Meet Our New FMN Team Members
Along with a new website and exciting program offerings coming this fall at Faith Matters Network, we are thrilled to welcome four new staff members to our team! This dynamic and brilliant crew joined us in August and come with an array of experience that will help us execute everything from administrative needs, to programming, and grant management. Read their bios below to learn more about their previous movement work and roles at Faith Matters Network!
Tyler Owens
Operations & Grant Manager
(She/Her)
Tyler R. Owens is from the Gila River Indian Community in Southern Arizona where she currently resides. Tyler has over 10 years of experience in customer service, working with high-level dignitaries, and a wide range of technical skills she has grown through youth program development opportunities, working with non-profit organizations, and community building efforts.
During her young career, she has had the opportunity to develop a variety of well-rounded capabilities, from serving as support staff to successfully leading individual projects and fundraising efforts. Ms. Owens is excited to bring her accumulated knowledge and experiences to provide meaningful and impactful backing as a servant leader to the Faith Matters Network.
Prior to joining our team, Tyler was with the Center for Rural Strategies, where she fulfilled the role of Program Associate for the Rural Assembly since March 2021. Where her focuses were set on assisting with tracking development and program progress, providing support to the Vice President of National Programs, planning virtual and in-person events, including an exhibit on urban renewal.
Casey Overton
Program Coordinator
(She/They)
Casey Overton is a radical nonprofit strategist, writer, and spiritual activist who is insistent on cultivating space for collective healing. They are the editor of “Liturgy that Matters”, an enfleshed publication, and the co-lead for Black faith programs in an affirming spiritual community. Her communications training with a faith-based nonprofit background has made narrative and other cultural metaphysics of liberation an ongoing priority in her work.
As a multi spiritual worker, they love being immersed in cooperative interfaith dialogue while creating restorative environments for marginalized populations within or beyond faith institutions. Her role with Faith Matters Network as a Project Coordinator draws on her expertise in systems analysis for co-creating spiritually sustainable cultures. She is a graduate of Hampton University and Duke Divinity School. She resides in the Powhatan lands now called Richmond, VA.
Danyelle Duckett
Administrative Coordinator
(She/Her)
Danyelle Duckett is a community project developer and recent graduate of the Illustrious North Carolina Central University with her Bachelors of Arts in Political Science with a pre-law and civic engagement/public policy concentration. She has been blessed with the vision of being able to uplift shared experiences among disenfranchised communities and create community programming in response to those issues. Danyelle has a natural passion for connecting communities through community service and has learned the structural importance of community work.
Danyelle is originally from the SE/NE part of Washington, DC, where she first gained the knowledge of how community work can change lives. She was able to intern at DC nonprofits centered around gentrification/housing equity and health accessibility and soon learned that her passion is simply helping Black and Brown communities become more aware of the true power they yield as a community. This help ranges from direct community programming/discussions, community resource navigation to directly interacting with her communities. After Danyelle found her passion, she was able to further center that passion at her time at North Carolina Central University where she programmed over 150 community service events and programming within 2 years.
She is the first person in her family to graduate college, eldest of 5, and was raised by her beautiful mother and grandmother to always have faith and follow her heart in every situation– this has been a strong centering piece for Danyelle and she carries that in every program she produces.
Frances Fitzgerald
Movement Chaplaincy Fellow
(She/Her)
Frances is a graduate student at Vanderbilt University pursuing a Master of Divinity degree. Born and raised in Nashville, TN, she graduated from Lipscomb University with her BSW degree. She spent the majority of her time in the city working with nonprofits that serve the unhoused and incarcerated communities. She is passionate about issues of social justice, especially those related to race, economic justice, and LGBTQIA+ legislation.
Frances is committed to building safe spaces of authentic community in all kinds of environments, whether that be on the streets, in jails, at a coffee shop, or on her back porch. She loves hearing people’s stories and learning about what makes them come alive. She believes that everyone deserves a seat at the table and is dedicated to both journeying with communities on the margins and working to amplify their voices. Frances is excited to join the Faith Matters Network team and dive into the spiritual work of accompaniment and intentional communal care. In her spare time, she loves to hike and spend quality time with friends.
