Featured Speakers

Follow Me: Sharing the Gospel in a 2.0 World

The Rev. Mark S. Hanson

The Rev. Mark S. Hanson is presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), Chicago. Hanson was first elected ELCA presiding bishop in 2001 and was elected to a second six-year term in 2007. In 2003 he was elected president of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), Geneva.

The son of a Lutheran evangelist, Hanson is by reputation an advocate for social justice, especially issues that impact people living in poverty, including racial justice, housing, welfare rights and immigration rights.

Eboo Patel

Eboo Patel is the founder and executive director of Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), a Chicago-based institution building the global interfaith youth movement.

Named by US News & World Report as one of America’s Best Leaders of 2009, Patel is author of the award-winning book Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation. He is a member of President Obama’s Advisory Council of the White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and holds a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University.

The Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber

Nadia Bolz-Weber is the founding pastor of House for All Sinners and Saints, an ELCA mission church in Denver, Colo.

She's a leading voice in the emerging church and her writing can be found in The Christian Century and Jim Wallis' God's Politics blog.

Author of Salvation on the Small Screen? 24 Hours of Christian Television (Seabury 2008) and the Sarcastic Lutheran blog, Nadia lives in urban Denver with her husband, 2 children, 2 cats and 4 chickens.

Michael Organ

Michael Organ was the first full-time Director of Internet Advertising for a presidential campaign (one of Obama for America’s many New Media innovations, which helped raise over $500 million online).

Organ’s 20+ year marketing career began with traditional advertising and direct mail, but he switched to internet marketing in 1999 and has since led New Media campaigns for over 400 clients. Organ’s direct-response background influences his approach, involving micro-targeting segmentation, continuous split-cell testing and Return On Investment optimization.

Andrew Bleeker

Andrew Bleeker helped build Change.gov, and most recently served as the New Media Director for the Presidential Inaugural Committee.

During the 2008 general election, Andrew was the Director of Internet Advertising for Obama for America where he oversaw the largest political online marketing operation in history. In this capacity, he was responsible for all aspects of online marketing for the campaign and the Democratic National Committee, including unprecedented programs for list building, donor acquisition, voter registration, early voting, messaging, and GOTV.

Yvonne Gilmore-Essig

Yvonne Gilmore-Essig is a pastor, poet and lecturer. She is the pastor of New Song Community Church in Columbus, Ohio and a poet/vocalist member of The Cornel West Theory, included on their 2009 debut release, Second Rome, on Sockets Records.

She wrote and performed a spoken word piece entitled "Tree," commissioned by the Christian Church, Disciples of Christ for their 2009 General Assembly and was featured in an artistic collaboration in Washington, D.C., entitled "District Calling: Freedom" in December 2009. Yvonne received her M. Div from the University of Chicago and her B.A. in International Relations from The American University. She is the grateful mother of two girls, Assata, 11, and Kharis, 6.

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