Speaker Bios

Sister Rebecca of New Skete Monastery is a certified spiritual counselor and director in addition to her degree in teaching. Sr. Rebecca was born in Tacoma Park, MD, and is the second of 5 children. Her father was a naval officer,
and her mother was an executive secretary at the National Institutes of Health. Her family moved often, and by the age of 19 she had already traveled widely. After two life-changing experiences she describes as “awakenings”, Sr. Rebecca knew she
was inclined to a life of the spirit. In 1961, she graduated from the McGill-affiliated St. Joseph’s Teacher’s College in Montreal, and for the next decade, she was assigned to Hong Kong as a Franciscan missionary. She taught biology, botany, and
zoology, and in 1968 she co-founded an evening school for illiterate boat people who had fled China.

Susan Ashbrook Harvey, PhD is a tonsured chanter at St. Mary’s Antiochian Orthodox Church in Pawtucket, RI, and serves on the Eastern Orthodox–Roman Catholic Bilateral Theological Consultation for North America. She is the Willard
Prescott and Annie McClelland Smith Professor of Religious Studies, and the Royce Family Professor of Teaching Excellence, at Brown University. Susan specializes in Syriac studies, early Christian history, and Christianity of the Byzantine and
Syriac traditions, particularly with respect to women. She has received honorary doctorates from Grinnell College (Iowa), the University of Bern (Switzerland), and Lund University (Sweden), and is a past-President of the Orthodox Theological
Society in America, and of the North American Patristic Society. A recipient of awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, National Endowment for the Humanities, Dumbarton Oaks Research
Library, and others, she has published widely in academic venues on women in ancient Christianity, monasticism, the cult of saints, hagiography, and early Christian hymnography.

Valerie A. Karras, ThD., PhD has earned doctoral degrees in patristic theology and Byzantine church history from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and The Catholic University of America. She has been a professor at various
colleges and universities for over 20 years, including Hellenic College/Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, Saint Louis University, and Southern Methodist University. Dr. Karras’ primary areas of research and writing are the liturgical
participation of women in the early and Byzantine church, and Greek patristic theology regarding sex and gender. She has published numerous scholarly articles on the female diaconate and other women’s liturgical and ecclesiastical ministries. Dr.
Karras is also a church musician who has served as choir director, organist, and chanter, and she holds a diploma in Byzantine music awarded through Greece’s Ministry of Culture.

AnnMarie Mecera was parish council President/Lay Vice-Chair for nearly 20 years, and has been involved in other areas of the church on diocesan and national levels. In 1998, she presented a paper titled “Women as Lay Ministers in the
Orthodox Church”, at the University of Leeds, in Leeds, England, which spurred her to delve deeper into the history of the female diaconate. She is author of the religious education manual for pre-schoolers “A Way of Life: Introducing Your
Children to the Orthodox Faith,” recently called ‘by far the best resource for introducing pre-schoolers and younger children to the faith.’

Clio Pavlantos, MA, CMA, MDiv and BCC (Provisional), holds a Master of Divinity degree from St. Vladimir’s Seminary, and is currently Intern Chaplain for the Breast Service of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York City, working as
the first chaplain there posted to outpatient care. Her chaplaincy is rooted in her previous career in movement and dance, including teaching positions at Gettysburg College, Wilson College, and NYU, and as a member and coordinator of the
Certificate Faculty of the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies in New York City. Ms Pavlantos has also worked as a choreographer, concert dancer and painter, and published articles on movement, dance and theology. Above all of these
careers and experiences, Ms. Pavlantos considers her work as parent to be the most demanding and rewarding she has undertaken thus far.

Teva Regule, PhD (candidate) has been an active member of the Orthodox Church all of her life. For many years she was involved in the work of youth ministries in the Church, working on the national level of the American Romanian
Orthodox Youth (AROY) and serving two years as the national president. She also worked in campus ministry, organizing and coordinating various Orthodox Christian Fellowships. For the past twenty years, her worked has focused on the ministry of
women in the Church. For over fifteen years, she was Managing Editor of the St. Nina Quarterly. She served as an Orthodox consultant for a number of consultations on women and men in the church sponsored by the World Council of Churches. Teva
received her Master of Divinity degree from Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in 2007, graduating with highest distinction. She is currently a doctoral (PhD) candidate in liturgical theology at Boston College.

Caren Stayer, PhD received her PhD in Medieval and Byzantine History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her MLIS from Kent State University. Caren has served on the faculty in Humanities and History at Strayer University,
Columbus, Ohio; was Assistant Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the Washington Theological Union; Assistant Professor of History at the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio; and Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion at Oberlin
College, Oberlin, Ohio.

Rev. Fr. Steven Tsichlis is the pastor of St. Paul’s Greek Orthodox Church in Irvine, CA. He is the coordinator of the Archdiocesan program for the diaconate for the Metropolis of San Francisco. He studied at the University of Missouri,
Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, Yale Divinity School and Fordham University. He is the former president of the Archdiocesan Presbyters Council of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese; a former president and member of the Board of Directors
of Project Mexico; and a member of the advisory board for the Orthodox Peace Fellowship. He is married and has four children.

Phyllis Zagano, PhD is Senior Research Associate-in-Residence and Adjunct Professor of Religion at Hofstra
University in Hempstead, New York. A former Fulbright Fellow to the Republic of Ireland, Dr. Zagano was awarded the 2002 Book Award from the College Theology Society for her book “Holy Saturday: An Argument for the Restoration of the
Female Diaconate in the Catholic Church” (Crossroad Publishing, NY, 2000) and has received several Catholic Press
Association Book Awards, one each for “Women & Catholicism: Gender, Communion, and Authority” (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011 and for “Mysticism and the Spiritual Quest: A Crosscultural Anthology” (Paulist, 2013). An internationally
acclaimed Catholic scholar who has lectured throughout the United States, and in Canada, Europe and Australia, Dr. Zagano also writes a regular column, “Just Catholic.” Dr. Zagano is the author of hundreds of articles and reviews in popular and
scholarly journals in the United States and abroad, especially on the question of Catholic women deacons. For five years she hosted a talk show on National Public Radio affiliate station, WBUR-FM. Her works have been variously translated into Czech, Indonesian, Italian, and Spanish.

Paulina Pedas is a sophomore at Maret School in Washington, DC, and attends Saint Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral. Her interests include her Greek Orthodox Faith, the protection of the Environment, and Theater. She is a member of the
Maret School Student Council and can often be seen in Maret School Concerts and Theatre productions.