Advisory Board
The Advisory Board provides expertise and advice to the Coming to the Table program. The members provide advice on the overall structure as it relates to the program’s goals. They also identify approaches to long-term sustainability and facilitate connections with related organizations. The Advisory Board Members are listed below.
Prinny Anderson wants to help herself and other European Americans actively contribute to healing the legacy of slavery, racism and white privilege. She is the several-great-niece of an enslaved woman and several-great-granddaughter of the man who owned her. Anderson’s journey so far has included holding a historic gathering of all the descendants of her ancestors’ plantation community, participating in the activities of Coming to the Table and reading, reflecting and dialoguing. She is a coach, educator and consultant. A significant amount of her work is with micro-finance institutions in the developing world.
Thomas DeWolf is the author of Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History. He is a public speaker who focuses on healing the collective trauma of slavery’s legacy. DeWolf has appeared at colleges, universities, and conferences throughout the United States, as well as at the National Constitution Center and the Smithsonian Institution. He is a graduate of the STAR program and participates in the Summer Peacebuilding Institute at EMU.
Lynn Roth is the executive director for the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at EMU. Roth previously served as director of Mennonite Central Committee East Coast. From 1985 to 1989 he was co-director of the Mennonite Ministries program in Botswana, Southern Africa. Roth has worked on anti-racism initiatives in various institutions throughout his career.
Leroy Clemons is a founder of the Philadelphia Coalition, a multiracial group of concerned citizens that formed around a call for justice in the case of three civil rights workers—James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael “Mickey” Schwerner—who were murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi, in 1964. He has also worked extensively with the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi.
Tali Hairston is the Director the John Perkins Center for Reconciliation, Leadership Training, and Community Development at Seattle Pacific University. He is a bridge-builder, scholar-practitioner, speaker, and adviser. Tali contributes to strategic organizational partnerships and community-based programming for a variety of Christian ministries and is committed to advancing the message and ministry of reconciliation and community development.
