Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie is the President/General Secretary of the National Council of Churches (NCC). She provides executive leadership to 37 denominations representing 100,000 churches and 30 million people. In this position, she provides leadership that helps these denominations to advocate and represent God’s love and promise of unity in our public square with a shared agenda of peace, progress and positive change.

Active in social justice issues for more than three decades, Bishop McKenzie served on the inaugural White House Commission of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, which worked to improve communities regardless of religious or political beliefs. She was the first female elected to episcopal office in the 200+ years of the AME Church and the first female to serve as president of its Council of Bishops and General Board. She was also the visionary behind the Payne Theological Seminary (Wilberforce, Ohio) documentaries of the Council of Bishops, four of them in the Anvil series, of which she served as executive producer and senior editor.

Bishop McKenzie is the founder of the Selah and the Leadership Encounter for Women, editor of an anthology of sermons from twenty-two preachers titled Those Sisters Can Preach, and the author of six books. She was named by Huffington Post as one of the 50 most powerful women religious leaders in the world.