The Team

Rev. Diane Ford Dessables

Founder

Rev. Diane Ford Dessables’ vocational work at the intersection of faith and money in marginalized communities of color during this era of ecological strain, demographic shift and transformative healing, was spiritually-inspired in Haiti in 2009.

On Juneteenth, 2019, she launched a critical conversation on “beliefs, shifting values and resources” among and for people of color in the U.S., through a Gemstones in the Sun LLC blog. In 2020, Diane founded Gemstones in the Sun Incorporated, a nonprofit organization that offers additional platforms and ways for POC globally to heal together from the damages they endure from living in or being subjected to the corrosive aspects of white cultural normative society, and from their addiction to that society.

In 2002, in her capacity as a seminary trained and professionally ordained minister, Diane partnered with national and transnational coalitions, networks, and social movements on behalf of impoverished communities, both in the U.S. and abroad, while in service to the United Church of Christ on behalf of its 1.2 million members and 6,000 congregations. In 2007, Diane became a community organizer for the Barack Obama Presidential campaign in the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Tidewater region. In 2008, she served as the mainline church relations associate for Bread for the World, where her national anti-hunger community work portfolio spanned the horizon of 54 mainline protestant denominations until December 31, 2016.

In 2000 and 2001, she received a Master’s degree in Divinity and Communication from Boston University, specializing in the integrated study of media, religion, and society.

Diane, who is a bisexual Washington DC area native, is also an active recovery community member. She and her spouse, Djalòki Dessables, who is of Haitian descent, are the proud parents of four adults.

Diane’s pronouns are she/her. She currently lives in Central America.

Paul Delaney

ChiEf Editor

Paul began his reporting career at the Atlanta Daily World, where he covered the the start of the civil rights movement’s important events and figures in Atlanta before moving on to the Dayton Daily News in Ohio, and then to the Washington, D.C., Evening Star. He later was the first black reporter in the Washington Bureau of the New York Times, where he reported on politics, urban affairs, civil rights, among other topics. He later worked in the paper’s Chicago bureau before becoming its first black editor. He also served as bureau chief in Madrid and ended his 23 years at the Times as senior editor.

He became the first African American chairman of the University of Alabama’s journalism department and served as editorial page editor at the startup black weekly Our World News, and later wrote editorials for the Baltimore Sun. He was also director of both the Center for the Study of Race and Media at Howard University and the Initiative on Racial Mythology at the Gene Media Forum of Syracuse University.

As one of the 44 National Association of Black Journalists founders and a recipient of its 2010 NABJ Lifetime Achievement Award, Paul's talent, experience and longstanding commitment to break down racial and racist barriers is why he is revered by many as "a journalists' journalist."