Christena Cleveland, Ph.D.

Christena Cleveland Ph.D. is a social psychologist, public theologian, author, and activist. She is the founder and director of the Center for Justice + Renewal as well as its sister organization, Sacred Folk, which creates resources to sharpen people’s understanding of the social realities that maintain injustice while also stimulating the soul’s enormous capacity to resist and transform those realities and support their journeys toward liberation.

A weaver of Black liberation and the sacred feminine, Dr. Cleveland integrates psychology, theology, storytelling, and art to stimulate our spiritual imaginations. She has spoken to diverse audiences all over the world, ranging from Fortune 500 companies to non-profit boards to international youth organizations.

She recently completed her third full-length book, God is a Black Woman (HarperOne), which details her 400-mile walking pilgrimage across central France in search of ancient Black Madonna statues, and examines the relationship among race, gender, and cultural perceptions of the Divine.

An award-winning researcher and author, Cleveland is a Ford Foundation Fellow who has held faculty positions at several institutions of higher education — most recently at Duke University’s Divinity School, where she led a research team investigating self-compassion as a buffer to racial stress.

Though Dr. Cleveland loves scholarly inquiry, she is also a student of embodied wisdom. She recently completed the Art & Social Change intensive body wisdom training for millennial leaders, and is currently deepening her mind-body-spirit integration in a year-long life practice program for BIPOC.

A bona fide tea snob, lover of Black art, and Ólafur Arnalds superfan — Cleveland makes her home in Boston.