Speaker Descriptions

Keynote Speaker

Lovett H. Weems Jr.
Dr. Lovett H. Weems, Jr., is Distinguished Professor of Church Leadership and Director of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC. He came to this position in 2003 after eighteen years as president of Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri. Previously he was a United Methodist pastor in Mississippi for many years.

Dr. Weems recently authored a report on clergy age trends in the United Methodist Church in cooperation with the General Board of Pension and Health Benefits of the United Methodist Church. The report also compares current clergy ages across several denominations.

Gloria Borger
Exclusively Represented by the Washington Speakers Bureau

Gloria is the National Political Correspondent for CBS News; the political columnist for U.S. News and World Report, penning the biweekly “On Politics” column; and a regular panelist on PBS’ Washington Week.  Before accepting the co-anchor job on CNBC’s Capital Report, with Alan Murray, former Washington bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal, Borger was a special correspondent with CBS News and appeared weekly as a panelist on CBS’s Face the Nation.

Gloria started her magazine career as a newsmagazine analyst at the Washington bureau of Newsweek, where she began as a general assignment reporter covering a variety of stories ranging from the Three-Mile Island nuclear accident to presidential campaigns.  Politics soon became her beat, and she was named Newsweek’s chief congressional correspondent, the title she held before moving to U.S. News and World Report.

Borger first entered journalism as a reporter at the now-defunct Washington Star where she won a series of Front Page awards.  While there, she also co-authored “Federal Triangle,” a spoof about political life in Washington.

Gloria is a 1974 graduate of Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, where she has served on the board of trustees.  She was also the recipient of an IBM sponsored Watson Traveling Fellowship to study the British press.  Borger lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband Lance Morgan, and their two sons.

9/06

Devotional Speakers

Arthur Cribbs
Arthur Cribbs is pastor of Christian Fellowship Congregational Church of San Diego, United Church of Christ. He is the former president of the San Diego County Ecumenical Council; former president of Pacific Media Ministry, a faith-based television production company in San Diego; former executive director of the United Church of Christ Office of Communications. He has an extensive background in broadcast journalism, having worked in Los Angeles, Reno, Seattle, San Francisco, Jackson, MS; Chicago, New York, Cleveland, OH; and, San Diego. He has written two plays, including "Awaiting Judgment," that brings together Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King, Jr. in a prison cell where they discuss their lives, decisions, and commitments to faith. Arthur earned his BA in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Master of Divinity degree from the Chicago Theological Seminary. He is married to the former Kana Koide. They have four children and one grandchild.

Rabbi Laurie Coskey, Ed.D.
Rabbi Laurie Coskey, completed her undergraduate studies at Stanford University and was ordained as a Rabbi in 1985. After serving a large San Diego Congregation for eight years as Rabbi, she completed her doctorate in Leadership Studies from the University of San Diego in 2000. Her twenty year career in the rabbinate has been marked by a commitment to issues of social justice.  Since 2001, Rabbi Coskey has served as the director of the Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice. The ICWJ facilitates the partnership between the religious community and the labor movement to create a more just, fair and compassionate workplace for all workers.

Lunch Speaker

Scott Sheperd, PhD
Dr. Sheperd has a B.A. in Music from the University of Toledo, a Master’s Degree in Mass Communication from Bowling Green State University and a Master’s and Doctorate in Counseling from the University of Toledo. Scott has over 30 years experience working with people in difficult situations ranging from high pressure jobs to terminal illnesses. He created a six part series for Public Television called "Who's In Charge?" He has had six books published and has spoken to over 100,000 people from Alaska to Florida in various corporate, healthcare and education industries.