About Us

Carie Cauley is a graduate student at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University where she explores her interests in Christian history and Black Liberation Theology. Driven by her long family lineage of merging faith with social justice work as well as the continued assaults on black life across the United States, Carie has contributed her activism to Houston’s local movement for black lives as a member of BLMHTX/ImagiNoir and Truth2Power. Through this work, Carie is working to follow in the model of who and what Jesus Christ embodied: one who struggled for all to be treated justly, with equity and unconditional love.

Claudia Crane is a project manager and the Chief Administrative Officer at Project Curate. She directs with both Curate and Iconoclasts Artists by overseeing all internal and external communication of planning, strategy, administration, and execution in consulting, community engagement, and grant research. She is a native Houstonian with strong Mexican roots who earned a Bachelor of Science from Boston University and additional certifications from the Universidad Autonoma in Guadalajara and the University of Houston. Ms. Crane comes to Project Curate with more than 15 years of leadership positions in relationship, project, and client management in the Food and Beverage, IT, and Healthcare industries. She has also assumed several roles in early stage start ups establishing competitive service offerings and growth strategies in both North American and Mexican markets. She is committed to her current mission of impact to build bridges for the betterment of our communities and society.

Dr. Jessica B. Davenport is a native of Little Rock, Arkansas where she graduated from the historic Little Rock Central High School. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Spelman College in 2004 and a Master of Divinity with a certificate in Black Church Studies from Emory University’s Candler School of Theology in 2007. Jessica earned her doctorate in African American Religion at Rice University in Houston, Texas. During her time at Rice, she was a doctoral fellow with The Fund for Theological Education and a Civic Humanist Fellow in Art and Cultural Heritage with the Rice University Humanities Research Center. Jessica’s research interests include theories of black religion, aesthetics, and visual culture, with a particular focus on the religious significance of black women’s visual art. In addition to her work as a Ph.D. student, she is also a local activist and community organizer who creates spaces for critical dialogue and creative imagination as strategies for justice and social transformation.

Jude Feng is a second-generation Asian American whose parents immigrated from Taiwan and whose roots are in Texas. He's committed to holistic justice and the belief that justice work is the healing of our collective spirituality. Jude received his B.A. in Asian American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin and completed graduate coursework in social work at the University of Houston. He's worked in various social services and non-profits - from providing one-on-one support/services to impacting international policy (with Nobel Peace Laureates!) - and as a community educator/trainer and curator. He was the Director of Justice and later the Spiritual Formation Associate at Access, a predominantly East Asian American church in Houston. And he was a teacher in public education for several years. Presently he's active as the co-founder of the Collective of Houston Asian Americans (CHAA), a queer Asian American collective committed to centering and building a community engagement space for queer Asian-Pacific Islanders in Houston and the city's diasporic Asian-Pacific Islander community. He spends his time thinking about how to find cohesion and build solidarity across different Asian ethnic communities, how to build relations and solidarity across different communities of color, how gender transcends the binary and their many nuances, how to deconstruct/reconstruct ideas of masculinity, and how to stay grounded in dystopia. He's also obsessed with his newly adopted puppy... it's a bit much. His friends are very patient with him.

Andrea Sawyer-Gray is a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner and life curator. Having been trained in both theology and healthcare, Andrea’s work and life coheres around the centrality of making black people—particularly black women’s—lives better. Her goal is to continually create spaces and environments wherein black women are able to both heal and thrive. She began this work through her innovative HERstory speaker series through which she invites black women to tell their stories of joy, pain, and triumph. In addition, she has been a critical member of the BLMHTX/Truth2Power alliance as an organizer around such issues. Through the sharing of stories, Andrea seeks to cultivate spaces where narratives become the catalyst for transformation. Motivated by a central conviction that black women bear the stamp of divinity, Mrs. Sawyer-Gray devotes her life to helping black women uncover the divinity within themselves.

Dr. Biko Mandela Gray is an Assistant Professor of American Religion at Syracuse University, and a community advocate. Attempting to try and bring theory and practice together, Dr. Gray’s research interests operate at the intersection of religion, embodiment, and subjectivity—all of which cohere around a central question: if we took our bodies seriously, how might we think about our relationship to ourselves, others, and the world? Biko raises this question specifically through the issue of racial justice: how does one think about one’s relationship to oneself, others, and the world when one isn’t white? This question—the question of the meaning of humanity—motivates his research. But more than this, it motivates his approach to the world and fuels his passion for justice.

Brandi Holmes is a Co-Managing Partner of Project Curate, sharing responsibility for the overall strategic direction, planning, development, and implementation of a range of initiatives and projects that promote robust civic engagement with diverse publics around issues of bias, race equity, and social justice. She is a native Houstonian who has held a variety of positions in corporate settings, including Business Development Specialist and Marketing Manager—both with Ford Motor Company. ​ Brandi combines years of corporate strategy and training experience with a passion for racial and social justice and mentoring young high school students. Having participated in and been shaped by Houston liberation work from an early age, Brandi felt summoned to leave her corporate career in 2014 and relocate back to her hometown. Since then, Brandi has focused her attention on various black liberation struggles, but especially the struggles of black girls and women. She is a noted social activist, community organizer, and strategist, specially dedicated to policy and criminal justice reform and community empowerment. She is the Co-founding Director of Strategy and Community Organizing for the Imaginoir/BLMHTX-Truth2Power Organizing Collective. In this role, she engages in criminal justice reform in Harris County and has also helped to implement a number of sustainable and equitable community-focused initiatives in some of the most vulnerable communities in Houston. ​ Brandi still works corporate-adjacent as a Program Manager for the Lazarus Energy Empowerment Program (LEEP), a program that exposes under-resourced high school students to personal development, financial literacy, college and career readiness, and to the energy industry. She is a graduate of the University of North Texas and holds a BBA with a concentration in Marketing.

Secunda Joseph directs a range of our community and civic engagement projects and smart media activism. She regularly trains and consults with community and religious leaders on how to build effective coalitions for social movement & justice work. A native Houstonian (with strong southern Louisiana roots), Secunda is a seasoned social activist, community organizer, and digital PR expert who creatively and strategically engineers social media campaigns for use in her advocacy work. Since 2012, she has run Grass Is Greener, a tech-savvy public relations firm which she also founded. There she assists her clients with digital, print, and social media strategies for connecting more effectively with focused audiences within the black community. Secunda also is the host of Imagine a World, a weekly radio talk show that airs every Sunday morning on All Real Radio. There she seeks to inspire the creative imagination of “the African diaspora,” she says, believing that it’s important to cultivate spaces and conversations wherein all kinds of black people feel that they “can breathe” and affirm the unique expressions of how they need to do so before joining with others in social change work. Her show was inspired by her work with the ImagiNoir/BLMHTX-Truth2Power Organizing Collective where she is a Co-founder. Secunda’s mantra is rooted in what she calls a Black Christian hope. "Listen, I love people…I love all people...but I especially love my people!"

Matt is currently on staff at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church Houston as the Senior Associate Pastor, is co-founder of Iconoclast Artists and is Assistant Professor of Recovery Ministry at Fuller Theological Seminary. Prior to this he was on faculty at Duke Divinity School as professor of Theology and Community Development. In 2013 he completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Cambridge’s Psychology and Religion Research Group (PRRG) where he explored redemptive narratives and models of the Church’s ministry of reconciliation in urban settings. While at Cambridge he was a tutor at Cambridge Theological Federation and on staff at St. Edwards King and Martyr congregation. He received his Master of Divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary and completed his PhD at Texas Tech University in 2010. His dissertation explored how women construct alternative narratives of redemption from years of sustained trauma and abuse and was awarded the “Outstanding Dissertation Award” for the University. While at Texas Tech he was the Associate Director at The Center for the Study of Addiction and Recovery. From 1996-2008 he was Associate Pastor of Houston’s Chapelwood United Methodist Church and founding pastor of Mercy Street an alternative community for people who “hated church”.

Michele J. Russell received her Master of Science degree in Marriage and Family Therapy from Fuller Theological Seminary in 1995. During her 22 years working in the field of mental health she served as a staff counselor at Texas Children’s Hospital Learning Support Center and established the Eating Disorder Program at The Center for the Study of Addiction and Recovery at Texas Tech University, of which she also served as program Director. In 2014, Michele was the Program Director for the Theology and Community program at Duke Divinity School and from 2015-2017, she served as Social and Emotional Program Specialist at Small Steps Nurturing Center. Currently, she works with Iconoclast Artists, a Houston-based writing, performance and visual arts program for young creative minds. There, she is working to establish Social and Emotional Learning support among Houston Independent School District’s most vulnerable populations. Across these unique environments, Michele has found the opportunity to support social and emotional growth and resilience in individuals, families and communities to be deeply challenging and rewarding.

Dr. Rachel C. Schneider is a scholar of religion, race, and culture as well as a community social justice advocate based in Houston, Texas. She is Co-Managing Director for projectCURATE—a non-profit social justice and civic engagement organization that works with academic, faith-based, and other institutional partners to promote collective flourishing among diverse publics. Rachel earned a PhD in religion from Rice University. Her dissertation, The Ethics of Whiteness: Race, Religion, and Social Transformation in South Africa, explores how progressive white Christians living in South Africa engage with past and present racial injustice. Working at the intersection of anthropology of religion and critical race studies, her current research examines how religious commitments shape ethical and political practice and inspire social change. Her writings on race, religion, gender, sexuality, African Christianity and evangelicalism have been published in Religions, Syndicate Theology, Religious Studies Review, and The Immanent Frame. Rachel is passionate about transformative learning that has real-world impact. Since 2017, she has worked with other projectCURATE team members to design innovative public curriculum that brings together clergy, academics, activists, artists, laity, and students to learn from one another. She also serves as a leader in Showing Up for Racial Justice, Houston (SURJ HTX): a group dedicated to educating and mobilizing white communities for racial justice. Rachel also works as a Visiting Research Fellow in Rice University's Religion and Public Life Program (RPLP). Prior to her academic training at Rice, Rachel worked in student affairs and multicultural programming at several universities. She holds a BA in Global Studies and English Literature from Seattle Pacific University.

The Revd. Dr. Cleve V. Tinsley IV is a scholar of religion and Black Studies. He earned his MA and PhD in religion from Rice University, where he concentrated in the study of African-American religion(s). His research employs inter(anti-)disciplinary theoretical and methodological approaches in efforts that explore the nature and meaning of black religious struggle and identity in light of the ever-evolving social complexities that shape religious formations and spirituality in the lives of African Americans today. He is a visiting research fellow in the Religion and Public Life Program (RPLP) at Rice University where, among other things, he is working on his first manuscript, tentatively entitled “Making Black Lives Matter: Race and Religion in Struggles for African-American Identity.” Dr. Tinsley is also a committed community activist, organizer, and ordained (and often transgressive) Baptist minister who holds a Master of Divinity (MDiv) from Princeton Theological Seminary. He has extensive experience as an organizer, institution-builder, manager, and consultant for churches, community organizations, and educational non-profit organizations across the country.