I am married to Mark Barger Elliott, my amazing life partner, and together we have raised three adult children who we celebrate, cheer on, and love to visit in D.C., Chicago, San Francisco. 

I am a Presbyterian pastor and have served in five congregations. I am a consultant with the Compelling Preaching Initiative, funded by the Lilly Endowment and coordinated through the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship.

As a professor, I taught Ministry Leadership, Intergenerational Theory, and Youth and Family Ministry for 13 years at Calvin University on their campus and the Handlon Maximum Security Prison.

I am an author. In 2025, I will be publishing Grief is Art: 17 Ideas on How to Invite Art to Heal our Pain and Loss and On the Other Side of Healing: 51 Reflections on What We Discover as We Heal. I also contributed to Intergenerate, a textbook on Intergenerational Ministry.

I am a podcaster and have produced podcasts on topics such as The Art of Grief. In 2025, I will launch the Miracle Year podcast. I was interviewed on the Forever Forward podcast and a clip from that has been viewed over 600K times on TikTok.

I have a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary, a Bachelor of Science degree in philosophy from Wheaton College, and certifications in End-of-Life Doula Professional training from the University of Vermont, in Nonprofit Executive Leadership through the Mendoza School of Business at Notre Dame, and in the Create a Happy and Meaningful Life course at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business Executive Education program.