Staff
Graham Reside, PhD, Executive Director
Graham Reside comes to the Cal Turner Program with a background in leadership development and academic training in the areas of sociology of religion and morality. His interests include ethics, sociology of culture and religion, sociology of the professions, and the sociology of emotions. Dr. Reside's research and teaching interests are in the role of social institutions as schools of moral formation. Through the shaping of our ideas, values and sentiments, the various professional spheres provide particular moral understandings of the virtuous self and the good society. As the director of the Cal Turner Program, Graham seeks to facilitate discussions across the various professions about their moral purposes and perspectives and to encourage professionals to consider how they contribute to the common good.
Laine Walters Young, PhD, Assistant Director of the Cal Turner Program for Moral Leadership in the Professions
Dr. Laine Walters Young is the Assistant Director of the Cal Turner Program for Moral Leadership in the Professions at Vanderbilt University. She received her PhD from Vanderbilt in Religion, Psychology and Culture, and considers herself a feminist care ethicist working at the intersection of psychology and ethics. She has experience in non-profit administration as well as a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School where she studied Religion in Public Life, storytelling, and the possibilities of pluralism. Further back, she studied journalism and global studies at Pacific Lutheran University, a culmination of growing up in the Pacific Northwest.
At the Cal Turner Program, she directs the interprofessional student fellowship at Vanderbilt, a group of 18 masters-level students who journey together over a year to deepen their moral awareness and gain leadership skill. She also plays a main role in designing and hosting the Program’s additional events, workshops, and courses on a variety of moral leadership subjects such as conflict transformation, restorative justice, educating for trauma-informed care, and cultivating courage.
In her free time, you can find her nose deep in a sci-fi novel, baking with her first-grade son Theodore, or eating her husband’s fabulous cooking.
laine.c.walters.young@vanderbilt.edu
A'Leeyah Ponder, Graduate Assistant
A’Leeyah Ponder is a second year Master of Divinity student hailing from Austell, Georgia. Ponder is a first-generation college student, independent journalist, creative, and womanist theologian. She’s an Alumni of The University of Alabama where she studied News Media Journalism and Criminal Justice. Her professional experience lies within the realm of Multimedia Journalism (News Broadcasting), Sports media, and Criminal justice nonprofit work. Ponder is studying Black Religion and Culture Studies and Religion and the Arts at Vanderbilt’s Divinity School. She is passionate about mental health, social and criminal justice advocacy, and youth ministry.
Ponder’s passionate pursuit of a program that would aid her in exploring professional opportunities aligned with her goals for social justice, mental health awareness, artistic expression and global equity and inclusion. These goals inspired her to become a graduate assistant for the program. She believes strong leaders are critical to the workforce, but Moral Leaders are vital for transformational impact in and outside of the workforce. Ponder says The Cal Turner Program is helping students amplify the light they already have by providing them with a space to discuss their ethical and moral convictions as leaders.