PRESENTERS
Kendra Arsenault
Kendra Arsenault is the creator of the Imago Gei Podcast. She earned her Master of Divinity (MDiv) in Professional Chaplaincy from Andrews University.
During her undergraduate education, she studied International Development Studies and African-American Studies while attending the University of California, Los Angeles.
She has also worked in communication and marketing for ten years creating campaigns and media projects for various non-profits. She is a writer and is excited to use her diversity of gifts and training to serve Jesus and the global community.
Sandra Banjoko
Dr. Sandra Banjoko holds a PhD in Couples, Families and Systems from Loma Linda University. She also holds a Masters in Public Health, is a registered dietitian and a licensed marriage and family therapist. Her previous experience includes working with mental health and nutrition, internationally.
She has also worked in health clinics, agencies and hospitals serving different populations working with child abuse, crisis, domestic violence, trauma, grief and loss, post-partum, human sexuality, eating disorders and cultural issues.
Dr. Banjoko is an assistant professor in the Masters in Arts Counseling Program at La Sierra Univeristy.
J.C. Belliard
Dr. Juan Carlos Belliard teaches in the areas of culture and health, traditional, complementary and alternative medicine, ethnographic research methods, health disparities, and migrant health. He applies service-learning methods to his teaching in local communities (Southern California) and in field courses in Latin America.
Dr. Belliard is also involved in various initiatives that strengthen community-university relationships, serves on the board of the Social Action Health System, a Federally Qualified Health Center serving San Bernardino, and enjoys exposing students to “real world” education through service-learning and community engaged research.
His administrative duties include his position as Assistant Vice-President for Community Engagement and Diversity and Director of the Institute for Community Partnerships at Loma Linda University Health.
Eugene Canson
Eugene Canson, Senior Associate at Policy Link. He holds a Master of Public Health from Indiana University and a Bachelor of Science degree from Pacific Union College.
He applies his public policy and public health training towards advocating for equitable and transformative state and local policies that work to address social inequities and improve the health and wellbeing in underserved, marginalized, and BIPOC communities. In his role, he works at the intersections of economic justice, health equity, and PolicyLink's core program areas in California.
Previously, Eugene has worked alongside Community Health Centers, Family Resource Centers, and statewide advocates to advance community initiatives and equitable state and local policies. He is also an inducted member of the Delta Omega National Honorary Society for studies in public health.
Marlene Ferreras
Marlene M. Ferreras, PhD, is assistant professor of practical theology at the HMS Richards Divinity School at La Sierra University. Her research focuses on decolonial approaches in care and counseling with working-class Latinx women.
Marlene is the first American-born daughter of a single-parent Cuban refugee mother. She is an ordained Seventh-day Adventist minister with fourteen years experience in pastoral ministry serving in communities around the Loma Linda, California area.
She holds two MA degrees in theology—from Fuller Theological Seminary and Claremont School of Theology—and an MS degree in marital and family therapy from Loma Linda University. She is registered as an associate marriage and family therapist with the California Board of Behavioral Sciences.
Priscilla Flores
A native New Yorker, Priscilla Flores is an actor, director, theatre practitioner, and activist working for the City University of New York | Creative Arts Team (CAT).
With 20 years of programmatic and administrative experience in the arts and education field, Priscilla is deeply committed to addressing youth and community development through an Applied Theatre approach. As Director for the College and Adult Program, she develops programming for student and adult populations across New York City and abroad that allow participants to explore social and academic issues, cultivate social and emotional learning, and help practice life skills. “Each year, I work to develop and supervise a highly-skilled team of teaching artists who provide interactive, participant-centered applied theater workshops and residencies for a diverse range of contracts and communities, serving approximately 10,000 participants annually. This work is Christ’s ministry. I’m privileged to be His co-collaborator.”
Garrison Hayes
Garrison Hayes is an award-winning filmmaker, journalist and content creator. He produces innovative short documentaries for his 270,000+ follower community where he explores the hidden or forgotten corners of Black history, faith and politics, and his love of books. He was selected as a member of the Inaugural Class of Snap Inc.’s Black Creator Accelerator, and is currently Mother Jones’s Creator in Residence.
He is currently the Creative Director of Kindred Media, a video-first creative agency amplifying diverse voices by making beautiful, engaging and DEIB-focused videos for corporations and higher education institutions.
He earned his Masters of Divinity from Andrews University. He presently resides in Nashville, TN.
Claval Hunter
Claval Hunter is the Associate Director of the Andrews University Center for Community Change. The Center for Community Change works with collaborating partners to provide training, mentorship, technical support and potential funding to pilot community-level projects. Through training and mentoring he supports pastors through the process of social innovation to help them undertake community needs through assessments, program design, evaluation, grant writing, and project management.
He is also the lead pastor of Berean Transformation Center (formerly Berean SDA Church).
Todd Leonard
Pastor Todd Leonard has a long history of equity work and civic engagement. He helped launch the Glendale Communitas Initiative, which partners with families to help them break out of cycles of poverty, and—in collaboration with Home Again Los Angeles—has expanded work in homelessness prevention and recovery.
He’s also a member of the Coalition for an Anti-Racist Glendale. And he helped launch the Glendale Martin Luther King Jr. Peace Walk. His longstanding passion is to help people discover spirituality in individuals, cultures, religions and lifestyles that differ from their own and building radically-inclusive community devoted to transformation.
Esther Loewen
Esther Loewen (or “Elle” as her friends call her) is a California transplant from Walla Walla, Washington. She lives to create inclusion, always making more room at the table of love.
Elle’s professional life has been filled with 16 years of full-time pastoral ministry, authoring a book about keeping secrets, and earning a master’s degree in leadership. Now preparing for the next phase as a full time student, she is pursuing a Masters in Family Therapy at Alliant University.
Geoffrey Nelson-Blake
Geoffrey Nelson-Blake is a PhD candidate in Religion and Practice at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. His academic interests were formed and transformed by his time as a practitioner, both as a Seventh-day Adventist pastor and a faith-based community organizer.
His interests include missiology, public theology, and decolonial theory. Drawing from research interviews, his dissertation investigates how future-oriented, eschatologically driven mission is a primary source of motivation for many participants of faith-based community organizing. He has contributed a chapter for the book Do Justice: Our Call to Faithful Living and has written for Religion Dispatches and The Washington Post.
Michael Nixon
Michael Nixon, Esq. develops, implements, and executes tactics to improve diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI) and Beacon Health Systems in Michigan. In his role, he leads the development and implementation of best-in-class DEI strategies and operations that support the organization’s mission, vision, values and strategic goals.
He previously worked at Andrews University for six years. There he served as the Inaugural Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion, Chief Diversity Officer, and as the Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion.
Jovannah Poor Bear-Adams
Jovannah Poor Bear-Adams grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. She is an alum of Holbrook Indian School and Union College. She later returned to Holbrook and served as Vice Principal as well as Dean of Students.
Spurred by her own life experiences of childhood homelessness and abuse, Jovannah has worked to improve the living conditions and emotional wellbeing of students and families who have suffered from poverty and trauma.
She also seeks to educate and inform by example that it is not only possible, but important, for people to recognize that embracing Christ doesn’t require destroying or denying one’s cultural identity. When Christian boarding schools first came into existence in America, the motto and the driving force behind it was to “kill the Indian and save the man”. And that is part of the stigma a lot of tribes—a lot of Nations Americans, especially traditional Native Americans—carry against Christian schools. However, she has sought to reshape this perception of the faith to show it is not about “killing the Indian”. It’s about meeting needs; it is about healing. Her ministry is about helping students claim their identity, their culture, their faith, themselves.
In addition to Holbrook, she has worked at Dakota Adventist Academy and is currently a part of Thunderbird Academy.
Greg Hoenes
Greg Hoenes is a career pastor with more than 25 years of ministry experience in the Central and Southern California Conferences. He became the West Region Director of the Southern California Conference in 2015, where he still serves.
Since 2013, Greg has also served as an Adjunct Professor of Pastoral Studies at La Sierra University. He earned a PhD in Practical Theology at Claremont School of Theology in 2021, focusing in the area of food, ecology, and religion/spirituality. He also studies the ways that racial categorization, racism, and the construct of “whiteness” connect to ecologies of land and environment, humans, and animals.
Renewed Heart Ministries is a fiscal sponsor of JustLove Collective.