
Join us for a weekend with over 300 students and faculty leaders to explore a Christian vision for faithfully serving university communities. We hope you will join us as we explore this year's theme "All People Shall See It Together: A Christian Imagination for the University and the World."
REGister today!Questions? Please contact Karen at 630-781-5983.
You are warmly invited to join Veritas and over 300 students in our network for Veritas Weekend - held in Boston, MA, from February 6-8, 2026. Veritas Weekend is our annual gathering for Forums and Augustine Collective student leaders to network, receive training from scholars and journalists, and refresh their vision for Christian faithfulness in the university.

The following sessions are offered especially for Veritas Partners to provide opportunities to engage more deeply with our speakers and students. Veritas Partner events conclude after the Closing Plenary Session on Saturday, February 7, 2026.
Veritas Partner events conclude after the Evening Worship & Plenary on
Saturday, February 7, 2026.
Praxis
Praxis
Andy Crouch is partner for theology and culture at Praxis, a venture-building ecosystem advancing redemptive entrepreneurship. His writing explores faith, culture, and the image of God in the domains of technology, power, leadership, and the arts. He is the author of five books (plus another with his daughter, Amy Crouch): The Life We're Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World, The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place, Strong and Weak: Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing, Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power, and Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling.
Andy serves on the governing board of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. For more than ten years he was an editor and producer at Christianity Today, including serving as executive editor from 2012 to 2016. He served the John Templeton Foundation in 2017 as senior strategist for communication. His work and writing have been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time, and several editions of Best Christian Writing and Best Spiritual Writing—and, most importantly, received a shout-out in Lecrae's 2014 single "Non-Fiction."
From 1998 to 2003, Andy was the editor-in-chief of re:generation quarterly, a magazine for an emerging generation of culturally creative Christians. For ten years he was a campus minister with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at Harvard University. He studied classics at Cornell University and received an M.Div. summa cum laude from Boston University School of Theology. A classically trained musician who draws on pop, folk, rock, jazz, and gospel, he has led musical worship for congregations of 5 to 20,000. He and his wife, Catherine, raised two children and live in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.
Columbia University
Columbia University
Justin recently completed his dissertation from Yale University’s Department of Religious Studies, where he studies virtue ethics and political theory. He is currently a researcher in bioethics at Columbia University Medical School.
Northeastern University
Northeastern University
Sara Hendren is an artist, design researcher, writer, and professor at Northeastern University. Her book What Can A Body Do? How We Meet the Built World explores the places where disability shows up in design at all scales: assistive technology, furniture, architecture, urban planning, and more. It was named one of the Best Books of 2020 by NPR and won the 2021 Science in Society Journalism book prize. Her art and design works have been exhibited on the White House lawn under the Obama presidency, at the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Seoul Museum of Art, the Vitra Museum, and many others, and her work is held in the permanent collections at MoMA and the Cooper Hewitt. Her first short documentary film Simple Machine will play at festivals in the US and abroad throughout 2025. She has been an NEH Public Scholar and a fellow at New America, and her commentary and criticism have been published in Harper’s, Art in America, The New York Times, the Washington Post, and elsewhere.
University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
Lia Howard is a political scientist who specializes in American politics. As Fellows Director for the SNF Paideia Program, Lia teaches SNF Paideia designated courses, designs curriculum and programming, and oversees advising and support for 75 undergraduate Fellows across three cohorts. She is the director of the Political Empathy Lab, and also leads with a team of Penn colleagues the Penn Commonwealth Engaged Scholars program, one of Penn’s inaugural Draw Down the Lightning Grants. Prior to joining the SNF Paideia Program, Lia Howard served as the executive director of the Philadelphia Commons Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the practice of civic dialogue. She has taught at St. Joseph’s University, Villanova University, Eastern University, as well as at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a non-resident senior affiliate at the Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society, and a senior fellow at the Robert A. Fox Leadership Program at Penn. Her research interests lie at the intersection of political culture, American political development, education policy, and citizenship. She received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Pennsylvania where she also received her B.A. in English and French.
Worship Leader
Worship Leader
Native Texan and new-ish Nashvillian, Taylor Leonhardt is first and foremost a craftsman.
Whether she's penning tunes for her solo project or for her duo Mission House with Jess Ray,
it’s always about the song. The Gospel Coalition recently called Taylor “one of the most
promising singer-songwriters in Nashville these days", naming her latest project Hold Still one of
the best albums of 2021. In addition to touring and writing, she spends time across the US
leading music and conversations for spiritual retreats, creative workshops, and faith
communities. When she’s not on the road, you can catch Taylor on a long run at Shelby Park or
pursuing her newest hobby - fly fishing. She is convinced God songs are everywhere.
Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School
Ruth L. Okediji is the Jeremiah Smith Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard Law School where she teaches courses in contracts, intellectual property (IP) law, and courses in biblical law. A widely cited prolific scholar and a foremost authority on the role of intellectual property in social and economic development, Professor Okediji has advised inter-governmental organizations, regional economic communities, and national governments on a range of matters related to patents, copyright, innovation policy, and human development. Okediji is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of Jos. She is the recipient of numerous awards for excellence in scholarship, teaching, mentorship and service, including recognition as one of the world’s top 50 leaders in IP law.
University of Virginia
University of Virginia
Angel Adams Parham is Associate Professor of Sociology and senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. She is also the Associate Director for UVA’s major in Political and Social Thought where she equips students to examine transformations in political and social thought from antiquity through the present. Her research is in the area of historical sociology, engaging in inquiry that examines the past in order to better understand how to live well in the present and envision wisely for the future. She is the author of American Routes: Racial Palimpsests and the Transformation of Race (Oxford, 2017) which examines changes in race and racialization in New Orleans under the French, Spanish and Anglo-American administrations. The book was co-winner of the Social Science History Association’s Allan Sharlin Memorial book award (2018) and co-winner of the American Sociological Association’s Barrington Moore book award in comparative-historical sociology (2018). Her most recent book, co-authored with Anika Prather, was published in 2022 and is entitled The Black Intellectual Tradition: Reading Freedom in Classical Literature. Parham has published articles on the intersection of Black writers and the classics in popular outlets including the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Public Discourse, and Common Good Magazine. She is the co-founder and executive director of Nyansa Classical Community which provides curricula and programming designed to connect with K-12 students from diverse backgrounds, inviting them to take part in the Great Conversation, cultivate the moral imagination, and pursue truth, goodness, and beauty. Parham has been a member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, as well as the recipient of a Fulbright grant. She received her bachelor’s degree from Yale University and completed her doctoral work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Rosalind Picard is an engineer, scientist, inventor, entrepreneur, and professor at the MIT Media Lab. She authored the book Affective Computing, envisioning the field giving skills of emotional intelligence to computers, and co-founded Affectiva, providing Emotion-AI software. She is co-founder and chief scientist of Empatica, providing FDA-cleared wearables to detect seizures and AI-biomarkers used in clinical trials. She is a named inventor on over 100 patents, is a highly-cited author and a popular speaker, with a TED talk of over 2 million views. Her awards include the 2022 Lombardia è Ricerca Prize and the 2024 Trotter Prize.
Cornell University
Cornell University
Praveen is Professor of Physiological Genomics and Chair of the Department of Biomedical Sciences at Cornell University. He leads a research lab focused on genome-scale and molecular approaches to understand physiology and human disease. Praveen received his BA degree from Cornell University and his PhD in Genomics from the University of Pennsylvania. After completing a post-doctoral fellowship at the National Human Genome Research Institute under the mentorship of the previous NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins, he moved in 2011 to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Genetics. The same year he was selected by Genome Technology as one of the nation’s top 25 rising young investigators in genomics. In 2017, he returned to Cornell University. Praveen has authored over 150 peer-reviewed publications in scientific journals such as PNAS, Cell and Science and has served as a reviewer for over 50 different journals. Honors include a faculty merit award for outstanding teaching and mentoring, the prestigious American Diabetes Association Pathway To Stop Diabetes Research Accelerator (which is awarded to only three people per year), and the inaugural Boehringer Ingelheim Award for Excellence in Research Mentorship. Praveen is an advocate for thoughtful discussion at the interface of science and faith and has served on the advisory board of the Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), has served on the Board of BioLogos, is a frequent speaker for the Veritas Forum, and a mentor in the Veritas Faculty Scholars program.
Stanford University
Stanford University
William Tarpeh is an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University. The Tarpeh Lab develops and evaluates selective separations in “waste” waters at several synergistic scales: molecular mechanisms of chemical transport and transformation; novel unit processes that increase resource efficiency; and systems-level assessments that identify optimization opportunities. Tarpeh completed his BS in chemical engineering at Stanford, his MS and PhD in Environmental Engineering at University of California, Berkeley, and postdoctoral training at the University of Michigan in Environmental Engineering and recently was named a 2025 MacArthur Fellow.
The Veritas Weekend breakout sessions offer a more intimate context to dive deeper into the conference theme and receive practical tips on running Forum events and publishing AC journals. The 2026 sessions will be announced soon.
Associate Vice President, University Partnerships, The Veritas Forum
Associate Vice President, University Partnerships, The Veritas Forum
Peter serves as the Director of the Augustine Collective and Veritas Institute at The Veritas Forum, helping to support student publications at universities across the country. While attending Dartmouth College, he was the third editor-in-chief of The Dartmouth Apologia, one of the first publications in the Augustine Collective network. After graduating, Peter served as a writer and an editor at The American Interest, a magazine of politics and culture in Washington, DC. He then joined Thomistic Institute, an academic institute in DC, where he was the Campus Program Coordinator. Peter occasionally writes on a freelance basis, and he tweets at @PeterAWBlair.
Vice President, University Partnerships, The Veritas Forum
Vice President, University Partnerships, The Veritas Forum
Ashley Byrd is the Director of Forums and leads the effort to support campus partners to design and host forums that model discourse about life’s biggest questions across different worldviews characterized by intellectual humility and rigor. Previously, Ashley served as Regional Director for Veritas, where he coached planning teams in New York and New Jersey.
As a graduate of Columbia University, he developed a love for the campus that led him to serve students and faculty there as a Religious Life Advisor through InterVarsity Christian Fellowship for 17 years. Ashley currently lives with his wife Carly and his daughters in Kailua, Hawaii.
Executive Director, The Wheelock Society
Executive Director, The Wheelock Society
Charlie holds an A.B. in Classical Archaeology from Dartmouth College, where he was editor-in-chief of the Dartmouth Apologia, and a J.D. from the University of Tennessee College of Law. He was a founding editor of Fare Forward. He currently serves as executive director of the Wheelock Society, a network of Christian alumni fostering the integration of faith, reason, and vocation at Dartmouth.
Forums Program Manager, The Veritas Forum
Forums Program Manager, The Veritas Forum
Timothy serves as Forums Program Manager for The Veritas Forum. Before joining Veritas, he has pastored college students at Rice University, served as a worship leader and church musician, and directed operations for the Credo Festival. He holds a BMus in Viola Performance from Rice University and an MTS in Bible from Duke Divinity School.
Timothy and his wife Sophia now live near Ann Arbor, MI. They spend their free time cycling and kayaking around Southeast Michigan, reading (preferably with large mugs of tea or coffee in hand), and playing with their two cats, Clive and Staples.
Aquinas House
Aquinas House
Fr. Timothy Danaher, O.P. is the Director and Chaplain at Aquinas House, the Catholic Student Center at Dartmouth College. He grew up in Steubenville, OH, where he attended Franciscan University, studying American Literature and Theology. He is a Dominican friar and was ordained in 2018 in Washington D.C. after graduate studies and ministry focused on hospital and Hispanic settings. Before arriving at AQ, he served for three years at St. Patrick’s Church in Philadelphia, PA.
Duke University
Duke University
Vivian formerly served as Forums Program Coordinator for the Veritas Forum and is now a PhD student at Duke University. An Oklahoma native, Vivian studied English and Environmental Science at Vanderbilt University before earning her Masters in Theology at Duke Divinity School, where she focused on theology and the arts. Prior to Duke, she lived in Colorado and worked for the Aspen Institute and the Global Warming Mitigation Project. In her free time she loves reading Flannery O’Connor, cooking Thai food, and planning her next backpacking trip. She currently lives in Durham, North Carolina with her husband.
Augustine Collective Program Manager, The Veritas Forum
Augustine Collective Program Manager, The Veritas Forum
Moriah serves as Program Manager for the Augustine Collective at the Veritas Forum. Prior to joining Veritas, she was assistant editor at First Things, a journal of religion and public life in New York City. She holds a BA in English from Baylor University and an MAR in Religion and Literature from Yale Divinity School. Moriah currently lives in New Haven, Connecticut, where in her free time she enjoys kayaking in Connecticut’s many waterways.
Managing Editor & Event Coordinator, Plough Quarterly
Managing Editor & Event Coordinator, Plough Quarterly
Alan Koppschall is a managing editor and an event coordinator at Plough. He is a member of the Bruderhof and lives at the Fox Hill Bruderhof in Walden, New York.
Slingshot Group
Slingshot Group
With 24 years of leadership experience across corporate and nonprofit sectors, Toni brings a unique blend of strategic expertise and heartfelt passion to her role as Vice President of Nonprofit at Slingshot Group. She serves faith-driven Christian nonprofits and mission-minded for-profit companies, helping organizations thrive through authentic leadership, mission clarity, and organizational alignment.
Before stepping into nonprofit leadership, Toni led a global team of 100 professionals as Director of HR and Operations for a $14 billion agriculture company. Her career spans sales, strategic marketing, and senior leadership roles – equipping her to bridge business acumen with mission-driven purpose.
A lifelong servant leader, Toni has invested over a decade on nonprofit boards in both the U.S. and U.K., and has faithfully served in her local church through discipleship, children’s ministry, and mentoring young women. Outside of work, she’s an avid fitness instructor, snow skier, hiker, and traveler who loves exploring new places with her husband, Rob, and their adventurous daughter. They reside in Longmont, Colorado, where they serve at LifeBridge Christian Church.
Author & Journalist
Author & Journalist
Wendy is an award-winning journalist who has published widely in many venues and across denominational lines. She received a Master of Arts in Theological Studies from Gordon-Conwell (1985). She served as regional correspondent for Time magazine in Tegucigalpa, Honduras and later worked as senior writer and editor at Christianity Today magazine. She has published extensively in other journals, including Books & Culture, The Christian Century, and Beliefnet.com. Her essays have been included in The Best Christian Writing and she was cited in Brill’s Content as being numbered among the nation’s leading religion reporters. She has written numerous books, including memoirs, journalistic explorations, biographies and devotionals. Her most recent book, Inner Healing the Franciscan Way, was released in 2025 with Paraclete Press. She is currently working on a book about Fred "Mister" Rogers and the theology of the Neighborhood.
Coordinator of University Partnerships, The Veritas Forum
Coordinator of University Partnerships, The Veritas Forum
Micah serves as the Coordinator of University Partnerships at The Veritas Forum. Before joining Veritas he completed a Bachelor of Arts degree from Vanderbilt University with degrees in Economics, History, and Philosophy. At Vanderbilt Micah served as the Executive Editor and Managing Editor for Vanderbilt Synesis, a journal of Christian thought, and as the President of the Veritas Forum student team. Micah is an avid hockey fan, lover of philosophy, and has a background in financial services and investment banking. Micah lives with his wife in Nashville, TN, and enjoys outdoor activities, live music, and coffee.
Comment Magazine
Comment Magazine
Jeff Reimer is an associate editor for Comment magazine, and writes regularly on literature, art, faith, and culture. In addition to Comment, his writing has appeared in Commonweal, Plough, Fare Forward, and elsewhere. He lives in Newton, Kansas, with his wife and four kids.
Art Director, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary
Art Director, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary
With over 20 years of creative experience, Nicole Rim is a multidisciplinary designer specializing in brand strategy, marketing, web design, and photography. As Art Director at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, she shapes the institution’s visual presence and serves as the lead designer for its print magazine, Ex Fonte.
Director of Community Formation, The Veritas Forum
Director of Community Formation, The Veritas Forum
Teal is University Engagement Director and Director of Student Development, Forums, for The Veritas Forum, jumping into Forum planning and student engagement with great excitement. After earning her BA in English at the University of Mary Washington, Teal earned her MA in Religion from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Teal spent a rewarding five years as a Ministry Fellow at Harvard University with Christian Union before joining the team. She lives with her husband Jeff north of Boston where they are always on the hunt for delicious coffee and new running routes.
Forums Program Coordinator, The Veritas Forum
Forums Program Coordinator, The Veritas Forum
Ana serves as Forums Program Coordinator for The Veritas Forum. Before joining the Veritas team, she worked in the administrative office of her local church. Her background also includes experience in campus ministry and freelance publication design. Ana received her Bachelor’s degree in the History of Science with a secondary in Comparative Religion from Harvard University. She currently lives north of Boston with her husband, Cam, and their son. Together, they love cooking, playing board games, and hiking Colorado’s tallest peaks.
Boston Park Plaza Hotel
50 Park Plaza at Arlington Street
Boston, MA 02116
617-203-7165
We've arranged a block of rooms at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel for our guests. Please reserve your room online by January 5, 2026 to enjoy the special rate of $159 per night group rate (plus applicable taxes).

Yes! The Augustine Collective (AC) is a program of The Veritas Forum. The Augustine Collective is a student-driven network of Christian journals on college campuses devoted to elevating thoughtful Christian perspectives and promoting dialogue on campus and in society. The journals seek to reinvigorate thoughtful conversations about faith on campus by publishing student essays, reviews, art, and poetry inspired by the conviction that the Christian Gospel encompasses the whole of life itself.
The Boston Park Plaza features two dining options: Off the Common, offering delicious breakfast, lunch, and dinner selections, and M.J. O’Connor’s, a cozy spot to relax at the end of the day.
The dress code for the conference is smart casual.
Here is a list of nearby attractions.
If you're driving, valet parking is available for $65 per night. Self Parking is available at the Motor Mart Garage, which is across the street from the Boston Park Plaza (entrance located at 201 Stuart Street, Boston, MA).
Yes. Your high school student is welcome to attend Veritas Weekend and may attend all events except AC and Forums student-only events.
For more information about the conference, please contact Karen Gehl at karen@veritas.org or 630-781-5983.