Dr. Trudie Kibbe Reed, President of Bethune Cookman University

Dr. Trudie Kibbe Reed is Bethune-Cookman College’s fifth president and the first woman to serve in this capacity since the College founder, Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune. Dr. Reed assumed the presidency of Bethune-Cookman College on August 16, 2004 after a very successful career in higher education and within The United Methodist Church. Dr. Reed brings experience and expertise as an educator, administrator, visionary, public speaker, and student-centered leader.
Dr Reed served 18 years as a senior level administrator with the United Methodist Church. At the age of 28, she became the youngest elected General Secretary (CEO) of a national program agency of the United Methodist Church. She developed and implemented educational programs for eight agencies, seminaries, colleges and universities around the nation. During her tenure with the United Methodist Church, she led and coordinated the denomination’s first national prison ministry, deaf ministry and ministries by, with, and for older adults’ initiatives. She drafted legislation and conceptualized a church wide study that developed into a major quadrennial emphasis for the denomination: Strengthening the Black Church for the 21st Century”. From 1994-1998, Dr. Reed was the Dean of the Leadership Institute and a tenured professor at Columbia College of South Carolina where she founded and edited a refereed journal: “A Leadership Journal for Women: Women in Leadership-Sharing the Vision.” Dr. Reed broke all fund raising records during her tenure as president at Philander Smith College, raising over $40 million in three years.

Bethune Cookman University website: www.cookman.edu

The Rev. Gil Rendle, Consultant, The Alban Institute

Formerly with The Alban Institute and now consultant with the Texas Menthodist Foundation, Gil Rendle previously served as senior pastor of two urban congregations in Pennsylvania for sixteen years and as a denominational consultant for the United Methodist Church for nine years. Gil has an extensive background in organizational development; group and systems theory; and leadership development. He frequently consults with congregations on planning; staff and leadership development; and issues of change. He is well known for his work with middle judicatory offices and staff as they wrestle with the issues of both denominational and congregational change. In training workshops and leadership retreats, Gil has led numerous large and small groups in practical learning that directly impacts the decisions and behaviors that participants practice in their congregations. He is the author of fours books, as well as a contributor to two others books and the author of numerous articles and monographs--Holy Conversations: A Handbook for Strategic Planning in Congregations, 2003, Alban Institute, The Multigenerational Congregation: Meeting the Leadership Challenge, 2002, Alban Institute, Behavioral Covenants in the Congregation, 1999, Alban Institute, Leading Change in the Congregation: Spiritual and Organizational Tools for Leaders, 1998, Alban Institute

Alban Institute website: www.alban.org

For more than 25 years, SAK Entertainment has brought its unique mix of comedy, improvisation and audience participation to theme parks, festival and thousands of corporate clients all over the world. The SAK Playing Together seminar mixes hilarious entertainment with practical, useful instruction. The SAK cast of improviser/educators have decades of experience teaching and performing improvisation. The SAK improvisers are trained to respond quickly and capably to any situation. Their strengths are obvious: adaptability, communication, and teamwork. The rules of improvisation are in place to generate the best chance of flexibility and diversity. Playing Together teaches those same skills and demonstrates how the tools used to create successful improve comedy apply to your work-place environment. This popular SAK seminar shows you how to realize corporate values and commitment, how to spur momentum forward throughout the organization, and how to confront problems that keep employees from doing their best.

SAK website: www.sak.com

The Rev. Dr. Gary Mason, Pastor, East Belfast Mission
The Methodist Church in Ireland

Gary has been in the pastorate for twenty years. He went on to work as a health service administrator for a number of years before studying theology at Queens University in Belfast and entering the Christian ministry in 1987.

Gary has spent his ministry in the inner city having a strong commitment to the churches role in the urban setting. From 1992 until 1999 he had responsibility for two Methodist churches one of which sits on a peace line in West Belfast. A peace line is a Berlin type wall, which separates the Protestant and Catholic communities. Life in this particular church and area is very complex and at times dangerous as part of the ministry of the Church includes trying to be an agent of healing in a sectarian society. Springfield Road Methodist is now recognized as being at the forefront of this ministry in Belfast, not only by the churches but also by the Government. In the course of his ministry Gary has been involved in what has now been called the peace process.

In 1999 Gary was moved to be the senior minister of one of the largest Methodist Missions in Europe at East Belfast Mission, this church with fifty employees is in the inner city and is seen as one of the most creative churches in the area of social justice in Ireland. This church in the last few years has been at the forefront of efforts to quell interface violence and is recognized by both the British and the American administrations having a leading role in developing peace within loyalist communities.

East Belfast Mission websites: www.ebm.org.uk | www.skainos.org

The Rev. David Beckmann, President, Bread for the World

David Beckmann is one of the foremost U.S. advocates for hungry people. He has been president of Bread for the World for 15 years, leading large-scale and successful campaigning to strengthen U.S. political commitment to overcoming hunger and poverty. Before that, he served at the World Bank for 15 years, overseeing large projects and driving innovations to make the Bank more effective in reducing poverty.

Bread for the World is a nationwide faith-based citizens' movement against hunger. It has 58,000 members, including 3,000 churches, and mobilizes a quarter of a million constituent letters to Congress each year. Thousands of Bread for the World activists meet with legislators, get coverage in local media, and organize others in their communities. Bread for the World is supported by 50 diverse religious bodies and works in partnership with many secular institutions. It is one of the largest organizations in the world dedicated to building the political will to end hunger.

Bread for the World has an impressive record of achievement under Beckmann's leadership. Bread for the World led the U.S. legislative coalition of the Jubilee movement to reduce the debts of low-income countries. Since 2000, the organization has helped to double U.S. funding for poverty-focused development assistance. Bread for the World has also helped to win increases in nutrition assistance for food-insecure people in the United States since the late 1990s – to a total that now exceeds $50 billion a year.

Beckmann earned degrees from Yale, Christ Seminary, and the London School of Economics, and five universities have awarded him honorary doctorates. He is a clergyman as well as an economist. He has written many books and articles, including Transforming the Politics of Hunger and Grace at the Table: Ending Hunger in God’s World. Beckmann speaks Spanish. He has lived in Bangladesh and Ghana, overseen projects in Bolivia and Ecuador, and visited more than 70 countries.

Bread for the World website: www.bread.org

Bishop Peter Storey, Methodist Church of South Africa

Peter Storey is former president of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa, past president of the South African Council of Churches, and was Methodist Bishop of the Johannesburg/Soweto area for 13 years.

A native South Africa with a 30-year track record in urban ministry, he served as director of a 24-hour crisis intervention service in Sydney, Australia, senior minister of the Inner-City Methodist Mission in District Six, Cape Town, and of the Central Methodist Mission in Johannesburg. In the 1960s, Professor Storey founded a network of crisis intervention centers in South Africa and served as chaplain to Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners on Robben Island.

In the 1980s he became a national leader in the church struggle against apartheid and co-led an ecumenical delegation to the United Nations, the U.S. Congress and Europe, urging intensified pressure on the apartheid regime in 1984. Committed to non-violence and reconciliation, Professor Storey was a founder of the Methodist Order of Peacemakers and Gunfree South Africa, the nation’s anti-gun lobby. He co-chaired the regional Peace Accord structures intervening in political violence before South Africa’s first democratic elections and was appointed by President Nelson Mandela to help select the nation’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

He has authored many publications, including With God in the Crucible: Preaching Costly Discipleship (Abingdon, 2002), And are We Yet Alive? Revisioning our Wesleyan Heritage in a New Southern Africa (Methodist Publishing House, Cape Town, 2004) and Listening at Golgotha (Upper Room, 2004). He was a weekly columnist for South Africa’s Sunday Independent, a national newspaper. He presented the Franklin S. Hickman Lectures at Convocation & Pastors’ School at Duke Divinity School in 1987.