Rev. Dr. Marie Onwubuariri serves as the Director of Intercultural Ministries with the American Baptist Home Mission Societies in King of Prussia, PA. With a lifetime-worth of experiences and learning at the intersection of a multiplicity of cultures, Dr. Onwubuariri brings to this role a committed posture of cultural self-understanding and a cumulative approach to cross-cultural communication and competency; diversity, equity, and inclusion assessment and praxis; and racial justice and anti-racism commitment and action.
Dr. Onwubuariri served as Director of Admissions at the Berkeley School of Theology (BST) from 2008-2014, where one of her greatest joys was walking alongside prospective and current students as they discerned God’s call on their lives. Her studies and experiences as an MDiv and DMin student at BST were also important in her own journey of vocational clarity and still informs her ministry today.
She has also served as Associate General Secretary for Mission Resource Development with the American Baptist Churches USA, Regional Executive Minister of ABC Wisconsin, Pastor/staff at three America Baptist churches in the San Francisco Bay area, ecumenical cross-cultural competency trainer, volunteer roles throughout the America Baptist denomination and in her local communities, and an executive in the retail industry in New York City and San Francisco. She is an active American Baptist church member with the Upper Merion Baptist Church in King of Prussia, PA.
Her educational training includes a BS in Business Management at Binghamton University (NY), and a Master of Divinity and Doctor of Ministry at BST (Berkeley, CA). She is author of “Reframing tension for transformation: bridge-crossing | bridge-making | bridge-being” (Review & Expositor, 118, April 2022), co-editor of Trouble the Water: A Christian Resource for the Work of Racial Justice (Nurturing Faith, 2017), and continues to develop her doctoral work focused on holistic intercultural transformational leaders through a character-forming spiritual practice of cultural self-knowing and negotiation.
