People

Cheryl Clyburn Crawford grew up in Boston and has worked for many years in communities of color advocating for voting and civil rights. She joined MassVOTE in 2008; as executive director, Cheryl is a critical public face for the organization, recruiting coalition members, new donors, and volunteers. She sits on the Executive Board of the NAACP-Boston Branch as 1st Vice President and is a past Executive Board Member and former Chair of the Board of Emerge Massachusetts. Before MassVOTE, Cheryl served as Chief of Staff to State Representative Willie Mae Allen. She is a graduate of Lesley College, and frequently serves as a poll worker for the City of Boston.

Cheryl Della Pietra is a New York City magazine editor, writer, and copy editor. She has published numerous stories in such magazines as \_Marie Claire\_, \_Redbook\_, and \_POV Magazine\_. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, she lived with Hunter S. Thompson in Woody Creek, Colorado, for several months in 1992 while she worked as his assistant. She wrote \_Gonzo Girl\_ (2015) as a fictionalized account of her experiences as Thompson's assistant.

Cheryl Giles, is the Francis Greenwood Peabody Professor of the Practice in Pastoral Care and Counseling, at Harvard Divinity School. She also works as a consultant to the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Boston Medical Center, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Social Services, as well as non-profit organizations, schools, and colleges. Professor Giles is also the recipient of the Outstanding African-American Making History Today Award, Boston Renaissance School (2004).

**Cheryl Harris** grew up in the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston and is now senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Attleboro and CEO of the consulting firm Cheryl Harris and Associates, Inc.

Following the creation of the American Legacy Foundation in 1999, Dr. Cheryl Healton joined the staff as the first president and chief executive officer of this groundbreaking public health nonprofit, created by the historic Master Settlement Agreement between 46 state attorneys general, five U.S. territories and the tobacco industry. During her tenure with the foundation, she has guided the highly acclaimed, national youth tobacco prevention counter-marketing campaign, "Truth", that has been credited in part with reducing youth smoking prevalence to its current 28-year low. She is a frequent commentator in national and local broadcast and print news coverage regarding tobacco control issues, which include guest appearances on ABC's *Good Morning America*; CNN's *Larry King Live*; NBC's *Today*, MSNBC's *Hardball with Chris Matthews*, National Public Radio and more. Healton is currently writing a book on the topic of women and smoking, with common sense strategies to increase successful quit attempts. She joined the American Legacy Foundation from Columbia University's Joseph L. Mailman School of Public Health in New York, where she served as head of the Division of Socio-medical Sciences and associate dean for Program Development. She founded and directed the school's Center for Applied Public Health.

Cheryl J. Sanders, Th.D., is professor of Christian Ethics at the Howard University School of Divinity where she teaches courses in Christian ethics, pastoral ethics and African American spirituality. Her key areas of research and writing are African American religious studies, bioethics, pastoral leadership and womanist studies. Dr. Sanders has lectured at colleges, universities and seminaries all over the United States, including the 2005 C. Eric Lincoln Lectureship at Clark Atlanta University and the Staley Distinguished Christian Scholar Lectureship. She has held visiting professorships at Harvard Divinity School and High Point University, and taught as an exchange professor at Wesley Theological Seminary and the Lutheran Seminary at Gettysburg. Dr. Sanders has been Senior Pastor of the Third Street Church of God in Washington, D.C. since 1997. She has ministered nationally and internationally for more than 30 years as a preacher for church services, camp meetings, conventions, conferences and revivals. In 2005, she was honored as one of the elders in the fall issue of *The African American Pulpit: Those Preaching Women*. She is an author of more than 100 articles and several books, including *Ministry at the Margins* (1997); *Saints in Exile: The Holiness-Pentecostal Experience in African American Religion and Culture *(1996); and *Empowerment Ethics for a Liberated People* (1995). She holds a bachelors degree in mathematics from Swarthmore College and two graduate degrees from Harvard Divinity School: Master of Divinity, cum laude and Doctor of Theology in the field of applied theology. In 2002, she was awarded the honorary Doctor of Divinity degree by Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky.

CHERYL TOWNSEND GILKES (Pronounced “Jillks”) is the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of African-American Studies and Sociology and director of the African American Studies Program at Colby College (Waterville, Maine). An ordained Baptist minister, she is an assistant pastor for special projects at the Union Baptist Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She holds degrees in sociology from Northeastern University (B.A.,M.A., Ph.D.) and has pursued graduate theological studies at Boston University’s School of Theology. She is the recipient of an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Ursinus College in Pennsylvania. She is a sociologist whose specialties focus on African American women, religion, social change, and the legacy of W. E. B. Du Bois for sociology, African American studies, and religious studies. Her research, teaching, and writing have specifically focused on the role of African American women in generating social change and on the diverse roles of black Christian women in the twentieth century. She is currently at work on a book titled, That Blessed Book: The Bible and the African American Cultural Imagination. She is also exploring the impact of African Muslims on the formation of African American Christianity during slavery; some of that work can be found in Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society (2014) and The American Baptist Quarterly (2008). Some of her essays and articles are gathered in her 2001 book, If It Wasn’t for the Women: Black Women’s Experience and Womanist Culture in Church and Community. She served as an editor of the 2012 volume, Sisters of African Descent: Connecting Spirituality, Religion, and Vocation. Several of her journal articles have been reprinted in anthologies such as African American Religious Thought: An Anthology, edited by Cornel West and Eddie Glaude and Kenneth Aman’s The Border Regions of Faith. Her 2010 essay, “Still the Most Segregated Hour: Religion, Race, and the American Experience” is in Patricia Hill Collins and John Solomos, editors, Handbook on Race and Ethnicity. In 2010, Dr. Gilkes was able to participate in a panel at the Harlem Book Fair that was broadcast on C-Span because of her essay “Outsiders Within the Higher Circles: Two First Ladies as Cultural Icons in a Racialized Politics of Difference,” an essay that explores the work and lives of Michelle Obama and Jacqueline Kennedy. A recent article, “Three Great Revolutions: W. E. B. Du Bois, African American Women and Social Change” can be found on-line in the Berkeley Journal of Sociology. She has lectured and presented papers at colleges, universities, and scholarly conferences in the United States, Canada, Germany, England, and South Africa. She is active in several scholarly organizations, having held leadership positions in the American Sociological Association, the Association of Black Sociologists, the American Academy of Religion, the Society for the Study of Social Problems, the Eastern Sociological Society, and the Society for the Study of Black Religion. During the 2003-2004 academic year, she served as the national lecturer for Sociologists for Women in Society and, in 1998-1999, as the Robin M. Williams, Jr. Distinguished Lecturer for the Eastern Sociological Society. In February 2008, she received the Eastern Sociological Society’s highest professional award–the Merit Award.

Cheryl Townsend Gilkes is the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and African-American Studies at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. She is also an ordained Baptist minister and serves as the Assistant Minister at Union Baptist Church in Boston.

Chet Manchester has written a screenplay on Mary Baker Eddy.

Chet Michalak, Principal Technical Support Engineer with honors with thirty-eight years at Raytheon. In 1977 he joined the U.S. Army 3/2nd Armored Cavalry followed by a tour with the Massachusetts Army National Guard. Chet became Raytheon’s volunteer company historian and archivist after studying with the previous historian Mr. Norman Krim.

Charles Chick Krautler is the director of the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC). As head of the official metropolitan planning organization for the 10-county, 63-city Atlanta Region, he oversees and directs regional planning programs in the areas of transportation, air quality, the environment, land use, water supply and quality, as well as aging services and workforce development. Mr. Krautler began his work in regional planning councils as the executive director of the Baltimore Metropolitan Council. Before coming to ARC, he was President of the Triangle J Council of Governments. Earlier in his career Mr. Krautler served as manager of Public Affairs for the Washington Gas Light Company in Washington, DC and executive vice president of the Maryland Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Krautler is a member of numerous professional organizations. He currently serves as the President of the Georgia Association of Regional Development Centers (GARDC) and is a member of the National Association of Regional Councils (NARC); the Clean Air Campaign (CAC) Board of Directors; the Georgia Foreign Trade Zone Board of Directors; the Southeastern Regional Directors Institute (SERDI); the Metropolitan Atlanta Chamber of Commerce; the Atlanta Rotary Club and the Regional Leadership Forum (RLF).