Lauren Maxwell is writer, speaker, musician, organizer, and creator.Currently, Lauren is a Master of Divinity candidate at Yale, where she focuses on moral responses to public injustice, spiritual care, and postcolonial and feminist theologies. Her work, both creative and academic, explores how mending fractures in communities and healing our relationships with ourselves, each other, and the planet might help us address the pressing issues of our time.At Yale, Lauren is the Graduate Assistant for the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy, which was founded by Bishop William Barber II in 2023. She also won a Yale Environmental Humanities Grant to bring her vision of an interdisciplinary public theological response to the climate crisis to life, and she is a member of the student-led Pennington Legacy Group, which organized to help secure a posthumous degree for Yale's first-known Black student. Lauren also founded and facilitates the Yale Chaplaincy Circle, which provides connection and learning opportunities to future spiritual leaders from varying faith backgrounds.In the summer of 2023, Lauren was a member of the UN Environmental Programme's Faith for Earth team, which leads inter-religious climate organizing efforts among global faith leaders. She was proud to support the formation of the first-ever Faith Pavilion at COP 28. Lauren was also on the planning team for the Yale Center for Environmental Justice's 2023 Environmental Joy conference, where she helped shape programming from a spiritual and faith-based perspective and led the initiative to include indigenous voices.Lauren is a writer first of all, and her essays or excerpts have appeared in Glamour Magazine, Catapult, Bustle, Stylist Magazine, The Dirty Spoon, TOWN Magazine, and Restless Magazine. She writes "a monthly column for people asking life's big questions" called WE'RE ALL FRIENDS HERE, which can be found at laurenmaxwell.substack.com.Finally, Lauren speaks frequently at churches around Connecticut. Her speeches and sermons aim to bring messages of love and justice to faith communities in a way that is rooted in tradition but unafraid to meet the world right where it is today.Specialties: Writing, Storytelling, Editing, Public Speaking, Event Curation, Music, Blogging, Spirituality, Spiritual Care, Chaplaincy, Theology, Public Theology, Public Policy