Deborah Jian Lee is an award-winning journalist, radio producer, and author of Rescuing Jesus: How People of Color, Women and Queer Christians are Reclaiming Evangelicalism. She is an editor and reporter at The Economic Hardship Reporting Project, a nonprofit journalism organization supporting independent journalists covering economic inequality in America. She has worked as a staff reporter for the Associated Press, taught journalism at Columbia University, and contributed to Foreign Policy, Slate, Playboy, TIME, WBEZ, WNYC and many others. She was named a finalist for the Livingston Awards and won a Newswomen’s Club of New York Front Page Award.

Of becoming an RPL Fellow, Lee says, “As a religion journalist, I am excited to teach students how to harness the power of reporting and writing to tell vital stories about faith, spirituality and the human experience. To do this alongside Harvard Divinity School professors and professionals across disciplines is thrilling. I’m looking forward to collaborating with my colleagues as we prepare students to bring religious literacy to whichever profession they pursue.”

Lee hopes to equip her students with the skills to tell vivid, impactful stories. She explains, “Good storytelling is powerful. It can transport someone to an unfamiliar world, it can expand compassion and empathy, it can shatter stereotypes, it can forge new bonds, it can compel change.”