Dangerous Listening: Highlander’s Story & Methodologies for Social Change
Rev. Allyn Maxfield-Steele grew up in Texas, Germany, and North Carolina. He once had the opportunity to live and learn alongside human rights organizers and community leaders from the Assembly of the Poor in Northeast Thailand. That experience transformed Allyn’s understanding of the power and purpose of education. Since 2002, Allyn has worked as a school teacher, a college educator, a neighborhood organizer, and a pastor, although he still cannot always tell the difference between all of those roles.
Allyn’s first visit to the Highlander Research and Education Center was in 2007 for Highlander’s 75th Anniversary weekend. In 2010, Allyn received an invitation to participate in Highlander’s leadership programming. The staff and board invited him to join Highlander’s Board of Directors, where he worked closely with Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, who in 2016 invited him to join her in applying to be Highlander’s most recent Co-Executive Directors.
Allyn is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and he has served congregations in Alaska and Tennessee. His interests include pastoral care, institutional change, dystopian science fiction, the problems of historical memory, and sculpture. Allyn earned degrees from Wofford College and Vanderbilt Divinity School, where he met his spouse, Erin, an Episcopal priest. They live in Western North Carolina with their enormous dog, Johann.
INTRODUCTION: Tom Adams
INVOCATION: Jim Duffie