Writer Bios

We couldn't offer The Well to our readers without the generous contributions of our writers. Read through their bios to learn from their stories and click through for links to the articles they have written. If you are interested in writing for The Well, explore our Writer's Guidelines.

Joanna Meyer is Executive Director of Women, Work, and Calling, a national initiative at the Denver Institute for Faith and Work that equips Christian women for godly influence in public life. Prior to joining the Institute, she worked in global telecom, nonprofit consulting, and campus ministry with Cru. Joanna served as associate faculty at Denver Seminary and completed a certificate in Women in Leadership through Cornell University. She contributed to Women and Work and has written for Faith Driven Entrepreneur and various Denver Institute publications. She lives in Aurora, Colorado where she enjoys, among other things, the rich variety of foods and cultures from around the world.

See other contributions by this author

Jen Pollock Michel

Jen Pollock Michel is the award-winning author of Teach Us to Want and Keeping Place. She writes widely for print and digital publications and travels to speak at churches, conferences, and retreats. Jen holds a BA in French from Wheaton College and an MA in Literature from Northwestern University. She is married to Ryan, and they have five school-age children. Their family attends Grace Toronto Church (Canada). You can follow Jen on Twitter @jenpmichel.

See other contributions by this author

Grace Ju Miller

Grace Ju Miller is a Professor of Biology at Indiana Wesleyan University (IWU). She has been at IWU for seven years. Before moving to Indiana, Grace and her family lived in Morocco where she taught at an orphanage for two years. Grace was the Seed Bank Director at ECHO (Agricultural Missions Agency) in Fort Myers, FL) for four years, taught at Gordon College for eleven years, and has led a travel course — “Sustainable Tropical Agriculture” — in Guatemala, Honduras, and Haiti for 15 years. She has a BA in Art and Botany from Duke University (including two years studying Chinese brush painting in Taiwan), MS in Agronomy from UC Davis, and PhD from Purdue University. She was recently elected as the IWU College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Chair by her peers.

See other contributions by this author

Sharon Hodde Miller

Sharon Hodde Miller leads Bright City Church in Durham, North Carolina with her husband, Ike. She is the author of Free of Me: Why Life is Better When It's Not about You, and Nice: Why We Love to Be Liked And How God Calls Us to More. She also has a PhD from Trinity Evangelical Seminary, where she researched women and calling. In addition to writing and speaking, she is a mom to three young, very loud, and very fun children. You can find out more about Sharon, her writing, or her church at SheWorships.com or on Instagram.

See other contributions by this author

Margarita Mooney

Margarita Mooney is an assistant professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Faculty Fellow in the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina. She received her MA and PhD in Sociology from Princeton University and her BA in Psychology from Yale University. Her areas of interest include religion, immigration, theory, culture, and economic sociology.

See other contributions by this author

Kindra Morelock

Kindra Morelock is a wife and a mother of three. She is studying Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana with a concentration in Data Curation. She enjoys baking, reading, spending time with her family, watching British TV, and cheering on the Detroit Tigers. She lives in Chicago.

See other contributions by this author

MaryKate Morse is a professor of leadership and spiritual formation at George Fox University Seminary. She holds the BS degree from Longwood University; MA and MDiv degrees from Western Evangelical Seminary (now George Fox Evangelical Seminary); and PhD in Leadership, Gonzaga University. A recorded Quaker minister and a trained spiritual director, Morse has expertise and research interests in healthy spiritual leadership, leadership development and formation, deep change processes in individuals and in groups, power and influence, team and gender issues, spiritual direction, and prayer. She was a keynote speaker at InterVarsity’s Following Christ 2008 conference. She is married and has three adult children and two grandchildren. She loves being with her friends and family, reading, and meeting new people in new places.

See other contributions by this author

Deborah Risa Mrantz

Deborah Risa Mrantz is Founder and principal creative of LOGOS DIVINITY GUILDWORKS and MINISTRIES. LOGOS DIVINITY GUILDWORKS is a faith-based artists guild and Abrahamic interfaith initiative bringing together new models of theology, worship, arts-ministry and pastoral chaplaincy in combined creative enterprise. Deborah’s calling has evolved over thirty years from beginnings in music and fine art apprenticeships to Jewish ecclesiastical work in sculpture, culminating in artistic work within publishing, printing, and multi-sensory digital design. She is an incoming MDIV seminarian at Pacific School of Religion, where her journey into seminary has re-formed these long-held arts vocations within a life of God’s Word and pastoral ministry. Through LOGOSdivinity she fashions liturgical artwork for individual and community religious spaces, monasteries and faith-based retreat-centers, churches and synagogues.

See other contributions by this author

Shirley A. Mullen

Shirley A. Mullen (PhD, University of Wales; PhD, University of Minnesota) served as president of Houghton College for fifteen years before retiring in 2021. She spent four decades in the work of faith-based liberal arts education as a professor, residence life director, chief academic officer, and president. As president emerita for Houghton University, Mullen continues to speak, write, and consult as part of her ongoing commitment to encourage and invest in the next generation of leaders through mentoring and serving on the boards of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, Jericho Road Community Health Center, the National Association of Evangelicals, Fuller Theological Seminary, and the 1st Amendment Partnership.

See other contributions by this author

Jerusha Matsen Neal

Rev. Dr. Jerusha Matsen Neal, Assistant Professor of Homiletics at Duke Divinity School, is an ordained ABC(USA) pastor who has served as a Global Ministries mission partner in the Fiji Islands through the United Methodist Church. Her first book, The Overshadowed Preacher: Mary, the Spirit, and the Labor of Proclamation, challenges preachers to leave behind false shadows of approval to embrace the overshadowing Spirit of God. Her most recent book, Holy Ground: Climate Change, Preaching, and the Apocalypse of Place, engages the climate crisis through the sermons of South Pacific communities displaced by rising tides. A former actress and playwright, she has also authored a collection of dramatic monologues, Blessed: Monologues for Mary (Cascade, 2012).

See other contributions by this author

Jean Neely, PhD, teaches in the writing program at Azusa Pacific University. She and her family love hanging out at their friendly neighborhood coffeehouse to read, write, and wonder.

See other contributions by this author

Marilyn Nelson is the author or translator of more than 20 books and chapbooks for adults and children. Her critically acclaimed books for young adults include A Wreath for Emmett Till and the ground breaking Carver: A Life in Poems, a Newbery Honor Book. Of Marilyn’s nine poetry collections for adults, The Homeplace won the 1992 Annisfield-Wolf Award; and The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems received the 1998 Poets’ Prize, the PEN Winship Award, and the Lenore Marshall Prize. A three-time finalist for the National Book Award, her many honors include the Frost Medal, the Poetry Society of America’s award for “distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry,” and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. A professor emerita of English at the University of Connecticut, she served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, and was Poet Laureate of Connecticut, 2001– 2006.

See other contributions by this author

Julie Newberry is Assistant Professor of New Testament at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. Her research focuses on Luke-Acts, joy, the intersection of intertextuality and embodiment in the New Testament, and the reception of the New Testament in English literature. Julie completed her doctoral studies at Duke in the spring of 2020, having written a dissertation about the conditions that lead to joy in Luke's Gospel. She attends Church of the Savior (ACNA) in Wheaton (via Zoom), even as she remains connected (also by Zoom) to Blacknall Presbyterian Church (PCUSA), her longtime church home in Durham, North Carolina. Julie has two dogs and enjoys very strong coffee, peanut butter, and sunshine.

See other contributions by this author

Quyen Ngo-Metzger

Dr. Quyen Ngo-Metzger, a Professor in the Health Systems Science Department at the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine. She teaches and mentors students and junior faculty in prevention, population health, health disparities, and evidence-based medicine.

See other contributions by this author

Renee Nicholas MA, RN, serves as the National Director for Graduate Healthcare Ministries with InterVarsity. She previously worked as an intensive care nurse in New Mexico and for 13 years as a clinic nurse at Lawndale Christian Health Center in Chicago. She loves being able to walk alongside healthcare students as they seek to follow Jesus with their whole lives. Renee lives in Chicago with her husband and two young boys and you can often find them playing at parks around the city.

See other contributions by this author

Amber Noel, M.Div., has been a teacher, blogger, beekeeper, librarian, and director’s assistant to an international arts initiative. She is currently a happily employed youth minister, and just moved to the wilds of urban Texas from Durham, North Carolina. She tends to spend her free time with animals, odd people, good writing, good food, good jokes, and people who laugh at those jokes. She does excellent impersonations and wishes she could make her money by reading aloud.

See other contributions by this author

Kate Norlander is an assistant director of communication services at a private university in Minnesota. In addition to assisting academic departments and programs with their external communications, Kate edits one of the university’s magazines and writes for many of the magazines and newsletters published by her employer. She and her husband live with their teenage daughter and a small black dog named Vader. In her spare time, she teaches Sunday school, hosts anti-slavery chocolate parties, and attends science fiction and fantasy conventions.

See other contributions by this author

Jamie Noyd, PhD, \serves InterVarsity Christian Fellowship as an Associate Director on the Faculty Ministry team serving as interim Director of the Emerging Scholars Network, directing pilgrimage experiences, and supporting other work that invites faculty to follow Jesus together. After earning a BA in Economics and working as an economic analyst, she returned to campus and earned an MA in English. Following a stint as a strategic planner at a zoo, and while serving as a program director for an AmeriCorps program, she completed doctoral research in literature and religion, exploring the idea of literary pilgrimage. Whether through InterVarsity or in other venues, she invites people to walk the path of story.

See other contributions by this author

Angie Crea O'Neal

Angie Crea O’Neal is Assistant Professor of English at Shorter University in Rome, Georgia, specializing in eighteenth and nineteenth century British literature. She teaches writing and all facets of British literature, but her favorite literary subjects are the Romantic poets and Jane Austen. Angie received her PhD from Arizona State University in 2007. She lives with her girls, Marin and Maeve, and her aging dog, Lucy.

See other contributions by this author

Laura Schmitt Olabisi

Dr. Laura Schmitt Olabisi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Community Sustainability and the Environmental Science and Policy Program at Michigan State University. She is a participatory systems modeler and works directly with stakeholders to build models that foster adaptive learning about the dynamics of coupled human-natural systems, and to integrate stakeholder knowledge with academic knowledge. Laura holds a doctoral degree in Systems Ecology from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, and a B.Sc. in Environmental Science from Brown University. A native of Ann Arbor, Michigan, she now lives in East Lansing, Michigan with her husband (an economist) and their six-year-old son.

See other contributions by this author

Pages