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.
In January, the World Economic Forum released a report, Faith in Action: Religion and Spirituality in the Polycrisis, arguing for the relevance of religion and spirituality in a time of complex, intersecting, global social challenges. It features several examples of collaboration between business and faith-based organizations to address some of these challenges, as well as important insights and lessons for faith, business, and other leaders. It is an invitation to forge more multi-sector collaborations that leverage the wisdom and assets of faith to drive impact at scale.
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.
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.
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.
Meet Jon Adam Ross, Executive Director and Founding Artist of the In[HEIR]itance Project. Jon, an actor and playwright, uses his talents to build bridges in communities, linking people across faith traditions and other siloes to identify, engage with, and tell their shared stories through collaborative theater projects.
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 Esther Lederman, Director of Congregational Innovation & Leadership at the Union for Reform Judaism. As a former congregational rabbi herself, Esther helps Jewish communities re-imagine their congregational life so they can adapt and thrive in an era of significant change and contribute to creating a better world.
Meet Nikhil Mandalaparthy, Deputy Executive Director of Hindus for Human Rights, and a committed advocate for pluralism and human rights. All over the world, we’ve seen how when religion and nationalism intertwine, it can drive hate, violence, and injustice. Inspired by his own faith, other traditions, and bhakti poets, Nikhil works to foster inclusive expressions of Hindu identity.
Meet Nikole Lim, Founder of Freely in Hope, which works to end the cycle of sexual violence through the leadership and advocacy of survivors. Nikole is a filmmaker, storyteller, and dedicated advocate. Her innovative work centers the leadership of sexual violence survivors in Kenya and Zambia, highlighting the power of survivors to lead us to a violence-free world.
Meet Ambereen Khan, executive producer and host of Inspired, a production of Interfaith Voices, an award-winning independent public radio show that fosters interfaith understanding through exploring how faith intersects with news, politics, and culture. Ambereen is a beautiful interviewer and also a longtime interfaith advocate and innovator. Among many other things, she was co-founder of Muslim Advocates and the first Muslim to chair the Interfaith Alliance Foundation. We are honored to count her as an ally and advisor to innoFaith.
Meet Sandy Hong, Assistant Director at Glean Network and Steering Committee Member of KQTx. Sandy is a wise and skilled innovator and community-builder who we’ve had the privilege to get to know through an innoFaith partnership with Glean Network.
Meet Ally McKinney Timm, passionate human rights advocate and founder of Justice Revival. As a lawyer and person of faith, Ally saw a need for Christian communities to understand their role in human rights. She started Justice Revival to engage these communities in helping safeguard human rights for all through education, advocacy, and collaboration. This work includes exciting interfaith collaboration to advance human rights goals, such as passing the Equal Rights Amendment.
Meet Rev. Dr. Amy Butler, current pastor at National City Christian Church in Washington, DC, and founder of Invested Faith. Amy helps churches give new life to their assets—especially at what can be an otherwise painful stage of winding down—by investing in faith-rooted social entrepreneurs. Amy and Invested Faith remind us that God is always at work in the world if we are open to seeing that work in new ways.
Meet Sara Abdel, passionate and collaborative interfaith advocate for women, refugees, and economic justice. Originally from Egypt, Sara’s search for knowledge and justice and commitment to putting her faith into action has taken her to Capitol Hill and numerous local and global organizations and companies. Founder of Thrivers on the Move, she now directs her energies toward supporting immigrants and refugees to find jobs and careers where they can thrive.
Meet Rev. Cynthia Johnson-Oliver, preacher, poet, and public servant. Cynthia is founder of the FaithJustice Foundation, as well as the Bishop Joseph Johnson History Project, which she created to tell the story of her grandfather, the first African American to graduate from Vanderbilt University, and his role in civil rights history. Cynthia carries on her grandfather’s legacy not just by sharing his story but through her deep dedication to social justice in our time.
