Today we speak with Vanesa Gomez Brake, the Associate Dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California. Vanessa’s amazing because she is the first Humanist Chaplain to be a Dean of Religious Life in any American University.
In her role, she works to support and promote university religious and spiritual life, serving the spiritual needs of all students regardless of their religious perspective.
Vanessa’s fascinating because even though she became nonreligious in her teens, she studied religion at university and got a Master of Divinity degree - meaning she has spent years studying religion and religious identity as a sort of outsider. She’s thought about how all people can benefit from religious and spiritual practices, even if they don’t have religious beliefs.
We spoke to her because she is an expert in understandin ...