The Reverend Dr. Carolyn A. L. McCrary has a rich and diverse background that has spanned more than thirty years encompassing the fields of education and pastoral counseling. This background has afforded Dr. McCrary extensive travel opportunities to approximately 17 countries where she has presented various lectures and has represented numerous organizations.

Dr. McCrary has earned several advanced degrees—most notably a Bachelor of Arts from Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina and a Master of Divinity from the Interdenominational Theological Center (ITC) in Atlanta, Georgia where she graduates summa cum laude. She was the first African-American woman to receive a Doctor of Theology from Atlanta Theological Association. She has also completed coursework at Brown University and CentroIntercultural de Documentation in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Coursework at the L’Universite de Lyon in Lyon, France earned Dr. McCrary the certificate mention bien in French Language and Literature.

Dr. McCrary’s experience within the educational arena has been equally as varied. She has served as an instructor at Malcolm X Liberation University in Durham, North Carolina and at the ITC. She has held a professorship at St. Pual Theological College in Limuru, Kenya and currently serves on the faculty of the Interdenominational Theological Center as Associate Professor of Pastoral Care and Counseling. Dr. McCrary is an ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. She has presented at the historic African Methodist Episcopal Women in Ministry Connectional Conference in 1991 and at the Faith, Order, and Ministry Convocation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church held in 1999. She has also served as the keynote speaker and workshop facilitator for the Women in Ministry Celebration of the South Central Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church. Her article, "Pastoral Care and the Local Church" was recently published in the new edition of The Pastor’s Manual of the A.M.E.Church for the 21^st Century.

Besides experience within the educational and religious arenas, Dr. McCrary has provided leadership in other areas. She has served as the co-director of the Religious Heritage of the African World (RHAW) program at the ITC as well as the co-leader of the Travel/Study Institute to the Sixth General Assembly of the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC), which met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 1997. She has also served as a pastoral counselor and preschool consultant for the Migrant Mexican Farm Workers of Longmont, California and the Faith/Nutrition/Teaching Center in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She currently serves as a part-time teacher/facilitator for the Mission Resource Center of the United Methodist Church and as a Theological Reflection Leader for the Ford Fellows Program of the Office of Black Women in Church and Society. She is also serving as a scholar for the Womanist Scholar Program.

Among her numerous international experiences, Dr. McCrary has presented the paper "Authority Issues, Internalized Oppression and the Incorporation of Positive Object Represntations: Empress Taytu, Harriet Tubman, and Liberating Leadership Values" during the Sixth Assembly of the All Africa Conference of the Churches in 1997. She has also served as the ITC/APPC African American Task Force representative to the Sixth International Congress of Pastoral Care and Counseling (ICPCC) Conference held in Accra, Ghana in 1999. Further, she has been selected to serve as the African American Seminary Representative to the first coordinating committee of African and African American Pastoral Counselors for the African Association for Pastoral Studies and Counseling Conference to be held in Cameroons, West Africa in 2001.

Dr. McCrary has received several awards and honors including the National Alumni Association Achievement Award from Turner Theological Seminary in Atlanta, Georgia and a Faculty Development Grant for sabbatical teaching and study in Kenya, East Africa. In addition, Dr. McCrary is currently serving as a scholar within the Womanist Scholars Program through the Office of Black Women in Church and Society. She is a certified member of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors and a founding member of the Racial Ethnic Taskforce of the Association of Clinical Pastoral Educators. In 1997, this association honored as one of the founders of the Racial Ethnic Minority (REM) Invitational. Dr. McCrary is a charter member of the Atlanta University Center Faculty Learned Society and is a member of Delta Sigma Theta.

Dr. McCrary has contributed to several publications most notably Stories About Ethiopia: An African Holy Land and The Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center. She served as the contributing editor for the spring 1998 edition of the journal and has contributed to the Journal of Pastoral Theology. Her article Interdependence as a Norm for Pastoral Counseling with African Americans"—an outflow of her dissertation topic—is one of the works published within the book The Recovery of Black Presence—An Interdisciplinary Exploration edited by Randall C. Bailey and Jacquelyn Grant.

Dr. McCrary is the mother of Alexandra, Micah, and William IV and currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia.

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