Alumni Q&A: Anna del Castillo, MDiv '21
Anna del Castillo, MDiv ’21, never pictured herself attending Harvard Divinity School. She was born and raised in Mississippi as the daughter of a United Methodist Minister mother and first-generation immigrant father. Through her parents, she grew up connected to community organizers, her faith, and faith-based justice work, and she knew her vocation would lie at the intersection of these themes.
Anna's lived experiences led her to realize that her “call to religion isn't necessarily in a sanctuary or a pulpit. It's on the streets and in secular institutions where there is a great need for understanding the way that religion can inform us about injustice, justice, and peacebuilding.” This call led Del Castillo to Tufts University, where she studied international relations and colonialism studies, and ultimately to pursue a Master of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School, where she focused on racial justice and healing.
Shir Lovett-Graff: What is your current work, and how does it draw from your experiences and learning at RPL/HDS?
Anna del Castillo: I see my work in the world as building at the intersection of justice, politics, and healing. Currently, I'm transitioning from my role as the Deputy Director for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) at the White House to a leadership role with the organization Our Own Deep Wells: Awakening Soulful Practices for Wellness (OODW). At my DEIA role, I ensured that folks on this campus feel seen, heard, and valued. I could bring DEIA to the forefront of conversations, not only for those who work in the White House, but more broadly in the federal government. This belonging work is tied in many ways to the skills I learned through RPL. Now at OODW, I work with a team that focuses on the ways that spirituality and religious practices can support those experiencing mental health crises. We bring in a deep well of soulful practices from diverse religious traditions and teach them to people who struggle to feel like they belong to themselves. In both roles, I see myself as a practitioner of belonging; my goal is to help others feel like they belong to themselves and all living beings.
What the world really needs right now is healing. And I think people need to feel like they belong to each other. And to me, belonging work is so connected to the work of just peace; to build peace, there must be repair, and repair can come through belonging. This is one way I thread all the work that I've been up to in the last couple of years together. It’s all working at this intersection of justice and healing.
SLG: How do you understand your current and past work in relation to cultivating just peace?
ADC: My work is mainly focused on helping historically excluded people experience belonging and wellness, and ensuring that they can not only survive, but thrive. The DEIA movement is a way for me to ensure that there is justice for those who are underrepresented or have not been allowed into certain vocations, especially in the decision-making spaces where their voices are critically needed. We all deserve to feel a sense of belonging and to heal from the structural violence that plagues all of us.
As the deputy director of DEIA for the White House, I attempted to uplift the importance of centering equity and justice in the work of the administration, believing that DEI is more than a check box initiative, but that it requires real reflection, reckoning, and unlearning. I facilitated difficult conversations around belonging, racial justice, and equity. The work wasn't easy, but it is necessary. Now, on the team for OODW, I help others tap into the parts of religion that allow us to connect to our internal knowing, fostering healing. At OODW, we are attempting to share the gifts of religion with those who don't have a religious background in a way that is inclusive and invitational. I see both of these roles as contributing to building just peace in this world. This work is long-game work because we are undoing generations of injustice. We are bridging the gap between the world as it is and the world as it should be.
SLG: Where does the study of religion fit into the process of cultivating just peace?
RPL allowed me to examine religion in a way that deepened my understanding of societal injustices and showed me the possibilities for addressing the urgent challenges of our time. Religion is often used to cause harm, division, and exclusion, but it has also been used as this powerful energy to further movements for racial justice, which is where I focus a lot of my time and energy. Studying religion provides possibilities for imagining a more peaceful and just world, but I would be remiss if I didn't say religion has also caused a lot of the harm that we're trying to repair. It’s a circle of harm and repair, harm and repair; it's all entangled, but places like Harvard Divinity School and OODW are working to remove the harm, and I'm grateful to be part of both communities.
SLG: How do you understand cross-disciplinary work connected to just peace?
ADC: I see this merging of worlds as the path to lasting social change. It's going to take multiple hands to build the world that we're striving for, a world of just peace. Unless varying perspectives are brought to the same table, there will continue to be division. People also burn out, but when you build a strong collective, a beautiful chorus where everyone sings together, then when one person gets tired, they can take a step back to rest and there's still an expansive and soaring chorus singing for all to hear." Building this collective, this chorus, that spans across disciplines, regions, religions, and identities can lead us to just peace and collective liberation. That's the song I want to sing.
by Shir Lovett-Graff, MTS '24 and Scarlett Rose Ford, MTS '25