Born into a family with deep roots in New England and in the Episcopal Church, Tina was baptized at Grace Episcopal Church in Salem, MA, grew up at South Congregational Church in Kennebunkport, Maine, and was confirmed at St. Paul’s School in Concord, NH. In her teens and early 20s, Tina’s main “worship” experience was following the Grateful Dead, until she began working with middle school students at Freedom House in Roxbury, MA – a historic black organization and neighborhood. There Tina met Harvard educated black Pentecostals and white evangelicals committed to the church as a change agent in urban neighborhoods. They helped Tina begin to see Jesus on basketball courts, front stoops, and in community organizing. She joined a large black non-denominational church where she learned to pray, to read the bible, and to see the Spirit’s creative work in herself and in the diversity of the community around her. She went on to seminary at Gordon-Conwell, took classes at Harvard Divinity, and worked as Development Director for the Emmanual Gospel Center in the south end of Boston (a resource center for diverse Christian leaders).
Tina married and moved to Concord, NH in 1995. For the next 8 years, Tina served as Executive Director for the New Hampshire Bar Foundation – a statewide foundation that provided about $2 million a year in support of civil legal aid for low-income people. With her family of three young children, Tina moved to Santiago, Chile while her husband worked on a Fullbright fellowship for 2 years. There they experienced a wonderful ex-patriot church that was both Anglican and Presbyterian and where she began preaching regularly. Tina returned with her family to Concord, NH to serve as a faculty member and Director of Alumni Relations at St. Paul’s School, an Episcopal boarding school. Tina started the first LGBTQ+ and Alumni of Color affinity groups there. She also rejoined the Episcopal church and served as warden at St. Andrews Church in Hopkinton, NH.
In 2014, Bishop Rob Hirschfeld hired Tina to serve as assistant and special projects director, then as Canon for Ministry Development, and now as Canon to the Ordinary. Tina was also called to serve jointly as the Canon to the Ordinary in the diocese of Maine in 2023-2024. In her ten years of diocesan ministry, she launched a diocesan-wide effort to address educational inequity in the Granite State, she started a diocesan local school for ministry with the Iona Collaborative, and she currently serves as chief of staff, transition officer, Title IV case manager, and congregational developer. Tina is the clerk on the Board of the Barbara C. Harris Camp and Conference Center and a member of the Transition Ministry Conference Board.
Tina lives with her husband Matt in a closed Episcopal church in Tilton, NH – praying about ways this church building might again serve the community there. Tina and Matt are also building a home in Belfast, Maine and are members of St. Margaret’s Church there. Tina has training in coaching and in the Enneagram, which is particularly helpful with the six young adult children that she and Matt share with their co-parents. Tina loves to forage in the woods, paint watercolors, sing and play guitar, and preach and lead worship.