ATLANTA (January 21, 2020) — The Forum for Theological Exploration (FTE) begins the new year with two senior directors and redesigned teams to advance its mission to cultivate diverse young adults to be faithful, wise, and courageous leaders for the church and academy.
In 2019, FTE engaged in a six-month organizational design process. During that time, FTE discerned a new organizational rhythm and staffing model focused on design principles in response to a continuously changing landscape and the organization’s evolving strategic approach to inspire and support diverse young adults, students, and Christian leaders to impact communities in a new decade.
Ms. Christina Repoley and Dr. Patrick B. Reyes have been promoted to serve as the senior directors leading teams focused on experience design and learning design, respectively.
Ms. Repoley joined FTE in 2019 following the transition from her role as founding executive director of Quaker Voluntary Service (QVS). In her former role at FTE as the director of strategic partnerships for organizations serving young adults, she built the capacity of organizations and their staff members to facilitate vocational exploration and leadership development with promising young leaders in diverse Christian communities.
Now serving as senior director for experience design, Ms. Repoley will provide oversight for FTE’s events and communities of learning for young adults and Christian organizations. In doing so, the team she leads will design and develop experiences for constituents that leverage diverse perspectives, cultivate collaborative learning, inspire a sense of meaning and purpose, and encourage participants discerning vocation and ministry to take their next faithful steps. The experience design team includes Ms. Allison Arsenault, experience design manager; Rev. Darlene Hutto, experience design director; Ms. Melissa Scott, experience design manager; and Ms. Stephanie Williams, event manager.
After serving as the assistant dean for Academic Affairs and the director of the Center of Community Engagement at Trinity Lutheran College, Dr. Reyes joined FTE in 2016. In his previous role as the director of strategic partnerships for doctoral initiatives, he was responsible for managing the fellowship program for doctoral students, relationship building, and providing support to leaders of theological institutions.
Dr. Reyes is now the senior director for learning design. While he will continue to oversee the doctoral initiatives, his new role has expanded to include managing FTE’s organizational learning and resource development. The learning design team that he leads will provide insights about FTE’s initiatives and networks of constituents, primarily focused on vocational exploration, leadership, and innovation. In addition, this team will develop tools and resources (guides, publications, interactive materials, etc.) and facilitate the dissemination of grants to support the organization’s capacity building and young adults’ vocational discernment toward ministry and teaching. The learning design team includes Ms. Elsie Barnhart, learning design manager; Mr. Ted Boone, knowledge management director; and Ms. Heather B.P. Wallace, learning design manager.
“The development of FTE’s new teams and strategic approach is an effort to make more explicit the ways the FTE is already leveraging design in its work, and to acknowledge that, design must be a core organizational mindset, competency, and asset,” said FTE President Stephen Lewis.
“Increasingly, organizational design acumen can be leveraged to solve problems and develop better solutions. FTE works with the expansive and dynamic topics of call and vocation, with all of the complexity and nuance that surround them. A designer’s mindset will help us develop better experiences and resources for diverse young adults and doctoral students exploring Christian vocations and theological scholarship. It will also help us to support busy institutional leaders seeking to design better solutions to barriers to vocational accompaniment of young adults.”
Visit fteleaders.org/about/team to learn more about FTE’s team members.
About Forum for Theological Exploration
The Forum for Theological Exploration is committed to cultivating diverse young adults to be faithful, wise and courageous leaders for the church and the academy. FTE provides resources and a forum for young adults and students to explore their purpose and call to pastoral ministry and teaching. For more information, visit fteleaders.org.