Speaker Bios
JOIN FOR A MORE INTIMATE CONVERSATION LED BY SOME OF THE SHARPEST MINDS IN THE CHURCH
Morning Panelists
Sister Arthur Gordon
Sister Arthur has been a member of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul for the past 64 years. She is a nurse by profession and has worked in Daughters of Charity hospitals in northern and southern California establishing clinics for the poor and doing community outreach. She served in health care in Africa for 11 years in Siera Leone, Angola, and Kenya. For the last 5 years she has been in Santa Barbara, where she serves as Vice President for Mission Integration and Archives, as well as Supervisor for the Fr. Virgil Cordano Center for the Homeless.
Jeff Shaffer
Jeff graduated from San Jose State University with a bachelor’s degree in Religious Studies. He studied at Western Seminary in Los Gatos before moving to Santa Barbara with his wife Julia in 1992 to pastor at Community Covenant Church in Santa Barbara. He was the interim Senior Pastor there until leaving to join Christian Associates International in 2005. At that point he began working with marginalized people groups in Santa Barbara County. He began his initial work with Friends without Homes at Pershing Park with a meal sharing he started there in 2005. He organized a tutoring program, kids club, and helped create a library for at risk youth while Director at the Village Apartments on the Westside. He helped initiate the first Vulnerability Index in tandem with our Point in Time count in 2011. He served as the coordinator of homeless services county wide from 2012-2019 under the United Way of Northern County. From 2013 to 2022 he was the Director of Initiatives with Santa Barbara ACT – a local non-profit dedicated to working with and for the marginalized in Santa Barbara. Under SB ACT he helped coordinate services for survivors of human trafficking and sexual exploitation under the Human Trafficking Task Force and worked to reduce homelessness and its impacts in the city of Santa Barbara. He has recently taken a new full-time position with Kingdom Causes, Inc. as their Santa Barbara Catalyst. His work with KCI includes coordination for the County’s Human Trafficking Task Force combating local labor and sexual exploitation and focusing on mentoring Westmont College students to learn to “do justice” in the County of Santa Barbara.
Karla Can
Karla has been Legal Director of Immigrant Hope Santa Barbara for three years and Accredited Representative for eight years, helping immigrant families understand the complexities of the U.S. immigration system. Being the first generation in her immigrant family to graduate from a 4-year university, God has called her to serve and love her immigrant neighbors in the community and from other parts of the world. Along with advocating for immigrant families, she also trains and equips others in their journey towards accreditation so they too can serve their immigrant neighbors.
Landon Ranck
Landon is a Santa Barbara native who has worked in SB-based nonprofits and faith-based initiatives for the past 10 years. Landon currently serves as the Associate Director for SB ACT, a nonprofit focused on bringing together partners from various sectors to address social issues ranging from homelessness to immigration.
Afternoon Breakout Facilitators
Pat Wheatley
Pat has worked professionally in human services primarily in Santa Barbara for over 47 years. In that capacity she developed and ran 24 hr. crisis intervention and information and referral services for Santa Barbara County. Later she established senior services at Goleta Valley Hospital. In 2000 she established and then directed First Five, California’s Children’s and Families Act for Santa Barbara County for 14 years. In those years she was also actively involved in the development and start of Transition House, volunteering as a case worker for 17 years.
Pat held a leadership role when Grace Lutheran Church transitioned from being a 113-year worshiping community to the establishment of a living legacy of faith gifting part of their property to the Housing Authority for the City of Santa Barbara which then became Grace Village, home for 57 low-income senior adults. Through this process the congregation also established the non-profit Grace Housing, Inc. which continues to oversee income generated from other leased properties of the church’s property and has provided funding of over one million dollars to local agencies providing basic needs to our community.
As a retired volunteer, Pat serves as the Chair of the Housing Authority for the City of Santa Barbara, as an active volunteer and board member for Transition House, and the Grace Housing, Inc. board of directors. She and her husband Joe are active at the Free Methodist Church of Santa Barbara.
Pat will facilitate the afternoon breakout session Discovering the church in the shelter: From Homelessness to Housing.
Nikki Ramage
Nikki graduated from Westmont College in Religious Studies in 2014 and from Azusa Pacific University with her MDIV in 2017. She loves gathering books and sometimes reading them, enjoys playing pickleball rather passionately, and is thrilled to have called Santa Barbara home for over a decade. Nikki loves “on the ground” theological education, community engagement, and communicating God's Good News in creative ways. She can't believe that dreams really do come true, and she gets to fulfill her vocation as a pastor at this church. Nikki is so thankful to be a part of such a loving and freedom focused denomination and local church.
Nikki, along with friends from Bethel House, will facilitate the afternoon breakout session Discovering the church in the program: From addiction to recovery.
She will also moderate the morning’s panel discussion.
Kayla Petersen
Kayla is an East Coast transplant to Santa Barbara and Westmont College alumna. Since her time at Westmont, she has participated in several initiatives focused on bringing together members of the community to address complex social problems. She did this first as a staff member with the Westmont Center for Dialogue and Deliberation (WCDD), then with SB ACT coordinating holistic services for folks experiencing homelessness in Santa Barbara. Most recently, Kayla has joined the Kingdom Causes, Inc. (KCI) team to support student and church community engagement initiatives and coordination of the SB County Human Trafficking Task Force.
Kayla will facilitate the afternoon breakout session Discovering the church in the safe house: From trafficking awareness to eradication.
Daniel "DJ" Johnsen
DJ is the Catalytic Neighborhood Impact Coordinator with Kingdom Causes, Inc., after having served for 5 years as Director of Compassion, Mercy, and Justice at Oceanhills Covenant Church. DJ loves Santa Barbara, both the place and its people. He has a passion for building bridges across cultural, generational, and socioeconomic divides because, he believes, our personal flourishing is bound up with the flourishing of our whole community. DJ has spent almost a decade in the SB area organizing groups and initiatives that improve the lives of unhoused peoples, underserved youth, and, in general, those who often go unseen.
DJ, along with June Michaelsen and some unlikely friends, will facilitate the afternoon breakout session Discovering the church around the table: From isolation to community.
