weLCOME special GUESTs rev. DR. david anderson hooker and rev. yvonne teresa gilmore

Rev. Dr. David Anderson Hooker began working with the Church Narrative Project of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in 2022. He is the Founder and Principle Narrator for CounterStories Consulting, llc. CounterStories engages as a conversation and visioning partner with international, national and local civil society organizations and religious groups to craft narratives of their preferred futures and align organizational structures and internal practices in furtherance of their constructed narratives. For almost 40 years Hooker has utilized his training and expertise in Conflict Transformation by serving as mediator, community builder, scholar, and advocate. Hooker’s primary focus is in the role of individual and collective narratives for the transformation of multi-party disputes and post conflict community reconciliation, especially those conflicts where race, class, religion, and other socially constructed variables significantly impact the disputed context. He also has both practice and academic interests in the interruption of the multi-generational transmission of trauma. He has served as mediator for more than 700 court-connected mediations, several dozen public policy conflicts, environmental justice disputes, and congregational conflicts. Hooker is a former Assistant Attorney General for the State of Georgia where he represented the Departments of Juvenile Justice, Mental Health Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse, and Medical Assistance (Medicaid). He later had a private legal practice focusing on civil rights (including prisoner rights and special education) He has worked in Bosnia, Croatia, Cuba, Myanmar (Burma), Nigeria, The Bahamas, South Sudan, Somaliland, and Zimbabwe,. Hooker is Formerly a Professor of Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame (2016-2021) and previously held  the posts of Senior Fellow for Community Engagement Strategies at the J. W. Fanning Institute for Leadership Development at the University of Georgia (2010-2015) and Associate Professor of Conflict Studies at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia (2004- 2012). 

He is a graduate of Morehouse College (BS); Washington University in St. Louis (AM); University of Massachusetts in Amherst (MPH & MPA); The Emory University School of Law (JD); The Candler School of Theology at Emory University (M. Div); and University of Tilburg in Tilburg, Netherlands (Ph.D.) Dr. Hooker is also an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ (UCC).

Rev. Yvonne Teresa Gilmore serves as Associate General Minister, Vice President, and Chief of Staff in the Office of the General Minister and President of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the United States and Canada where she also directs the Church Narrative Project. Previous to this role she served as Interim Administrative Secretary of the National Convocation, and Associate General Minister. From 2013-2020, she served as Associate Dean of Disciples Divinity House of the University of Chicago (DDH), and as a co-teacher in the MDiv Arts of Ministry sequence at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. Ever committed to the cultivation of thought leadership and community formation, she is also a core trainer with Reconciliation Ministries and co-directs "Living Justice: An Anti-Racist Practicum," a justice learning and innovation lab at DDH UChicago. She also serves as adjunct faculty at Lexington Theological Seminary. She is a former new church pastor, and chaplain. She holds a BA in International Relations from The American University, and an MDiv from the University of Chicago Divinity School. She enjoys jazz, tennis, and spending time with her oldest daughter Assata (26) and her husband, Jared, and Kharis (21), her youngest daughter.