Re/Generation 2021: Midwest
Call To Action is thrilled to announce our Re/Generation cohorts for 2021! In a series of posts, we are introducing the young adults who are joining our community through this program. Re/Generation gathers, supports, and mobilizes a growing community of young Catholic change-makers as they discern their particular vocations and lead the church toward healing and justice. Moving into our fourth programming year, we are introducing two cohorts under the Re/Generation umbrella. The POC Cohort is a cohort exclusively for people of color, while the Local Cohort provides dedicated support to people looking to build local progressive Catholic communities outside traditional parishes.
delfin bautista
POC Cohort
delfin is a queer and trans Latinx social worker and activist theologian. Originally from Miami, FL, they are of both Cuban and Salvadoran heritage. delfin's background is eclectic, including chaplaincy, trauma therapy, child welfare/services, queer and trans advocacy, diversity education, teaching, and faith-based activism. They participated in the 2019 Re/Generation cohort and currently serve on the Vision Council of CTA. delfin is passionate about eating, cooking, writing, queering the world, family, their dearly beloved, and exploring intersectional approaches to justice and liberation.
Callie Bruley
Local Cohort
Callie is an organizer who has been working on progressive advocacy and political campaigns for over a decade. Passionate about the training side of organizing, her focus has been to build programs that train a bench of progressive leaders and volunteers with the skills needed to be successful. Most recently, Callie was the Michigan Training Director for Senator Elizabeth Warren’s Presidential Campaign and Organizing Director for the Michigan House Democrats. Callie believes that while elections are not the sole piece of winning progressive change, they are a critical first step. Raised in a working class Catholic family, her faith and family inspire her to do this work, and she is looking forward to applying her skills to advocating for progressive change in the Church as well. In her free time, Callie likes taking care of her plants, hanging out in and around the Great Lakes, and plays the French Horn in her local community band.
Claire DesHotels
Local Cohort
Claire is a Master of Divinity student at Loyola University Chicago. She has worked in social justice ministry at a local parish and retreat center, and is active with CTA's Chicago Chapter. Prior to living in Chicago, Claire worked as a case manager in a Twin Cities shelter for families following a year of service with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Boston. A Minnesota native and lover of coffee and naps, Claire seeks to live a Catholic faith that embodies justice, healing, and Spirit. She finds wisdom in the feminine and believes in cultivating communities where all are seen, known, and beloved.
Julio Garcia
POC & Local Cohorts
Julio is a writer based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Julio hopes to use his words to tell stories about people that never get the chance to tell their stories. In his free time Julio enjoys reading, watching and analyzing film, brewing coffee, playing video games, exploring new things with his fiancée, as well as playing basketball.
Alejandra Hernandez Chavez
POC Cohort
Alejandra is a Mexican immigrant currently based in Minneapolis, MN. She has three years of experience working in faith-based community organizing at the local level in Minnesota and Nevada. Through this work, she learned more about the Catholic faith and its values in justice for all. It is her hope to see a more progressive, accepting Catholic church that acts on its teachings in her lifetime.
Tiffany Hunsinger
Local Cohort
Tiffany is a Midwesterner who grew up in rural eastern Indiana, where she learned about faith from various angles, including talking to the Buddhist monks that frequently stayed at her grandmother’s. She was confirmed in the Catholic faith in undergrad while working as a youth minister and studying for a Bachelors in Comparative Literature and History at Purdue. She is currently pursuing a PhD in theology at the University of Dayton, a Marianist university. When she has a chance, she enjoys reading for fun, spending as much time outside as possible, and spending time with friends. She is passionate about the environment, plants, and flowers. She has a heart for social justice and making space for everyone’s voice to be heard. Her favorite place is in a room full of people advocating for a more caring and inclusive world.
Jordan Kennedy
Local Cohort
Jordan graduated from the University of Michigan-Dearborn in 2019, where she was a student organizer around labor, Palestine, and LGBTQ+ issues. As a member of Students for Justice in Palestine, she worked alongside Palestinian students in educating the campus about the occupation, and she helped organize the first two Midwest SJP conferences. She is currently building a community center with other former organizers from UM-Dearborn. Dorothy Day inspires both her faith and organizing. Jordan plans to pursue a graduate degree in theology, and is working on a project about millennials, culture, and faith called A Generation Rooted. She grew up between Detroit and Dearborn, and now splits time between Detroit and Ann Arbor. She has also played the violin for over 15 years and is a member of the Gaelic League Irish American Club, a social organization in Detroit founded 100 years ago to preserve Irish language, history and culture.
Sadie Kirschenman
Local Cohort
Sadie is originally from Omaha, Nebraska where she attended Catholic schooling Pre-K through 12th grade. She now lives in West Branch, Iowa with her partner Dani and cat Shiloh. She graduated college last May and now works as an AmeriCorps service member with an organization that helps students succeed in school. In her free time she likes to dance and go for walks.
Jessica Nickrand
Local Cohort
Jessica (she/her) is excited to join the Local Cohort of Re/Generation from St. Paul, Minnesota, although her roots are from the Downriver area of Detroit, Michigan. She is looking forward to building community among other Catholics who are interested in building radically inclusive systems that seek to end racial inequalities in healthcare, education, and housing. Jessica has a PhD in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine from the University of Minnesota, and currently works as a patient advocate for children and young adults with special healthcare needs and their families at a national nonprofit. She loves hanging out with her eight niblings, swimming, hikes through state parks, and was a big Dolly Parton fan before it was cool to be, but she welcomes everyone onto that gorgeous and glam bandwagon.
Min Park
POC & Local Cohorts
Min is a labor economist based in Chicago. She is a member of Affirmed Chicago and QTPOC Spiritualities at the University of Chicago. She joins the 2021 Re/Gen cohort hoping to learn more about creating and nurturing just communities and work environments.
NJ Phillips
Local Cohort
NJ is an occupational therapist from the metro-Detroit area. She is a disability advocate with a focus on education around ableism and cultivating inclusivity.
Allison Reed
POC & Local Cohorts
Allison is an advanced-year PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on how social justice communities enact care, healing, and accessibility. Her research and teaching interests include Gender and Sexuality, Neurodiversity/Mental Health, Social Movements, and Race Studies. She also started U Chicago’s Queer and Trans People of Color (QTPOC) Spiritualities group, creating a safe/safer space for LGBTQIA+ people of color across faiths to explore spirituality, religion, and ethics together. She looks forward to thinking about how to help BIPOC, especial QTBIPOC, recover from adverse religious experiences and reclaim/remix the richness of Catholic spirituality, especially traditions of monasticism, mysticism, and contemplative life. She is fundamentally interested in the wellbeing and flourishing of marginalized people, on both a bodymind and spiritual level. She is a St. Louis native.
Aireale Joi Rodgers
POC Cohort
Aireale is a PhD Candidate in the urban education policy program at the University of Southern California. She is fundamentally interested in developing practices that disrupt and reshape historical inequities towards justice for historically minoritized students pursuing higher education. Her research seeks to empower faculty to transform postsecondary institutions to better serve Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. She brings this commitment to her church home, the Sheil Catholic Center at Northwestern University, where she routinely hosts workshops on anti-racism and anti-blackness. Her goal is to help expose and eradicate the pervasive fallacy of white supremacy and how it functions within the Church. When not thinking about equity and justice in higher education, Aireale is volunteering at her church, FaceTiming with her three year-old goddaughter, Michaela, or scouring books by fantastic women of color, like bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and Gloria Anzaldúa, for inspiration.
Maria Alejandra Salazar
POC & Local Cohorts
Maria Alejandra is a budding artist, writing at the intersection of faith, social justice, and ancestral connection. A 1.5-generation, formerly undocumented immigrant from Peru, she was raised Roman Catholic and is in the process of discerning her own place as a spiritual misfit.
Her professional background is in community organizing, advocacy, and direct social service focusing on immigrant communities. She earned her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and a Master of Divinity at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, where her capstone project focused on community organizers and burn out. Maria Alejandra is passionate about theologies that center lived experience as sites of liberation and transformative healing. She lives in Chicago with her partner and plantitas.
Kascha Sanor
Local Cohort
Kascha is grateful to be back with Re/Gen for a second year (with the same team!). She is newly serving as Pastoral Ministry Assistant at a parish in Chicago, and roots her Catholic faith in relationships of sacred resistance and prophetic disobedience. Currently, Kascha is a full time graduate student working towards her Masters of Divinity and Social Justice dual degree at Loyola University, a local facilitator for Nuns & Nones Chicago, a member of CTA Chicago, a co-creator of Alternative Liturgies, and a faith-based organizer for 46th Ward Neighbors Against Police Violence. Previously, she served as a hospice chaplain, and was wholly formed by a year with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps at The Center in Hollywood. Kascha is sustained by red wine, the Catholic Worker movement, and Mary Oliver.
Mac Svolos
Local Cohort
Mac is a writer and lay minister. He is a white, queer trans man who is interested in the relationships between faith, gender, sex, and power. You can read some of his work at New Ways Ministry. He lives in Chicago.
Sarah Tarkany
Local Cohort
Born in Charleston, SC, Sarah holds an MFA in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago and joint MAs from Loyola University in Theology and Women’s Studies/Gender Studies. She currently teaches undergraduate writing and Women’s Studies/Gender Studies around Chicago. Her research interests include queer theologies and theopoetics, feminist/queer pedagogies, and baking the perfect pie. Her poetry appears in Columbia Poetry Review, Court Green, and |tap| lit, which nominated her for Best of the Net in 2017. Sarah lives in Chicago with artist Jacob Victorine and two best cats.
Brian Wigman
POC & Local Cohorts
Brian is a Detroit-based musician, educator, writer, and advocate. As a lifelong Catholic, Brian’s interests and ministries include lectoring, cantoring, preaching, and young adult ministry. Born in Busan, South Korea, Brian embraces his dual role as an Asian-American adoptee and a Scottish-Irish singer and speaker. Having lived his whole life with cerebral palsy, Brian believes in breaking down barriers; spiritual, physical, and emotional. Brian comes to Call To Action with an eye toward a more inclusive and equitable Church, acknowledging tradition while challenging misconceptions and prejudice. With love and trust in the Spirit, Brian pledges to be not only a voice for those unheard, but also to recognize when it is time to listen. Outside of CTA, Brian is a recognized speaker on disability and mental health, and a local music critic.
