Heidi Kim, the Episcopal Coalition for Racial Equity and Justice’s first executive director, has broad experience as a nonprofit leader in organizational development, capacity building and communication, and in working for the church.
[Episcopal News Service] The Coalition for Racial Equity and Justice, an association of Episcopalians and Episcopal entities dedicated to addressing racial healing in The Episcopal Church, has hired Heidi Kim to serve as its first executive director. She will begin her new role on Feb. 1.
“As a faithful Episcopalian, Korean American immigrant and citizen, proud resident of Minneapolis, and lay woman who has engaged issues of equity and justice for decades, I am humbled by this opportunity,” Kim said in a Jan. 30 press release.
Kim, a member of Executive Council from the Episcopal Church in Minnesota, previously served as the diocese’s racial justice and healing commission chair and The Episcopal Church’s staff officer for racial reconciliation. She also served as the interim canon for discipleship in the Richmond-based Diocese of Virginia.
“I welcome Heidi’s community building skills and her leadership towards building the Beloved Community that God intends and calls us to be,” said The Rev. John E. Kitagawa, chair of the coalition’s steering group and a priest in the Diocese of Arizona, said in the press release. “She is a devoted Episcopal lay leader who combines broad knowledge and experience of the Church with passionate and demonstrated commitment to racial equity and justice.”
As executive director of the coalition, Kim will work with individuals and groups to form partnerships and share resources for dismantling white supremacy and racism.
“Heidi Kim has emerged as the candidate best suited to lead the coalition at this moment of heightened need,” Joe McDaniel Jr., member of the coalition and a lay member of Executive Council from the Diocese of the Pensacola, Florida-based Central Gulf Coast, told ENS in an email. “[Kim] brings deep experience in faith-based organizing, policy advocacy, community healing work and a demonstrated commitment to centering voices from communities of color.”
Episcopal leaders have spent the past four years envisioning, creating and activating the coalition, under a mandate adopted in 2022 by the 80th General Convention. The coalition, incorporated in New York as an independent nonprofit in 2024, is intended as a network of support for congregations, dioceses and other Episcopal institutions in their efforts to address the church’s historic and ongoing complicity in white supremacy and racist systems and the lingering effects of colonialism.
The coalition’s founding resolution was based on a series of recommendations made by a committee formed in 2021 by then-Presiding Bishop Michael Curry and the Rev. Gay Clark Jennings, the House of Deputies president at the time. Curry’s and Jennings’ intention was to press the church to make long-term and lasting commitments to its ongoing racial healing framework.
By establishing a voluntary coalition of dioceses, parishes, church institutions and individuals, Episcopal leaders hope to improve the church’s uneven track record of prioritizing racial reconciliation and healing, at the denominational level and across its more than 100 dioceses.
In the press release, Kim evoked the ongoing, often violent, federal immigration raids in Minneapolis, where the Episcopal Church in Minnesota is based. Episcopalians locally and nationwide have joined rallies, vigils and other events alongside interfaith partners and tens of thousands of protesters in recent weeks.
“As I have watched the cruelty and injustice taking place in my city, I have also seen the beauty of what is possible when diverse groups of like-minded people come together to care for and protect one another,” Kim said.
“Episcopalians throughout the church are engaging in innovative ministries of love and justice in their local contexts. I am excited about the possibilities of what we might do together through the coalition’s mission of serving as a hub for connection and mutual support. I invite Episcopalians everywhere to join us for such a time as this.”