Katharine Henderson

Website: www.auburnsem.org

The Rev. Dr. Katharine Henderson is currently the Executive Vice President of Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City. She oversees the educational program, including developing and directing program initiatives, among them, multifaith programs for women, corporate executives, and Face to Face/Faith to Faith, a multifaith leadership program for teenagers from around the world.  She is also responsible for fundraising and day to day operations of the seminary.

Henderson received a doctorate in higher education from Teachers College Columbia University in 2000. She received her M. Div. degree in 1982 from Union Theological Seminary in New York City and her B.A. from The College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio, Phi Beta Kappa. She was ordained as a minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in 1982 and is currently Parish Associate at First Presbyterian Church in New York City.

Since 1985, Dr. Henderson has worked in theological education as Director of Development at Auburn Seminary from 1993-2000; Associate Dean of Students and Director of Admissions at Union Seminary, 1985-1993. Prior to that she was Associate Pastor at Central Presbyterian Church, New York City.

Her book, God’s Troublemakers: How Women of Faith are Changing the World, published by Continuum International Publishing Company, is now available. Henderson’s intellectual interests include leadership, particularly among women; the role of progressive religious leadership in the public arena and religion in the media; communication across lines of faith, race and class; and the role of philanthropy in shaping the third sector of society.

 She has taught, spoken and preached in seminaries, churches and synagogues, and to community groups. Recent keynote speeches include: Alchemists at Work: God, Money and the Common Good, October 2001, Generations of Giving Conference, The Aspen Institute, and Women Alchemists At Work: Turning Good into Gold delivered at A Force for Change, a conference of the Jewish Women’s Foundations, Chicago, IL in April 2002. An entry, Public Voices of Religious Women, will appear in The Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America, Rosemary Skinner Keller and Rosemary Radford Ruether, Editors, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, in 2004. 

Katharine was born and grew up in Louisville, KY. She is married to Charles Henderson and has a 23-year-old daughter, two grown stepchildren and two grandchildren.