Tim Keller, Founder and Senior Pastor, Redeemer Presbyterian Church
Dr. Keller and his wife, Kathy, founded Redeemer Presbyterian Church in 1989. While a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary, outside Philadelphia, he served on a PCA denominational church planting team to explore the opportunity for planting a church in Manhattan. At the urging of Terry Gyger (then head of PCA church planting in North America), he and Kathy eventually accepted the assignment themselves. Their goal was to start a church that would draw the unchurched of NYC. Seventeen years later, Redeemer has grown to 4 worship services and a weekly congregation of 4500 people. Tim’s entrepreneurial vision is to build a movement of gospel-centered churches and supporting organizations that serve the city and are agents of widespread cultural renewal.
Prior to teaching at Westminster, Tim was the pastor for a church in Virginia for 9 years. He has served the PCA denomination as Director of Church Planting and Director of Mercy Ministries. He has authored 2 books, Resources for Deacons and Ministries of Mercy. He earned his MDiv at Gordon Conwell and his DMin from Westminster. Tim and Kathy are committed to promoting and nurturing the growth of new churches in the city and around the world from their home base in New York City.
Dennis Bakke, Author of Joy at Work and founder of AES Corporation and Imagine Schools
Dennis Bakke was raised in the foothills of Mount Baker in rural Washington State. He graduated from the University of Puget Sound, Harvard Business School, and the Nation War College.
Mr. Bakke co-founded The AES Corporation in 1981 and served as its president and CEO from 1994 to 2002. He helped build the international energy corporation into a multi-billion dollar company with 40,000 employees in 31 countries. He is now president and CEO of Imagine Schools, a company that operates 70 elementary and secondary (K-12) charter schools in 10 states.
Prior to 1981, Mr. Bakke worked in the Federal Energy Administration and was deputy director of the Energy Productivity Center at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Mr. Bakke is the author of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, JOY AT WORK: A Revolutionary Approach to Fun on the Job. The book is about two of Bakke’s passions: To create the most fun workplace in human history, and to teach the world the real purpose of organizations, including businesses.
Bakke has discovered that it is when we are given the opportunity to use our ability to reason, make decisions, and take responsibility for our actions, we experience joy at work.
Katherine Leary, Executive Director, Redeemer’s Center for Faith & Work
Katherine Leary is founder and executive director of The Center for Faith and Work at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. Prior to this role at Redeemer, Katherine worked for 20 years in the technology industry both in New York and California. She served as President and CEO of Pensare, Inc. in Los Altos, CA, an online management education startup. Prior to that she was President and CEO of One Touch Systems, Inc., a corporate communications hardware/software company, in San Jose, CA. In the early 90s she was President of Private Satellite Network in New York and started a European subsidiary of Satellite Network Systems in Luxembourg. She has also worked in numerous consulting, sales, and marketing roles primarily in the technology sector.
She received an MBA from the Darden School, University of Virginia and a B.A. in Psychology and Education from Wittenberg University. She became a Christian mid-career in NYC through the ministries of Redeemer Presbyterian Church.
Justin Browne, Coordinator, Redeemer’s Entrepreneurship Initiative
Justin Browne joined Redeemer’s Center for Faith and Work in February of 2005 to serve as coordinator for Redeemer’s Entrepreneurship Initiative and assist with the development of an accelerator that would help launch new gospel-centered ventures.
Before joining Redeemer, Justin worked in the finance industry for four years. He spent two years with Morgan Stanley as an investment banking analyst and then was an associate at BlackRock Financial Management for two years. He attended Princeton University where he majored in public policy and international affairs and served as both President of his class and Chairman of the Honor Committee. Originally from Atlanta, Justin has attended Redeemer since 2000 and serves as both a fellowship group leader and coordinator. His passion for using business as a means of affecting social change developed over the past two years while leading mission trips to Swaziland where he was exposed to indigenous entrepreneurs working to address the vast problems of the country.