Meet Our Team

I was born in Yonkers, NY and raised in nearby Irvington—a small, affluent, 90% white village and suburb to NYC. I studied theatre at the State University of New York in Albany, and then received my BA from Hunter College while I (briefly) pursued a career as an actor in NYC. After graduation I took a job as a project coordinator for Bridges to Community in Nicaragua, where I had previously volunteered. I lived and worked among some of the most severely impoverished people in the western hemisphere—and learned from them more than I could ever possibly convey. It was there that I became committed to economic and racial justice work and to immigrant rights, and from there that I discerned a call to ministry.

While completing my MDiv at Union Theological Seminary in NYC I interned with the Poverty Initiative, Interfaith Worker Justice, and in the homeless outreach program at Jan Hus Presbyterian Church. I also met my wife Selene—a student at Columbia University School of Social Work at the time—in a joint “poverty-immersion” course. We traveled through Appalachia meeting with poor peoples organizations, wept and raged together over mountaintop-removal mining and human deprivation, and fell in love.

In the years that followed she ascended through the ranks of the ACLU to become a deputy national political director, and I went on to serve progressive, eclectic, justice-oriented congregations in urban, rural, and suburban New York. I served on the national board of More Light Presbyterians, helped to found two local chapters of Showing Up For Racial Justice, and led South Presbyterian Church in Dobbs Ferry, NY, to become the first worshipping community in its county to provide sanctuary to an immigrant family facing imminent threat of deportation. We also became parents. Beckett (7) is a perceptive and deeply feeling kid with startingly good rhythm and a deep love of words. Serafina (5) is an impish and adventurous kid with a sidesplitting sense of humor and a deep love of dance. They both love bugs.

At the end of July, 16 months into the pandemic, we made the extraordinarily difficult decision to pick up and move our family across the country. This strange season—for all its challenges—has given us space to dream that was unavailable to us in seasons past. We’ve thought long and hard about what we most want for our children. We’ve thought, felt, listened, and remembered our way to some key truths: A) We want them to grow up surrounded by the splendor of the natural world—near to the ocean, the forest, the hills. B) We want them to grow up immersed in human diversity and committed to progressive social movements. C) We want them to grow up nourished by the arts—not just highly-polished final products, but gritty, playful, collaborative art in progress. As we began to hone in on these things it became clear that the Bay Area would be the place of greatest possibility for our family.

A colleague in ministry used to say that of all the words used to describe our role—minister, pastor, preacher, priest—the one he most preferred was the Old French “parson,” which simply meant “person.” It’s the simplest, oldest, most universal, most important, and, I suppose, most difficult calling which is reflected also in the mission statement of the church I served for the last five years: “To aid one another in the work of becoming more fully human.” That’s the only work that really interests me. I think this is what I’ve always been after: in punk rock and parenthood, vegetable gardening and antiracist organizing, in yoga and EMDR therapy, in slam poetry and parish ministry, in Brooklyn, the ‘burbs, and the barrios of Nicaragua, and—most recently, for me—onstage and in front of the camera, as an actor. It seems that what the world needs now more than ever is people willing and wanting and working to be human. I’m trying to answer that call.