Founded in April 2018, The Katie Geneva Cannon Center for Womanist Leadership (KGCCWL) is the premier center for womanist theory and practice endowed by Union Presbyterian Seminary. The mission of KGCCWL is to nurture the soul of Black women as they cultivate pathways to whole communities. KGCCWL’s Spring conference is the premier gathering of womanist scholars, practitioners, activists, and leaders in the nation. This conference features leading womanist voices who explore pressing questions, engage rigorous inquiry, and energize open dialogue essential to the freedom and flourishing of Black women. Through panel presentations, keynote lectures, interactive activities, and multifaceted, transgenerational, innovative conversations across disciplines, this conference is the culmination of the work of the Center integrating its six-core tenets – womanist wellness, witness, wisdom, worship, wares, and works – which represent the holistic interconnections that help womanist leadership flourish.

The founder of the Center for Womanist Leadership, Katie Geneva Cannon is known to many as a woman of firsts, a scholar among scholars, a decorated teacher, and a trailblazing pioneer in womanist theology and ethics. Cannon was the first African American woman ordained in the United Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in 1974, and the first African American to earn the Doctor of Philosophy degree from Union Theological Seminary of New York in 1983. For more than thirty years, Cannon lectured globally on topics in womanist theological ethics and Christian social ethics as well as authored and edited numerous articles and books.

In April 2018, on the 44th anniversary of her ordination, Cannon organized the Center for Womanist Leadership by launching a womanist conference that critiqued the complex cultural locations and histories of contemporary society. Fourteen African American women scholars led the conference where over 1,500 gathered to hear the keynote Alice Walker – the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, activist, and author of The Color Purple – and a sold-out gathering of women clergy and community leaders followed in weekend lectures, workshops, and strategy sessions on communal transformation and empowerment of women of color. In this Spirit, KGCCWL continues this tradition by gathering womanist leaders and practitioners biennially through participatory learning to engage pressing issues of our time.