Introducing Re/Generation 2020 Part 2

On this Easter Monday, I write to introduce seven more members of the 2020 Re/Generation cohort. These young people have all been most recently based in New York City or the Bay Area. Their skills and passions encompass all three of our National Campaign strategies (education, lobbying, and direction action).

As artists, organizers, scholars, pastoral caregivers, and more, these young adults are already using their gifts to transform the church. Call To Action is thrilled that they will be joining us on this journey over the next year.

Welcome to Re/Generation 2020, Erin, Nichole, Tess, Alex, Jacob, Benjamin, and Kasey!

Erin Burns

Erin Burns (she/her) is an artist and writer who comes from a long, guilt-ridden line of Italian and Irish Catholics. Through Re/Generation, she hopes to explore how Church can center and amplify the voices of marginalized communities.

Erin has spent her career in nonprofit communications, pushing institutions—from local governments to higher education to public health care—to become more equitable and inclusive. For three years, Erin worked at a progressive, LGBTQ+-affirming divinity school, Pacific School of Religion. There, she witnessed the intersection of faith and activism on a daily basis.

Recently, Erin has represented Catholic social teachings in her art, illustrating saints in modern contexts. Originally from Jacksonville, Florida, she currently lives in San Francisco.

Nichole Carrubba

Nichole is a Florida native who identifies as an LGBTQ Catholic. She managed to fuse these two parts of her identity while studying at the Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley, California. During her studies, she was excited by the intersections between spirituality, science, and ethics. Her fondness for spirituality led her to various parts of the world, including South Korea, Italy, Louisiana, and California, while serving as an educator for diverse populations. Throughout her teaching career, Nichole supported the inclusion of LGBTQ youth to ensure they know that their dignity matters.

For many years of her adolescence and adulthood, Nichole felt drawn to the community life, prayer, and service of religious orders. She aspires to transform her love for religious life in creative ways by building bridges between the Church and marginalized communities, especially LGBTQ, women, and the Earth through the power of storytelling.

Tess Gallagher Clancy

Tess was born and raised, and developed many of her perspectives in western Montana on the unceded lands of Salish, Kootenai, and Kalispel peoples. She spends a lot of time thinking about her Irish-American, settler family’s relationship to place and space in the American West. Having dabbled in environmental and labor organizing, she has spent the past year working on an MDiv, studying theology and social ethics and Union Theological Seminary. She looks to build alignment and comradery with those who also seek beloved community against empire and toward liberation, particularly focused on what justice and equity look like in organizing work.

Alex Gaynor

Alex is a New Jersey native living in New York City working in homeless outreach services. She has roots in the Jesuit tradition through her time at Boston College where she was formed by Ignatian spirituality. This passion brought her to study abroad with the Casa Bayanihan program in the Philippines where she spent time accompanying marginalized communities in Manila. This passion for a faith that does justice led her to serve in Sacramento, CA as a Jesuit Volunteer where she worked in homeless services and later to a year as a campus minister at St. Joseph’s University. She spent time living at the NYC Catholic Worker and is a regular at a lay house church community. Through these experiences, Alex has become passionate about working collectively to undo unjust structures and practices of the Catholic church and is excited to work with Re/Generation! Living in New York, she is energized by community, parks, running, Mary Oliver poetry, journaling, and empowering others.

Jacob Gonzalez

Jacob comes from Phoenix, Arizona. He grew up in a multigenerational household, living with his grandparents—immigrants from the free and sovereign state of Chihuahua, Mexico—his mother and father, three younger brothers, and a pack of puppies (chihuahuas!).

Jacob’s grandparents raised him in the kind of church they'd been raised in: traditionalist, Latin Mass saying. This experience formed him spiritually and intellectually. For example, he prays the Latin rosary daily. And as an undergraduate at Stanford University, he studied classics, broadening his very Rome-oriented education with work in gender theory.

Jacob has worked as a public school teacher and an electoral politics organizer in Phoenix, and as a pastoral minister and hospital chaplain in New York City, where he studies Anglicanism and Christian ethics as a Master of Divinity candidate at Union Theological Seminary. Jacob lives with his partner of seven years, with whom it is Jacob’s privilege to be quarantining.

Benjamin Mead

Benjamin is a New Englander turned New Yorker. His journey with Catholicism is tied to his love of music and music ministry, which continues to form and inform his faith. He considers Henri Nouwen, St. Francis de Sales, and St. Catherine of Siena as some of his models of faith. Currently working in college campus ministry in the New York area, Benjamin is in his sixth year working in higher education. Benjamin received his MTS degree from Boston University School of Theology, and his spiritual direction certification from Fordham University. You can read more about Benjamin and his practice at https://www.sdwithb.com/.

Kasey Sinha

Kasey Sinha is a palliative care social worker and is committed transforming the Catholic Church to reflect the inclusive love that Jesus embodied. When Kasey was a little girl, she dreamed of becoming a priest (she also considered being an astronaut, nun, field goal kicker, and Broadway actor). She ended up receiving her BA in theater and psychology from Boston College, and her MSW from Fordham University. She is a leader of her parish's Young Adult Initiative, member of the local Young Adult Deanery Committee, and cantor and choir member at her parish. Kasey is honored to be a part of this year's Re/Generation cohort with her dear friend, Benjamin Mead.