![A black man with glasses wearing a suit and bow tie](/sites/default/files/styles/crop_square/public/Steven%20Harris_0.jpg?h=9f406b32&itok=0RUcv_Cf)
Steven Harris
Vice President of Ecosystem Transformation
Meet Steven
One of the things I find most exciting about being at Fetzer is the explicit intention to attend to the inner, spiritual life as the site from which public life emerges. As VP of ecosystem transformation, I have the signal opportunity to commend a transcendent vision for service in the world—a worldview desperately needed for such a time as this.
I come to this work having negotiated the boundaries of not a few divergent sectors in my own personal and professional life. Most recently, I served as a senior director with Georgetown University’s Center on Faith and Justice. Prior to Georgetown, I served on the faith engagement working group for President Biden’s 2020 campaign and, as director of advocacy and policy director for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) of the Southern Baptist Convention, I played a significant role in building bipartisan coalitions on Capitol Hill for passage of the criminal justice reform legislation that President Trump signed into law in 2018. During that season, I also testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee and spent time overseas investigating human rights violations.
For the past several years, I have also served as a teaching fellow and lecturer at Harvard University, teaching a range of classes in the academic study of religion, including “Theories and Methods in the Study of Religion,” “Religion, Race, and the Rise of New Orleans Jazz,” and “Religious Literacy and the Professions: Government and Humanitarian Leadership.”
A Vanderbilt graduate, I received an MDiv from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, an MA in Religion from Yale, and an MA in Religion from Harvard, where I am also a PhD candidate in American Religious History and African American Studies. When I am not reading or watching movies, I am spending time getting acclimated to the Kalamazoo area with my wife, Sunni, and our two boys, Jude and Luke.