Sakena Young-Scaggs
Senior Associate Dean for Religious & Spiritual Life and Minister of Memorial Church -- Stanford University
## Rev. Dr. Sakena Young-Scaggs is an unyielding voice on race, gender, and social justice.
After completing both her MDiv and STM at Boston University, she worked and served in Higher Education for over a decade as what she calls an "academic midwife" lending to her contention that we must birth new life every day in the academy and nurture students toward their own success. “Dr. Sys” as her students call her, is an Itinerant Elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. She has previously served as the Associate Dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University and as the Associate Protestant University Chaplain at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Currently, she serves as an Associate Minister at The Historic Tanner AME Church, in Phoenix, Arizona. Her Dissertation "Afrofuturism, Womanist Phenomenology, and the Black Imagination: A Liberative Revisioning of Black Humanity" examines the potentiated hope of visioning African Futures through a Womanist Phenomenological analysis. Upon completion of her PhD in Woman and Gender Studies and Africana Studies, she began her current post as an Honors Faculty Fellow at the Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University.
After completing both her MDiv and STM at Boston University, she worked and served in Higher Education for over a decade as what she calls an "academic midwife" lending to her contention that we must birth new life every day in the academy and nurture students toward their own success. “Dr. Sys” as her students call her, is an Itinerant Elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. She has previously served as the Associate Dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University and as the Associate Protestant University Chaplain at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Currently, she serves as an Associate Minister at The Historic Tanner AME Church, in Phoenix, Arizona. Her Dissertation "Afrofuturism, Womanist Phenomenology, and the Black Imagination: A Liberative Revisioning of Black Humanity" examines the potentiated hope of visioning African Futures through a Womanist Phenomenological analysis. Upon completion of her PhD in Woman and Gender Studies and Africana Studies, she began her current post as an Honors Faculty Fellow at the Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University.