Rev. Elizabeth Styron Howze

Program Director

Rev. Elizabeth Styron Howze serves as Program Director of the Ormond Center’s Lilly grant initiatives. In this capacity, she led the theological integration, and 2022 launch of the Community Craft Collaborative (CCC) curriculum, which is based on the human ecology framework. The CCC teaching, training and learning materials are designed to help nurture faith-inspired imagination alongside faith-informed action through interactive, co-learning, and co-creation among the academy, the church, and the communities that they share. This curriculum has experienced success across multiple sites in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. This unique faith-based, community-academic partnership course development process was published for local, rural and global consumption in a co-authored article, “Faith-based community-academic partnerships: An asset-based community development strategy for social change,” which appears in Gateways: International Journal of Community Research and Engagement, Vol. 16, No. 2, December 2023.  

Elizabeth is an Ordained Elder in the AME Zion church. Before joining the Ormond team, she served as the Sr. Program Manager for Faith and Justice Initiatives at Youth Empowered Solutions (YES!) where she led the programmatic efforts of YES! to strengthen and sustain collaborative partnerships with clergy, congregations, and communities through curriculum development and facilitation. Elizabeth has over 10 years of experience in developing community-level teaching, training, and learning programs and a proven track record of success in program management, project implementation, and community outreach within diverse settings.