Meet The Chair
Neddy Yong is Co-Director of the Radically Inclusive Parenting Project and an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries. Her passion is to support diverse families with resources that nurture a compassionate and just spirituality in daily life. Neddy seeks to center the well-being of children and their parents/caregivers as a way to foster healing, wholeness, and liberation in the world.
She is co-author of recently published, Sacred Parenthood: Spiritual Practices for the Highs and Lows of Parenting which centers parenthood as a spiritual path towards collective healing and renewal. She also received an MBA where she was trained in business management and a certificate in the Art of Spiritual Direction as she is continually cultivating her spiritual direction practice.
Meet The Panelists
Rev. Dr. Aizaiah Yong is an ordained Pentecostal Christian minister, practical theologian, and contemplative practitioner whose work bridges spirituality, justice, and healing. He is the author of four books—including Multiracial Cosmotheandrism, Sacred Parenthood, and Trauma and Renewal—which have earned both national and international recognition for their contributions to theology and community transformation.
Trained in multiple psycho-spiritual healing modalities such as Internal Family Systems and the Compassion Practice, Dr. Yong integrates contemplative wisdom with practical approaches to personal and collective renewal. Dr. Yong currently serves as Executive Director of the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research at Saint John’s Abbey in Central Minnesota, where he continues to advance dialogue and innovation at the intersections of faith, culture, and human flourishing.
Lailatul Fitriyah (dia, she, her) is an Indonesian, Muslima feminist scholar who focuses on comparative Muslim and Christian feminist theologies, decoloniality, gender, and religions in Southeast Asia, and feminist interreligious dialogue. She is currently an Associate Professor of Interreligious Education at the Claremont School of Theology in Los Angeles where she teaches courses in Feminist Interreligious Dialogue, Decolonial Theories and Religions, Racism and Islamophobia, and Ethnography and Theologies. She is also a Visiting Professor at Emmanuel College in the University of Toronto, Canada.
She currently works on a manuscript on the constructions of Muslim and Christian anti-patriarchal theologies from the lives of Indonesian Migrant Domestic Workers who work and live in Singapore. Her publications can be read in journals such as, The Muslim World, Religions, and Interreligious Relations. She currently sits on the Board of Advisors for the Journal of Interreligious Studies.
Ashley Plotnick, LCSW, MAJS, M.Ed., is a psychotherapist, spiritual director, and Jewish educator with extensive experience in the Jewish community. She currently serves as the Director of Congregational Learning at a Reform congregation outside Chicago. Ashley completed training in Jewish spiritual direction and was subsequently a New Contemplative Fellow for Spiritual Directors International. She is now a spiritual director for rabbinical students, as well as a mentor for the spiritual direction training programs at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality and the Center for Engaged Compassion. Additionally, Ashley works with clergy as a spiritually oriented counselor.
This Spring, Ashley plans to graduate from Claremont School of Theology with a Doctor of Ministry degree in contemplative practice, spiritual renewal, and strategic leadership, where her research focuses on the Shekhinah as the compassionate face of God. Recently, Ashley completed training in compassion-based spiritual direction supervision, through the lens of internal family systems. Her extensive training in mindfulness practice enables her to hold each person’s story with compassion and to meet them with presence. Ashley lives with her husband and three children, her greatest loves and most important spiritual practice.
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