Co-conveners and Advisory Board Members

Rhonda Miska is a spiritual director, writer, preacher, and lay ecclesial minister, currently serving as Communication Director at a large parish in the Archdiocese of St. Paul/Minneapolis. She is concurrently pursing of a Doctorate of Ministry in Preaching from the Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis while serving in full-time ministry.

Rhonda holds an MA from the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry and has also completed coursework at the Aquinas Institute of Theology and the University of Virginia. She has served in parishes, universities, retreat centers, and served as a Jesuit Volunteer in Nicaragua from 2002-2004. Rhonda is on the advisory board of Catholic Women Preach and is active with Discerning Deacons, a movement to engage Catholics in discernment around the restoration of the diaconate to women in the Roman Catholic Church. Her writing has appeared in Catholic Women Speak:  Bringing Our Gifts to the Table (Paulist Press, 2016), Pope Francis Lexicon (Collegeville, 2018), and Catholic Women Preach:  Raising Voices, Renewing the Church (2022), Green Saints for a Green Generation (2024). She has also published in various print and online publications including America, U.S. Catholic, and Presence:  A Journal of Catholic Poetry. 

She holds a certificate in spiritual direction from the Spiritual Direction Institute founded by Msgr Chester P. Michael and was part of the 2015 cohort of the Spiritual Directors International New Contemplatives. Rhonda discerned vowed life with the Sinsinawa Dominican Sisters from 2015-2020, and during that time studied preaching at the Aquinas Institute in St. Louis. Her time journeying with vowed members of the Order of Preachers deepened her desire to grow as a preacher in companionship with others.

Christy M. Hicks Aydt currently serves in the role of Regional Director for the Ignatian Volunteer Corps in the St. Louis region. She is a spiritual director, preacher, and also trained in the 19th Annotation, the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. She has preached portions of the Spiritual Exercises and has preached for Catholic Women Preach and U.S. Catholic. Christy formerly worked in hospital chaplaincy, in campus ministry at three different universities, and as an acquisitions editor for a publishing company. 

In 2010-2011, she spent a year in India and Nepal. Though her studies have been through the lens of Catholic-Christian faith and thought, she reveres the faith and beauty other faith traditions share. Eastern spirituality and culture have gifted her with a more expansive image of God. 

Christy holds a Master of Arts in Pastoral Studies from the University of Dayton as well as a Certification in Spiritual Direction and Preaching Courses from the Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis. She holds a certificate in restorative justice from the Center for Restorative Justice.  Christy lives in St. Louis, Missouri with her husband and family.

BJ Brown shares a virtual pulpit with Walter Modrys SJ on their weekly preaching podcast, Believe.Teach.Practice.  She is also part of the initial cohort of Boston College's The Courage to Preach certificate program. BJ is presently a chaplain a Philadelphia hospital and has served in Catholic parishes in Philadelphia, PA and Chapel Hill, NC and in the Diocese of Richmond’s Office of Justice and Peace. She has also worked as a kindergarten instructional aid and high school tutor. 

IN addition to a BA in Religious Studies (University of Virginia, '80) and Master of Divinity (Weston School of Theology '85), BJ has done additional coursework in children's literature, conflict resolution, early elementary education and coaching exceptional children, and noprofit management. 

BJ’s most constant loves, however, are her children: Brendan, Clare, Patrick and Mary.

Ann Garrido is associate professor of homiletics at Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis, MO.  While her first passion is teaching, Garrido has also served the school in a number of administrative roles including (at varying points in time) as Director of the Doctorate of Ministry in Preaching, Director of MAPS Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, Director of Field Education, Director of Distance Learning, and Director of the Aquinas Ministry Integration Project. In Fall 2018, Garrido served as the Marten Fellow in Preaching at the University of Notre Dame.

Garrido preaches monthly for the Dominican website Word.op.org and is the author of numerous books, including the award-winning Redeeming Administration (Ave Maria Press, 2013) and Redeeming Conflict (Ave Maria Press, 2016).  Her recent book Let’s Talk about Truth (Ave Maria Press, 2020) took second place in the professional ministry category for the Catholic Media Association. She has visited all 50 states and 20 countries, having spoken in over 250 diocesan, university, parish, health care, educational, and business settings.

Rev. Dr. Susan Cartmell is a pastor and writer. Recently, the interim Senior Pastor of the 1500 member Congregational Church in Appleton WI, Susan is the author of UnCommon Preaching, a book about how to use sermons to teach the stories of faith and reach today's congregations. For four decades, she has led churches in Massachusetts and was the first woman to lead a "tall steeple" church in New England when she was called to be the Senior Minister of the Congregational Church of Needham, a Boston suburb, in 1997. Currently, Susan is working on a book about how the pandemic has affected clergy and changed churches.  

Susan has led workshops on preaching for the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ since 2015.  She was a keynote presenter at the Preaching Excellence Symposium of the United Methodist Church, Missouri Synod (2018). She received her Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School and her Doctor of Ministry in Worship at Andover Newton Theological School (now at Yale University.)  Her new book is entitled - The Perpetual Pivot: Ministry in the Pandemic and Beyond. Learn more about her ministry and view some of her preaching at susancartmell.com.