Speakers

Stay tuned for announcements about our conference all through November!

Brent Anderson is a mission integration leader, spiritual director, contemplative retreat facilitator, and former hospital chaplain. His work has been shaped by an enduring interest in the relationship between Franciscan spirituality, dialogue, peacebuilding, and justice. Drawing upon various philosophies of dialogue and his experience chairing a hospital ethics committee, he helped develop Franciscan Dialogue as a contemplative approach to engaging the divisions and polarization of our time. He has facilitated workshops and formation experiences on bioethics, human trafficking response, the art of reflection, resilience, and leadership for educators, physicians, nurses, and healthcare administrators.

He has also collaborated with resilience researchers to develop workshops for healthcare professionals and contributed to the formation of chaplains and spiritual directors through mentorship, education, and retreat ministry. This work included a three-month Contemplative Chaplaincy formation series for spiritual care professionals.

His writing includes “Tending Movements of Healing in Spiritual Direction,” published in Presence: An International Journal of Spiritual Direction, as well as several articles for Franciscan Media. He served as co-principal investigator for the John Templeton Foundation-sponsored research project Tending the Soul, Transforming Healthcare and as volunteer faculty with the University at Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

Earlier in his career, Brent worked in nonprofit consulting and served as an intercultural Fulbright Scholar in Uganda, where he contributed to efforts to expand HIV testing, access to AIDS medication, and safe water in rural villages. He is also a co-founder of Sowing Solidarity, a nonprofit sustainable urban farm in Sacramento, California, inspired by the conviction that “care for the earth and care for the most vulnerable are one.”

Brent holds an M.Div. from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. He lives in Western New York with his wife and three children, where he serves as Chief Charism & Mission Officer for the Felician Sisters of North America. He also continues to support the work of Cultivating Unity through service on its board and its ongoing Franciscan Dialogue efforts.