CSE’s Advisory Board provides strategic and programmatic guidance to CSE:
Reverend Shaundra Cunningham
Shaundra is a former military kid who has lived all over but Columbia, South Carolina is home. Shaundra received her B.S. in business administration from the University of South Carolina and her Master of divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School with research interests in the role of the black church, gender equity, popular culture and religion. At Harvard, Shaundra served as president of Harambee, Harvard Divinity School’s Black Student Union, and organized a conference on hip hop and religion. Out of this conference, Shaundra was asked to contribute an article to Emmett Price’s anthology The Black Church and Hip Hop Culture: Toward Bridging the Generational Divide. In February 2010 she was ordained by the National Baptist Convention USA, Inc. After completing a one year CPE (clinical pastoral education) residency at Spartanburg Regional Hospital in August 2011 she became a staff chaplain for the Cleveland Clinic. In this role she serves as an embedded practitioner coordinating the spiritual care and healing services needs for patients, families, and staff on all the Medical Intensive Care Units. In the words of Peter Gomes, Shaundra is committed to doing ministry with both head and heart and hopes to embody that in all she does.
Ayana Free
Raised in Virginia, Ayana Free is an attorney in New York City at Cleary Gottleib Steen & Hamilton. Ms. Free’s practice focuses on litigation and enforcement matters, including complex commercial and securities litigation, regulatory investigations, corporate governance and compliance matters. She received a J.D. degree from New York University School of Law in 2007, where she was an Institute for International Law and Justice Junior Fellow and the Senior Note Editor for the Journal of International Law and Politics. She received an undergraduate degree, cum laude, from Spelman College in 2000. From 2008 to 2009, she served as law clerk to the Honorable Reginald C. Lindsay of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Ayana is a member of the Bar in New York, and is admitted to practice before the United States District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York. Her native language is English and she is proficient in French.
Ivy Hill
Ivy Hill lives just outside of Greenville, SC with hir fiance Misha. Ivy was a founding member of the Greenville Technical College GSA and had the opportunity to serve as president. Ze has participated in actions and volunteered with organizations like Faith in America, Soul Force, and Sean’s Last Wish. Ivy served as the advertising chair on the board of Upstate Pride. Ze was first involved in actions with the Campaign for Southern Equality during stage two of the WE DO Campaign, where ze fell in love with the work that this Campaign is doing and the people running it. Ever since then Ivy has been one of CSE’s biggest fans, driving to actions, workshops, family dinners, and reunions whenever possible. Ivy is one of the founding members and serves as a co-leader of Gender Benders, a grassroots group for transgender and gender variant folks in the upstate of SC. Ivy is also currently serving on SC Equality’s TransAction committee, which is working to improve the legislation that effects the lives of transgender and gender variant folks throughout the state of South Carolina.
Reverend Laura Ruth Jarrett
Laura Ruth grew up on the south side of Atlanta, GA, and is the Pastor at Hope Central Church in Jamaica Plain, MA. Prior to serving at Hope Central, Laura Ruth served as the Minister of Outreach and Evangelism at the First Church in Somerville, where she was instrumental in growing church membership. She received her Bachelor of Social Work from the University of Georgia in Athens and a Masters of Divinity from the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge. Her field work included serving as a Student Minister at St. Luke’s and St. Margaret’s Parish, an Episcopal Church in Allston-Brighton. She worked at the Women’s Center in Plainville, MA, a Dominican retreat house, helping with retreat preparation and working on worship music with composer Carolyn McDade. Laura Ruth also served a two-year internship at Pilgrim Congregational Church, UCC in Lexington, MA with her mentor, the Rev. Judith Brain. Laura Ruth traveled to North Carolina for the launch of the WE DO Campaign and is active in CSE’s work as part of the Boston Support Team.
Dr. Mark Jordan
Mark Jordan is a professor at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics as Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at Washington University. A renowned philosopher, ethicist, and theologian, he formerly served as the Richard Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Divinity at Harvard University. He taught previously at the University of Notre Dame and Emory University. His writing and teaching pursue questions about the interactions of political and religious rhetoric, the history of sex and gender in America, and the functions of ritual in creating unexpected identities. He teaches a range of courses in Christian ethics, natural law, theology, sexuality. His many books include Ordering Wisdom: The Hierarchy of Philosophical Discourses in Aquinas (1986); The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology (1997); The Ethics of Sex (2002); Telling Truths in Church: Scandal, Flesh, and Christian Speech (2003); Rewritten Theology: Aquinas after His Readers (2006); and Recruiting Young Love: How Christians Talk about Homosexuality (2011). He has just finished a book on religion and bodily resistance in the writings of Michel Foucault.
Luke Largess
Luke is an attorney in Charlotte, NC, at Tin Walker Fulton and Owen. He joined the law firm in 2009, after 18 years as a partner at Ferguson Stein Chambers. One of eight children in a Navy family, Luke earned a B.A. cum laude from Duke University in 1979 and worked as a teacher, social worker and carpenter before entering law school at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he graduated in 1990.Luke’s practice has included trial and appellate work in state and federal courts in education, employment, civil rights, criminal defense, personal injury and medical negligence.He represented the class of black families in the 1999 trial and later appeals in the historic Charlotte school desegregation case, originally known as Swann v. Charlotte Mecklenburg Board of Education, and later as Belk v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education.He more recently has won large jury verdicts for Title VII retaliation (Brown v. Hillcrest Foods, Western District of North Carolina, 2005) and defamation (Roquemore v. Shepherd Electric, Mecklenburg County, 2003) and has had significant confidential settlements in police misconduct and medical malpractice cases.Luke has represented school teachers since 1990 for the North Carolina Association of Educators. Luke is a member of the Mecklenburg County Bar Association, the North Carolina Advocates for Justice, the North Carolina Bar Association, and the North Carolina State Bar, and has served on the board and legal committee of the ACLU of North Carolina and the N.C. Justice Center.He also remains involved as board president of NCLEAF, which today provides over $750,000 in assistance annually to public service lawyers.
