ABOUT THE FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR

Ruby Nell Sales is a highly trained, experienced, and deeply committed social activist, scholar, administrator, manager, and educator in the areas of Civil, Gender, and other Human Rights. She is an excellent public speaker with a proven track record in conflict resolution and consensus building. Ms. Sales has preached around the country on race, class, gender, and reconciliation, and she has done ground-breaking work on community and nonviolence formation. Ms. Sales also serves as a national convener of the Every Church A Peace Church Movement.

Ms. Sales has attended and earned degrees from Tuskegee Institute, Manhattanville College, and Princeton University. Most recently, in 1998, Ms. Sales received a Masters of Divinity from the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she specialized in Feminist, African-American, and Liberation Theologies, with an emphasis on race, class, and gender issues. She was the Absalom Jones Scholar at EDS, and she received the Social Justice Award upon graduation.

While in Divinity School, she served on a city-wide Ecumenical Task Force on Prison Reform, in Boston, Massachusetts; Steering Committee on Wheelock College's national conference, Race and Racism in the 90's: Teaching and Living Social Justice; and Brookline Race Relations Council and student representative to the Board of Trustees Committee.

As a social activist, Ms. Sales has served on many committees to further the work of reconciliation, education, and awareness. She has served on the Steering Committee for International Women's Day, Washington, D.C.; the James Porter Colloquium Committee, Howard University, Washington, D.C.; the Coordinating Committee, People's Coalition, Washington, D.C.; the President's Committee On Race, University of Maryland; and the Coalition on Violence Against Women, Amnesty International, Washington, D.C. She was a founding member of Sage Magazine: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women. Ms. Sales received a Certificate of Gratitude for her work on Eyes on the Prize. Additionally, she is part of the Veterans of Hope documentary series and was featured in Broken Ground: A Film on Race Relations in the South, by Broken Ground Productions. In 2000, Dan Rather spotlighted Ms. Sales on his American Dream Segment. In 1999, Selma, Alabama gave Ms. Sales the key to the city to honor her contributions there.

From 1991-1994, Ms. Sales also founded and directed the national nonprofit organization Women of All Colors, dedicated to improving the overall quality of life for women, their families, and the communities in which they live. Women of All Colors organized a week-long SisterSpeak that brought more than eighty Black women together to set a national agenda.

Throughout her career, Ms. Sales has mentored young people and provided support and venues for performing artists. Currently, Ms. Sales is the Director of SpiritHouse, which she also founded in 2000 for the purpose of building a just and non-violent world through the arts, spiritual reflection, and attention to public policy. SpiritHouse has emerged as cutting-edge and highly-respected national voice on peace and justice issues. SpiritHouse houses the Jonathan Daniels and Samuel Younge Institute for Justice, which trains a new generation of activists. During the summer of 2002, ten students of all colors participated In the Daniels and Younge Institute.

Ms. Sales lives and works in Washington, D.C.