Staff
EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP
Deborah Caldwell
Publisher
Read Complete Bio
Judith Golub
Director of Strategy and Planning
Read Complete Bio
Deborah Caldwell
Publisher
Deborah Caldwell is CEO of Religion News Foundation and Publisher of Religion News Service. She previously served as Vice President of Content Marketing at Bank of America. She also previously held executive positions at Time Inc. -- including digital managing editor at FORTUNE and digital assistant managing editor at MONEY -- as well as at CNBC and Reader's Digest Association.
Judith Golub
Director of Strategy and Planning
Judith is a highly skilled executive-level leader and activist with more than 25 years of experience working with Congressional staff, federal agencies, and the White House; planning, coordinating and implementing legislative strategies; developing policy, media and grassroots issue advocacy campaigns in support of legislation and policies; developing and working in coalitions with like-minded organizations to help create effective networks; and working with the media.
Ms. Golub most recently was the Director of Congressional Affairs & Policy and Planning at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), an independent federal commission that monitors religious freedom abroad and makes policy recommendations to the President, Secretary of State, and Congress. Before joining USCIRF, she was the Executive Director of the San Francisco-based Immigrant Legal Resource Center. She also was the Senior Director of Advocacy at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and Legislative Director at the American Jewish Committee, both based in Washington DC. Golub has focused on a broad range of issues during her career including religious freedom, hate crimes, due process protections, civil rights, and immigration.
Bob Smietana
Editor-in-Chief
Smietana is an award-winning religion reporter and editor who has spent two decades producing breaking news, data journalism, investigative reporting, profiles and features for magazines, newspapers, trade publications and websites.
Most notably, he has served as a senior writer for Facts & Trends, senior editor of Christianity Today, religion writer at The Tennessean, correspondent for RNS and contributor to OnFaith, USA Today and The Washington Post.
He is best known for his coverage of Islam and Islamophobia, including his comprehensive reporting on the Murfreesboro mosque conflict, and of evangelical Christianity, including the emotional journey of Pearl Joy Brown’s family as well as the ongoing Willow Creek Community Church scandal.
Roxanne Stone
Managing Editor
Stone was most recently at Barna Group, where she has served as Editor-in-Chief since 2012. She previously served as Editorial Director of Relevant Media Group and formerly was on staff at Christianity Today International. She received her bachelor’s degree from Colorado State University.
Paul O’Donnell
Senior Editor
O’Donnell has served as editor for a variety of news organizations, including Newsweek, Condé Nast, CNBC, and Washingtonian magazine. He has also reported on politics, religion, and culture for national publications such as Huffington Post, Slate, Wired, Commonweal magazine, and others.
In 2000, O’Donnell helped found the award-winning religion news and opinion website, Beliefnet.com, serving as one of the original channel editors. During his tenure, O’Donnell created the annual “Beliefnet at the Oscars” and “Beliefnet Book of the Year” franchises, as well as a virtual roundtable series.
O’Donnell was later hired to reinvent and revive front-of-book at House & Garden and relaunched the magazine website, quadrupling the website’s traffic in six months. As an editor at CNBC, O’Donnell launched or relaunched multiple channels of the financial news organization’s website and oversaw daily news coverage for those sections.
Based in Annapolis, Maryland, O’Donnell is the author of Man Up! 367 Classic Skills for the Modern Guy. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Chicago.
Kerry Staurseth
Copy Editor
Kerry lives in Chicago with her family and dogs. After teaching English overseas and stateside, she is now a freelance copy editor for RNS and Conde Nast and is a member of the New York Writer's Guild. She enjoys adjunct teaching and tutoring for nearby universities, as well as volunteering at a local arts center. She holds a master's degree and bachelor's degree from North Park University.
Kit Doyle
Photo/Multimedia Editor
Kit Doyle joined Religion News Service in August 2016. He enjoys figuring out the best ways to visually tell stories. Kit earned a B.J. in Photojournalism and a B.A. in Spanish from Mizzou, and holds a Masters of Education from UMSL. Kit has worked as a photojournalist, photo editor and Director of Photography at the Southeast Missourian newspaper and the Columbia Daily Tribune newspaper.
In addition to photography, Kit taught high school science and photography classes in Kansas City. Kit’s editorial and freelance photography has appeared in various publications and professional websites.
Mary Gladstone
Copy Editor
Mary Gladstone joined Religion News Service as a copy editor in 2013. She also serves as an assistant editor for ReligionLink, an online resource to help journalists cover religion-related stories for the secular media. Gladstone is a freelance writer and editor whose clients also include The Dallas Morning News, where she previously was an assistant metro editor.
She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin and has worked for the Abilene Reporter-News and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, as well.
Adelle M. Banks
Production Editor & National Reporter
Adelle M. Banks joined the Religion News Service staff in 1995. She previously was the religion reporter at the Orlando Sentinel and a reporter at The Providence Journal and newspapers in the upstate New York communities of Syracuse and Binghamton.
Banks spearheaded an RNS project on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington that won a 2014 Wilbur Award from the Religion Communicators Council. She also spearheaded RNS’ coverage of the life and legacy of Billy Graham that resulted in a comprehensive package of stories, commentaries, photos and video.
Banks was a third-place winner in the Religion Newswriters Association’s Religion Reporter of the Year contest in 2011 and 1998.
She also has received first-place Associated Church Press awards in news, convention, photography and multimedia categories.
Her writing has been featured in The Washington Post, USA Today, Christian Century, Christianity Today, Jet, BlackVoices.com, Sojourners, Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly, Nieman Reports and the 2006 book “Good News: The Best Religion Writing in North America.”
Banks is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass. A former board member of the Religion News Foundation, she is a public speaker on religion reporting at gatherings of students, scholars, journalists and other communicators.
Claire Giangravè
Vatican Reporter
Giangravè was most recently at Crux Catholic Media Inc., where she served as Faith and Culture Correspondent covering the Vatican and the Catholic Church. She has previously worked at CNBC/Class Editori, ForexInfo.it, PBS and MSNBC News. She received her bachelor’s degree from Roma Tre University and her master’s degree in journalism from Boston University. Claire speaks Italian, English and French.
Jack Jenkins
National Reporter
Jack Jenkins was most recently the Senior Religion Reporter at Washington-based ThinkProgress. Jenkins was an RNS reporting intern in 2011 and later blogged for RNS.
His work has appeared or been referenced in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, MSNBC and elsewhere. After graduating from Presbyterian College with a Bachelor of Arts in history and religion/philosophy, Jack received his Master of Divinity degree from Harvard University with a focus on Christianity, Islam and the mediaJenkins is based in Washington, D.C.
Aysha Khan
Reporter
Aysha Khan contributes reporting on Muslim American issues for RNS. She holds a degree in multi-platform journalism from the University of Maryland. In 2016, she was a reporting intern in Washington, D.C. with RNS and ThinkProgress. Her work has also appeared in The Washington Post, USA Today, NBC News, VICE News, American Journalism Review, Religion & Politics magazine, Sojourners and other publications. Khan is based in Boston, Massachusetts.
Emily McFarlan Miller
National Reporter
Emily McFarlan Miller is a national reporter for RNS based in Chicago. She covers evangelical and mainline Protestant Christianity. Before joining RNS in 2016, she won awards for her work as education reporter at The Courier-News in Elgin, Illinois, and digital editor for social media and engagement at the Chicago Sun-Times.
Her writing also has appeared in the Washington Post, USA Today, Relevant Magazine, Christianity Today’s CT Women website, Crux and more. She graduated with honors from the journalism department at New York University and is working toward a master’s in intercultural studies from NAIITS (formerly the North American Institute for Indigenous Theological Studies).
Alejandra Molina
National Reporter
Molina most recently served as Journalist in Residence at the University of Southern California (USC) and as Equitable Cities Fellow at Next City. She has worked at The Press-Enterprise, La Prensa and OC Excelsior, and The Orange County Register. In 2018, she was named one of the 15 most influential Latina journalists by Latino Journalists of California. She has also received fellowships from the Center for Health Journalism at USC and the Institute for Justice and Journalism. Alejandra is a native Spanish speaker. She received her bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism from the University of La Verne.
Yonat Shimron
National Reporter & Senior Editor
Yonat Shimron joined RNS in April 2011 and became managing editor in 2013. She was the religion reporter for The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C. from 1996 to 2011. During that time she won numerous awards. She is a past president of the Religion Newswriters Association.
Fredrick Nzwili
Nairobi, Kenya
Fredrick Nzwili is a journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya. For more than 15 years, he has written about religion, politics, peace and conflict, development, security, environment and wildlife. His articles have appeared in international media organizations among others; The Tablet, The Christian Science Monitor, The National Geographic and Kenyan local newspapers; The Standard and the People Daily. He holds two degrees from the University of Nairobi – a bachelor’s degree in sociology and literature and a post-graduate diploma in mass communication. He is married and has two daughters.
Michele Chabin
Jerusalem
RNS Middle East correspondent Michele Chabin has covered events in the region for 18 years. In addition to her work at RNS, Chabin writes regularly for the New York Jewish Week and National Catholic Register and is a contributor to USA Today and numerous other publications. She has won several awards from the American Jewish Press Association for Jewish journalism (including one for a first-hand account of the evacuation of Jewish, Muslim and Christian residents from war-torn Sarajevo) as well as first-place honors from the Catholic Press Association. A graduate of Brandeis University, Chabin was awarded a British Chevening Scholarship and Press Fellowship at Cambridge University, England. The home she shared during the fellowship contained a Hindu, a Sikh, two Muslims, a Jew, an Orthodox Christian and a Catholic, “a harmony that deepened my love for religion-based reporting,” she says.
Tara Isabella Burton
Column: Religion Remixed
Burton, who received a doctorate in theology from Oxford University, is at work on a book about the rise of the religiously unaffiliated in America, to be published in November 2020 by Public Affairs. Her novel, “Social Creature,” was published in June 2018.
Charles C. Camosy
Column: Purple Catholicism
Charlie Camosy, though a native of very rural Wisconsin, has spent more than the last decade as a professor of theological and social ethics at Fordham University. He is the author of five books, including, most recently, "Resisting Throwaway Culture." He is the father of four children, three of whom were adopted from the Philippines.
Thomas Reese
Column: Signs of the Times
The Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a Jesuit priest, is a Senior Analyst at RNS. Previously he was a columnist at the National Catholic Reporter (2015-17) and an associate editor (1978-85) and editor in chief (1998-2005) at America magazine. He was also a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University (1985-98 & 2006-15) where he wrote Archbishop, A Flock of Shepherds, and Inside the Vatican. Earlier he worked as a lobbyist for tax reform. He has a doctorate in political science from the University of California Berkeley. He entered the Jesuits in 1962 and was ordained a priest in 1974 after receiving a M.Div from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley.
Jana Riess
Column: Flunking Sainthood
Jana Riess, a senior columnist at Religion News Service, has been an editor in the publishing industry since 2008, primarily focusing in the areas of religion, history, popular culture, ethics, and biblical studies. (Learn more about her freelance editorial business and rates here.) From 1999 to 2008, she was the Religion Book Review Editor for Publishers Weekly, and continues to write freelance articles and reviews for PW as well as other publications.
She holds degrees in religion from Wellesley College and Princeton Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. in American religious history from Columbia University. She speaks often to media about issues pertaining to religion in America, and has been interviewed by the Associated Press, Time, Newsweek, People, the Boston Globe, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and Newsday, among other print publications, as well as “Voice of America,” the “Today” show, MSNBC, and NPR’s “All Things Considered,” “Tell Me More,” and “Talk of the Nation.”
She is the author, co-author, or editor of books including Mormonism and American Politics; The Twible: All the Chapters of the Bible in 140 Characters or Less . . . Now with 68% More Humor!; Flunking Sainthood: A Year of Breaking the Sabbath, Forgetting to Pray, and Still Loving My Neighbor; What Would Buffy Do? The Vampire Slayer as a Spiritual Guide; Mormonism for Dummies; and The Writer’s Market Guide to Getting Published. She blogged for Beliefnet before coming to RNS in 2012.
Mark Silk
Column: Spiritual Politics
Mark Silk graduated from Harvard College in 1972 and earned his Ph.D. in medieval history from Harvard University in 1982. After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review.
In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist.
In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College.
Professor Silk is the author of “Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II” and “Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America.” He is co-editor of “Religion by Region,” an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of “The American Establishment,” “Making Capitalism Work,” and “One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics.” He inaugurated “Spiritual Politics” in 2007. In 2014 he became Religion News Service Contributing Editor.
Simran Jeet Singh
Column: Articles of Faith
Singh currently serves as the Senior Religion Fellow for the Sikh Coalition and Henry R. Luce Post-Doctoral Fellow for Religion in International Affairs at New York University’s Center for Religion and Media. Dr. Singh also serves as a Truman National Security Fellow, a term-member for the Council on Foreign Relations, a board member for the Religion News Association, and an Honorary Fellow at the Edward Cadbury Centre for the Public Understanding of Religion at the University of Birmingham (UK). Dr. Singh earned an M.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D. from Columbia University, as well as an M.T.S. from Harvard University and a B.A. from Trinity University.Singh is a columnist at Religion News Service.
