Emilie Townes

Emilie Maureen Townes (born August 1, 1955, Durham, North Carolina) is an American Christian social ethicist and theologian, currently Dean and E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of Womanist Ethics and Society at the Vanderbilt University Divinity School. She was the first African-American woman to be elected president of the American Academy of Religion in 2008 and served as president of the Society for the Study of Black Religion from 2013–2016. 
Education and career.
Townes holds degrees from the University of Chicago (AB in Religion in the Humanities, AM in Religion, DMin) and from the joint Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary/Northwestern University program (PhD). She taught at Saint Paul School of Theology, Union Theological Seminary in New York, and Yale Divinity School, holding named chairs at both Union and Yale. In 2013 she became Dean of Vanderbilt Divinity School. She has been an ordained American Baptist minister since 1980.