John Dempsey Parker
John’s current collaborators and colleagues include the Ormond Center at Duke Divinity School, the Institute for Emerging Issues at NC State University, the Beloved Community Center of Greensboro, the NC Council of Churches, Kim Pevia, and the NC Rural Center. His community connections include the Southeast Raleigh Table, Zen Peacemakers, plus board service with Repairers of the Breach, and Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries. John splits his time between North Carolina and Louisiana, and primarily works in communities throughout in the U.S. South.
John’s career includes directing a community development collaborative, community development finance, business and organizational development, teaching cultural and applied anthropology and nonprofit management, ethnographic research, and a variety of consulting work with small businesses, nonprofits, and philanthropic organizations.
John is from Moore County, North Carolina, part of the Sandhills area in the upper Cape Fear and Lumber River basins in the Piedmont region – historic and present homeland to descendants of the Pee Dee, Catawba, Shakori, Tuscarora, Lumbee, among other indigenous peoples. He received a BA at Wake Forest University in anthropology, international relations, and politics, a MA in applied anthropology from the University of Memphis, a certificate in nonprofit management from Duke University, and a M.Div. from Duke Divinity School.