are my people. I come to that tradition as a true agnostic, in the sense that I really don't know about the divine. I've never had an experience with the divine, but also recognize that other folks believe they have. I'm not willing to prioritize my experience over others' to declare an atheistic truth. I got to that point because I was bullied for being atheist in my Bible-belt town. It took some learning but I finally realized that dogmatic atheism was an attempt to violate others' rights of conscience the same way that bullying had attempted to violate mine. From there, my agnosticism has allowed me to build relationships with folks from very many traditions and worldviews. To say it differently, I have been able to build or support unusually diverse coalitions and cross-religious collaborations because I am equally agnostic to the participants' religious beliefs.
What are you currently working on?
I'm building my consultancy, Cohesion Strategy, where I aim to support nonprofits and funders in promoting pluralistic solutions - that is, solutions that take "us/them" situations to "me, you, and all of us" situations. One of my projects right now is researching faith-based grantmakers to investigate where in the nonprofit sector their grants go. It's a fascinating space. As usual with religion, whatever you expect to find is there, and it is also so much more and so different than original expectations. For example, faith-based grantmakers support organizations across the spectrum of nonprofit activities and across ideological perspectives.
What can we find you doing when you’re not working?
Chasing my spitfire kid, finding my inner music, and dreaming about gardening.
What is piquing your curiosity these days?
Curiosity feels almost frivolous when there is so much to worry about. But I also think it's the one thing that might save us all, if we can manage to be curious about each other. Monica Guzman's book I Never Thought of it That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Creative Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times has been a good teacher to me. So I'm trying to stay curious about everyone, especially anyone whose actions I don't understand.
What is something you’d like help on?
Grace. We could all use a little grace to give and to receive.
What is something you can offer others in the innoFaith network?
For folks in DC, human connection! Let's meet for coffee. More generally, I have a gift for design management, which means I can visualize a project from research through strategy, program development, and implementation, all the way down to the details of the event planning.
You can find Allison at cohesionstrategy.com, by Email, or on LinkedIn or Twitter.
Meet an innoFaither is our series to introduce the inspiring optimists in the innoFaith world and what they’re working on and thinking about. We hope it helps you find and engage with each other across the network to advance faith-rooted social innovation and interfaith collaboration for social impact. Or just meet some cool people. Find the full series at www.innofaith.org/meet-an-innofaither.
Photo by Laurence Genon