Kimberley Briana Gordy is the daughter of Eloise and Frank, the granddaughter of Marigold Kee and Virgie Lee, and the great-granddaughter of Lora Parker. From these foremothers, Kimberley inherited the spirit of an educator.

She hails from Snow Hill, MD, a town so small it only has one stoplight. After graduating as Salutatorian from Snow Hill High in 2002, she earned a B.A. in biology, played women’s basketball, and discovered her gift as a spoken word poet and creative writer at Goucher College. While at Goucher, she studied abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark, continuing biological studies courses that had a practical benefit, and lived with her paternal aunt who has lived in Denmark for more than 50 years. She still vividly remembers a course taught by two Danish doctors who used some of their own patient cases to bring anatomy and physiology to life, as well as developed treatment plans and helped students understand how complex providing medical care could be. She could not have known she would have a different role in that same reality decades later.

Her professional roles in secondary and post-secondary education positioned her to advocate for and empower young people, helping them realize their power as decision-makers and agents of change in their own lives as they prepared for higher education. She worked for eight years advocating for students in the college admissions process, leading multicultural recruitment efforts and college access scholarship programs focused on first-generation, underrepresented students at Goucher and the George Washington University. She then joined St. Timothy’s School for four years as the director of college counseling.

This work helped her realize the impact that faith and spiritual tools could have when accompanying individuals and families through life transitions. This led her to enroll at Union Theological Seminary (UTS) in New York to pursue chaplaincy. She earned a master of divinity degree with a concentration in psychology and religion in 2022. While at UTS, she served as a peer chaplain, leader of the Black Women’s Caucus, and a student worship coordinator for daily interfaith chapel services.

Upon graduation, she completed a yearlong chaplaincy residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in West Philadelphia. At present, Kimberley holds a fellowship in the Spiritual Care department at UPenn’s Hospital, where she is training to become an ACPE Certified Educator, someone who will lead future chaplaincy students through residencies and initial exposure to clinical pastoral education. For Kimberley, chaplaincy merges faith and spiritual tools with facilitation and engages her inherent contemplative and communication skills.

She recently earned the distinction of recognition as a board-certified chaplain through the Association of Professional Chaplains. In her brief time in the field of professional chaplaincy, Kimberley has made use of national opportunities to share her experiences and lens. She presented twice at the American Academy of Religion’s 2022 conference on the ways Black women serve as chaplains in official and unofficial ways in their relational networks. In the fall of 2023, she led Brite Divinity School’s Stalcup Series as the Betty Jo Hay Lecturer in Religion and Mental Health. Most recently, she completed a semester as a Teaching Fellow at UTS, co-teaching a virtual Intro to Spiritual Care course alongside her former academic advisor. Those opportunities have been invaluable for Kimberley to share her voice, continue to make meaning of her own rich and diverse experiences, and connect with aspiring chaplains and spiritual care providers, living at the intersections of theory and practice.

Kimberley is a Womanist and LGBTQIA+ affirming spiritual caregiver whose identity as a multiple spiritual belonger draws her to those in liminal spaces with a focus on liberation for each individual. Her renegotiated identity as an athlete means physical movement facilitates joy and release and deepens the mind-body connection. Kimberley believes dancing, laughter, writing, imagination, and creativity are soul food and that everyone would do better with daily doses of. She hopes to remind as many people of that as possible.