The Rev. Liz Walker's transformative journey from television news reporter to pastor began with an inauspicious start.
"My first day at Harvard Divinity School was September 11, 2001," said the former anchor at WBZ-TV in Boston. "I was coming out of the chaos of a newsroom that didn't know anything or what was happening, over to this place—where everyone was finding meaning. It was a moment, and that is how I describe my call to ministry and my life."
Walker, MDiv '05, spoke on the HDS campus recently on the topic "The Div School Risk?" Her talk, which was broadcast to alumni around the world via live stream from Andover Hall, marked this year's first installment of the "Divinity Dialogues" alumni speaker series.
During the course of the 2015–16 "Divinity Dialogues" series, Dr. S. Joshua Thomas, MTS '02, chairperson of the HDS Alumni/Alumnae Council, will be exploring the theme of risk in three conversations with distinguished graduates. Questions that will be addressed include: What are the risks of coming to HDS? What risks do students take while here? And, how are students empowered to take risks after graduation?
In the world of television news, Walker thought she knew all the answers, but going into ministry and starting on the path to become Reverend Walker was like "swimming in the deep end of the pool."
But leaving network news and a position that was both secure and that paid well wasn't Walker's only risk.
In July 2001, just months before her first day at HDS, she visited the Sudan to explore allegations of an emerging slave trade. While filming on the ground in Sudan, Walker spoke to people about slavery and their experiences.
In response to hearing the tragic stories that emerged, she co-founded, alongside the Rev. Gloria White-Hammond, MDiv '97, My Sister's Keeper—a humanitarian organization that focuses on economic and educational initiatives for Sudanese women and girls. In 2007, My Sister's Keeper opened a school for young women. The day it opened, a thousand students enrolled.
Today, Walker serves as the pastor of Roxbury Presbyterian Church (RPC), where she works on issues of healing in a neighborhood where, as she explained, "there is a lot of pain and a lot of rage."
At RPC, Walker creates open spaces for listening and talking to other people. At Harvard, Walker cherished the space to dialogue, where one could simply think and engage with one's community.
Walker chose to accept the risk of attending HDS, then grasped the opportunity to saturate her life with meaning in a quest to serve community. Inspired by her experiences at the School, she's attempting to foster safe spaces in underserved communities.
"I never thought that anything could be more exciting than television news, but that was just preparation for the work that I'm doing now," she said.
—by Orli Robin, MTS candidate