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Board of Advisors

The role of the Earlham School of Religion Board of Advisors is to serve as a channel of communication, in both directions, between ESR and the wider world of Friends.

The Dean of the Earlham School of Religion seeks the advice and assistance of the Board of Advisors on matters relating to mission, program design, faculty searches, fundraising, student recruitment, placement and other matters.

Our BoA

Micah Bales

A 2009 graduate of ESR’s Master of Divinity program, Micah has been active in church planting, writing, and network building among Friends. He now serves as a bivocational pastor with Berkeley Friends Church, while also working as a software engineer. Micah lives with his wife and three small children in Oakland, California. Explore his ministry and writing at www.micahbales.com.

Ellie Bewley

After graduating from Earlham College in 1969, Ellie Bane attended the University of Southern California and received a master’s in physical education. She taught high school P.E. and U.S. government for five years, and then was employed by Rio Hondo Community College in Whittier, California, for 35 years. She taught physical education courses in health and fitness and coached the women’s tennis team. For the last twenty years at Rio Hondo, she served as the dean of the Physical Education and Health Science Department and was the athletic director.

Ellie served on the California State Athletic Governing Board’s Commission on Athletics for 20 years, and served as chair for three years and chaired the Gender Equity Committee, the Constitution Committee, and represented the sports of women’s basketball and volleyball. She also served on the executive committee of the State Athletic Director’s Association, and served as president of that organization. In addition, she served twice as president of the Foothill Athletic Conference, on the Whittier YMCA Board of Directors, the Rio Hondo College Foundation Board, and as president of Delta Sigma chapter of Delta Kappa Gamma.

Ellie has been a member of First Friends, Whittier for 60 years, and currently serves as clerk. In the past she has also clerked the Personnel and Nominating committees, and served on the Finance and Trustees committees. While serving on the Earlham Board previously, she chaired the Education and Nominating committees. Ellie has given 24 years of service to the Earlham Board of Trustees.

Chris Cradler

Chris grew up as a pastoral Friend in Whittier, CA (FUM). She is a member of Bridge City Friends Meeting (North Pacific Yearly Meeting), an active member among unprogrammed Friends in Portland, OR. She has clerked both monthly meetings and served on pastoral care and children’s program committees over decades at monthly, quarterly, and YM levels. She attended the Fifth World Conf. of Friends in Honduras, leading to FWCC representation locally and internationally. Participation among the evangelical and liberal Friends in the Pacific Northwest (FWCC, Pacific Northwest Quaker Women’s Theology Conferences, Convergent Friends) knits her varied Quaker experiences together.

Chris’ grandmother, great-aunts, uncle, cousins, and daughter are EC grads.

After 32 years in 4 schools, she is a retired Montessori educator.

Chris and her husband Larry spend as much time as pandemically possible with their 4 grandsons (5-12 years) and families in NY and Norway. She is an active geocacher, hiker, and cyclist.

Tom Gates

He served as a physician for three years with Friends Lugulo Hospital in Kenya followed by a year at Earlham School of Religion. He has been member of Lancaster (PA) Friends Meeting in PhYM since 1995. Tom serves on the board of Right Sharing of World Resources and is the author of five Pendle Hill Pamphlets as well as Opening the Scriptures by Quaker Press. Over the years Tom has participated in Spiritual Formation, School of the Spirit, Way of Ministry, and Nurturing Faithfulness programs. He recently retired after 42 years as a family physician and family medicine educator.

Adria Gulizia

Adria is a lawyer, mediator, teacher, mother and Young Adult Friend. For the last few years, she has carried a concern for how Friends’ traditional faith and practice translate into an increasingly unstable, atomized and uncertain world. In her ministry activities and in her daily life, Adria is passionate about inviting all into deeper relationship with the Spirit of Christ, which spoke so strongly to early Friends and continues to speak today. She is a member of Chatham-Summit Monthly Meeting (New York Yearly Meeting) and the Friends of Jesus Fellowship. Adria’s blog, In the Shadow of Babylon, can be found at shadowofbabylon.com.

Tom Hamm

Grew up in New Castle and recently retired after serving as Professor of History after 36 years at Earlham College. He is currently serving as Quaker Scholar in Residence. Tom has written five books on Quaker History and has edited a collection of Quaker writings published by Penguin Classics. He served for 14 years on the Pendle Hill board and is a member of the New Association of Friends.

Paul Sniegowski

Paul Sniegowski became the 21st president of Earlham College and Earlham School of Religion on August 5, 2024. Paul is an Earlham parent (his son, Ben Kienitz Sniegowski graduated in 2023) and an Indiana native. Paul most recently served as the Stephen A. Levin Family Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and a professor of biology at the University of Pennsylvania.

became the 21^st president of Earlham College and Earlham School of Religion on August 5, 2024.
Prior to Earlham, Sniegowski served as the Stephen A. Levin Family Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and a professor of biology at the University of Pennsylvania.
As dean of the College since 2017, Sniegowski was responsible for the direction of Penn’s liberal arts undergraduate curricula, programs and students in academic departments and interdisciplinary programs across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Sniegowski worked closely with faculty and students in the College and across the University in adapting the College’s teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic, establishing consultative faculty committees to plan for online teaching and steering the College’s return to in-person instruction after the pandemic. Under his leadership, the College launched new minors in Environmental Humanities and Data Science and has initiated a review of its longstanding General Education requirement.
Sniegowski has been an advocate for First-Generation, Low-Income (FGLI) students, participating in the establishment of the Penn First Plus Office and launching the FGLI DAB student advisory board in 2018 to provide a voice for FGLI students in the College and complement the ongoing work of DAB, the longstanding dean’s advisory board. In addition, he has played a key role in Penn’s five-year grant to support inclusive teaching in the sciences through the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Inclusive Excellence 3 program, serving as Project Director in the first year of the grant.
Sniegowski’s scientific work focuses on evolutionary and population genetic theory as a framework for understanding genetic mutation rates and mutational phenomena. His research has been supported by the Sloan Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and NASA; he is a co-author on nearly 70 peer-reviewed papers, has mentored dozens of graduate, undergraduate, and high school students, and is an award-winning teacher. Throughout his career, Sniegowski has also maintained an active commitment to outreach and regularly engages with public audiences to promote better understanding of science. He is currently writing a book, Persistence of Error: A Natural History of Mutation, explaining genetic mutation for non-scientists.
An Indiana native, he received his bachelor’s in music from the Indiana University School of Music; an M.A. in biology from Indiana University, Bloomington; and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He joined Penn’s Department of Biology in 1997 after a postdoctoral fellowship at Michigan State University.
Paul and his spouse and partner, Gail Kienitz, are the parents of Ben Kienitz Sniegowski ’23. Their daughter, Emma Kienitz Sniegowski, is a 2018 graduate of Kenyon College. Paul and Gail — along with their Golden Retriever, Willa — live on campus in the President’s House.

Pam Kuhn

Pam Kuhn started her Quaker life at Germantown Meeting in Philadelphia when she was two years old. She spent her youth surrounded by Friends while attending Germantown Friends School (K-12) and Swarthmore College. As an adult she moved to the Chicago suburbs and was a stay-at-home mother for two boys. She is a member of Lake Forest (IL) Friends Meeting, part of Illinois Yearly Meeting, and has spent much of her free time serving both. In 2019, she completed an MA degree at Earlham School of Religion, specializing in nineteenth century Hicksite Friends. Steve Angell once said of her, “If you want to see Pam Kuhn come alive, ask her about her monthly or yearly meeting.”

Pam and her husband, David, are currently dividing their time between western North Carolina and northeastern Illinois. Their younger son is an Earlham College alumnus.

Emma Condori Mamani

Born into an indigenous Aymara family in the highlands of Bolivia, Emma Condori Mamani witnessed her parents and siblings become convinced Friends until she too became convinced at age 14 while working in La Paz. A member of Santidad Amigos (Holiness Friends) Yearly Meeting, she has been particularly involved in education, Friends’ religious education, and evangelical work. Emma is a 2013 Graduate of the Earlham School of Religion. She frequently travels in ministry around the world and is currently the director of the Friends International Bilingual Center in La Paz, Bolivia.

John Muhanji

John Muhanji is FUM’s African Ministries Director, working from the Africa Ministries Office in Kisumu, Kenya. He oversees member relationships, mission mobilization, fundraising initiatives, and policies and works to shepherd the overall vision of Africa Ministries. John also represents FUM on the board of Friends Theological College. He holds a Doctor of Ministry degree from George Fox University and a Master of Divinity from the Earlham School of Religion. John is also a farmer of corn, beans, chickens, turkeys, and Guinea fowl. He organizes annual sporting activities in his home community for the youth.

Eric Mayer

Eric Mayer is currently the head of Lansdowne Friends school in Pennsylvania. Eric grew up in Baltimore Yearly Meeting and he is a 1994 graduate of the Earlham School of Religion. In 2022, he completed a nine years as Head of School at St. Stephen’s School in Rome, Italy. Prior to St. Stephens, Eric served Westtown School for 20 years as a teacher, chair of the Religion Department, and Upper School Head. A former Westtown colleague remembers him as a beloved teacher and a leader who brought respect, deep listening, and “design thinking” to his collaboration with other educators.

Alicia McBride

Alicia McBride spent more than a decade leading the communications team at the Friends Committee on National Legislation before taking on her current role as the director for integrated strategy and impact. In that capacity, she works across the organization to improve cross-team strategy and FCNL’s facility in assessing and communicating about its effectiveness. She is a member of Sandy Spring Monthly Meeting, where she has served on committees related to family engagement and religious education, most recently as clerk of the Marriage and Family Relations Committee. She lives in Takoma Park, Maryland, with her husband Sam Garman, and children Miranda and Howard. In addition to the ESR Board of Advisers, she serves on the board of Friends Community School in College Park, Maryland. She enjoys reading, cooking, doing crossword puzzles and making systems work better.

Diane Randall

Diane Randall served as the General Secretary of the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) from 2011-2021. Diane is a convinced Friend, and a member of Hartford Monthly Meeting, New England Yearly Meeting. Diane graduated from the University of Nebraska with a B.S in Education. Diane began her career as a high school English teacher and started working for peace in 1983 as the executive director of the Omaha Nuclear Freeze Campaign. Diane relocated to Connecticut in 1986 where she directed the state Network to Abolish the Death Penalty and worked for the Office of Urban Affairs of the Archdiocese of Hartford, launching a 20-year career lobbying the state legislature. During that time, she became the first executive director of the Connecticut AIDS Residence Coalition.

Marty Smith

Because of her experience as a counselor in a Quaker Camp in Indiana, Marty Smith became a Quaker as a teenager. After marriage and completing college, the Smiths joined the Peace Corps in Kenya. Back home in Ohio, she finished her master’s at Ohio State and then moved with her family to New Jersey to teach Middle School math and science at Moorestown Friends School. In 1985 the Smiths joined Moorestown Meeting, where Marty twice clerked the Meeting, taught FDS, led high school youth, facilitated Quaker parenting classes, and clerked Religious Education and Pastoral Care committees. In her professional life, Marty was a classroom teacher, teacher educator and religious educator. Following retirement in 2012, the Smiths became sojourning members of Honolulu Friends where they were resident Friends. There Marty was clerk of the RE Committee, taught Quaker parenting, and helped create a Child abuse prevention policy. Recently Marty was a traveling minister for FWCC in Arizona Half Yearly Meeting and Wilmington Yearly Meeting.

David Shiner

Friend, member of Evanston Meeting, Illinois Yearly Meeting, Friends General Conference. He started attending Lake Forest Friends Meeting in 1993 and joined in 1996. He was clerk of Lake Forest Friends and several times clerk of Illinois Yearly meeting. He became involved with Friends World Committee for Consultation in 2001. He served as clerk, Section of the Americas, 2019 to 2023 and is still serving on the Executive Committee. Academically: BA Temple University in Philosophy, PhD California Miramar University in Philosophy, Career: Professor of Philosophy at Shimer College (1977-2017), and volunteer work with underserved communities and individuals, 2000-present.

Jonathan Vogel-Borne

Jonathan Vogel-Borne is a lifelong Friend raised in Orange Grove Meeting, Pacific Yearly Meeting. Traveling widely across the full Quaker spectrum, from evangelical to liberal, Jonathan’s ministry is to seek deeper unity and a clarity of vision and witness among us. He and his spouse, Minga Claggett-Borne served as resident friends of Cambridge Monthly Meeting from 1985-1990. Jonathan was the lead staff person at New England Yearly Meeting from 1991 to 2013. He currently is serving as co-clerk of the Friends Peace Teams.

Scott Wagoner

Scott Wagoner serves as the pastoral minister at Deep River Friends Meeting in High Point, North Carolina (North Carolina Fellowship of Friends). He is presently in his 19th year and has served in pastoral ministry for over 35 years. He also serves on the Board for Friends United Meeting and is certified through the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation in leading contemplative groups and retreats. Scott is also the principal and Founder of Growing Edge Resources, an organization that provides coaching/consulting services as well as contemplative retreat experiences. Scott is a 1990 graduate of ESR.

David Zier

David is originally from Maryland outside Washington D.C. He was raised with a Jewish mother and Lutheran father, but neither were particularly religious. David started attending a Southern Baptist church as a teenager and then, at the age of 18, started attending Metropolitan Community Church. He met his life partner and husband, Jeff Miner, at church in Rockville, Maryland. They were married in 1990, then legally in 2013 in Maryland.

David and Jeff moved to Indianapolis in 1997, as Jeff (then a lawyer) was called to pastor Jesus MCC (Metropolitan Community Churches), now LifeJourney Church. David was a medical engineer for 25 years, working at the FDA, Quintiles Transnational, and for Eli Lilly. In the latter years of his career as a medical engineer, David finally responded to his call after many years of ignoring it, and attended seminary at ESR in 2007, graduating in 2010, while working at Quintiles Transnational.

David completed an internship at West Richmond Friends in 2010 and was ordained in Metropolitan Community Churches in 2011. David also completed a spiritual direction internship at a monastery in Beech Grove, Indiana. David was a full time pastor at LifeJourney Church from 2011 until 2015 and still serves as a part-time pastor there. David also serves as an MCC network leader for the Central US Eastern Churches, and network facilitator (Leading other Network Leaders) for the Canada, Northeast, North Central and Eastern Networks within MCC. In order to maintain health care costs for him and his spouse, David returned to engineering work as an environmental engineer with the State of Indiana in 2015.

Leadership and governance

President of Earlham College

Board of Trustees

Dean of ESR