My life has been filled to overflowing with beautiful opportunities to learn and grow as a minister, musician, facilitator, and writer, and as a parent, partner, colleague, and friend. In the late 1990s, I received my Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Emory University in Atlanta and a law degree from the City University of New York School of Law. After law practice that included a federal clerkship, insurance defense, and LGBTQ civil rights litigation, I discerned a call to ministry and went on to receive a Master of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York.

For over twenty years, the focus of my calling and commitment to professional ministry has been to grow and nurture spaces where people can 1) connect in ways that heal, not harm; 2) talk about and re-imagine congregational life that truly fosters a sense of belonging among all people; and 3) make impactful changes through spiritual practice, deep listening, and active engagement in community.

Since 2013, I have served in various roles in Unitarian Universalism and, for the last seven years, I have had the pleasure and the joy of serving as the Community Minister for Worship & Spiritual Care for Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism (BLUU), an organization and spiritual community that provides spiritual care, support, and resources to Black UUs and Black people who center love, justice, and liberation in spiritual journeys of all kinds. I am also one of the co-founders of the Transforming Hearts Collective, a collective of beautiful souls whose collaborative work in community over the last nine years has both supported spaces for LGBTQ people to access resilience, healing, and spirituality and also resourced faith communities and other groups for the work of radical welcome and culture shift, including and especially through our Transgender Inclusion in Congregations learning series. 

I have been a leader in worship arts and congregational life in communities in New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Georgia, and Hawaii, and have been given the opportunity to lead worship and offer theological reflection from the General Assembly main stage. For the past three years, I have coordinated programming for Finding Our Way Home, the UUA’s annual retreat for UU religious professionals of color. And in 2022, I was invited to give the annual Berry Street Lecture, the longest running lecture series in North America started by Rev. William Ellery Channing, during the UU Ministers Association’s Ministry Days (professional learning days), which was a profound honor.

I am grateful, through everything that I do and all that I endeavor to be, to have a beautiful family who I love, made up of my mom, two younger sisters (a psychotherapist and an educator), and eleven aunts and uncles (from both sides), many of whom are married and have children and grandchildren. I am a father to an incredibly bright, creative, wild, emotionally aware, and neurospicy eight-year-old, who I adore (see picture above of us lighting the Menorah). I am also partnered to a remarkable human, who also happens to be a UU minister, and I have chosen family all over the country, without whom I would not be the person I am today.

When I’m not working or traveling or engaging in shenanigans with my kid, I’m usually singing or dancing to something upbeat. I love playing my drum set or my steel tongue drum, and baking pies is one of my favorite things to do in the world. Star Wars, as a story and as an ethos, changed my life as a young person and is near and dear to me on many levels. And I love a good labyrinth. Joy and rest are essentials in life, and I am committed to ensuring that I have both.

Read more about my ministry and my faith.