Dr. Monique Moultrie is Professor of Religious Studies, Africana Studies, and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Georgia State University. Her scholarly interests include sexual ethics, African American religions, and gender and sexuality studies. She has written Passionate and Pious: Religious Media and Black Women’s Sexuality (Duke University Press, 2017) and Hidden Histories: Faith and Black Lesbian Leadership (Duke University Press, March 2023) and is currently the co-principal investigator for “The Garden Initiative for Black Women’s Religious Activism.” Her current research is on reproductive justice, Black women and faith.

Dr. Moultrie believes that people have callings on their lives that lead to fulfilling a greater purpose. She lives into her calling through a career that spans the academy and the Black church.

Rev. Dr. Paula Owens Parker, a Presbyterian minister (PCUSA), is the senior program developer of Roots Matter LLC, and the former program associate for the Katie Geneva Cannon Center of Womanist Leadership at Union Presbyterian Seminary, Richmond, Virginia. She is a member of Spiritual Directors of Color Network and Spiritual Directors International. She earned her DMin from San Francisco Theological Seminary, MDiv from Union Presbyterian Seminary, and BA from Fisk University.

Dr. Parker is the author of Roots Matter: Healing History, Honoring Heritage, Renewing Hope (2016), and has contributed articles to Christianity Century, Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology, and chapters in Kaleidoscope: Broadening the Palette in the Art of Spiritual Direction (2019), Walking through the Valley:Womanist Explorations in the Spirit of Katie Geneva Cannon. (2022)