Speakers

Daisy Machado
Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean
Lexington Theological Seminary

Daisy L. Machado, born in Cuba, emigrated with her parents to New York City at the age of three where she was raised and educated. With her ordination in 1981, she was one of the first U.S. Latina ordained as minister in the Christian Church (Disciples). She has served inner city Latino congregations in Connecticut, Spanish Harlem in Manhattan, and Brooklyn, New York. She has also worked as pastor developer of two Latino Disciples congregations - one in Houston, Texas, Iglesia Cristiana El Redentor, and a second in Fort Worth, Iglesia Cristiana Camino de Paz.

In 1996 Ms. Machado graduated with a Ph.D. in the history of Christianity from the University of Chicago. From 1996-1999 Ms. Machado served as the Program Director of the Hispanic Theological Initiative, a $3.3 million dollar project funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts then housed at the Candler School of Theology, Emory University. In 1999 Ms. Machado had the honor of receiving a "Distinguished Alumni Award" from her alma mater, Brooklyn College, and was named to list of "100 Most Influential Hispanics in the United States" by the Hispanic Business Magazine, October 2003. In the spring 2003 semester she was invited to teach at Harvard Divinity School as the Henry Luce Guest Scholar in Urban Ministry. In June 2004 the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians in the U.S. (ACHTUS) gave Ms. Machado the "Virgilio Elizondo Award" for "her stature within the Hispanic/Latino/a theological community...and [for] her singular efforts to build bridges across religious, denominational and theological boundaries."

Her publications include more than 15 chapters in books, more than ten articles in journals and encyclopedias, as well as sermons in collections of sermons by women. She is also co-editor of a collection of essays on Latina feminism in the United States published by the University of Texas Press in spring 2002 under the title "A Reader in Latina Feminist Theology: Religion and Justice." In 2003 her book "Of Borders and Margins: Hispanic Disciples in the Southwest, 1888-1942," was published by Oxford University Press as part of the AAR Scholars Series.

Ms. Machado continues to teach, lecture, write and is particularly interested in the concept of "borderlands" which is a multilayered word that not only refers to a specific geographic location, but for Latinas and other women of color also refers to a social, economic, political, and personal location within the dominant culture.

Biography used, with permission, from the Lexington Theological Seminary website.