Learn more about the AHA’s new executive director!
TheHumanist.com: What is your educational and work background?
I’m driven by a deep belief in the dignity of all people, and have spent my career building programs and movements that help people realize it in themselves and defend it in others.
For years, I was the Director of Programs at a non-profit called Peace First, which trained and funded youth activists around the world to design and lead social innovation projects in their communities—students leading the first sex-ed programs in their rural village in Kenya, young people standing up programs to prevent and protest gun violence in the US. We helped young people around the globe fight for social justice and find meaning through service.
From there, I joined the tech startup world, creating digital programs to help kids build positive mental health. I ran the research and curriculum team at a company that was creating a secular, gender-inclusive Scouting program for kids, and we launched beloved chapters in five cities until we pivoted to building apps that helped kids and their parents build confidence through stories and research-based exercises.
In between, I’ve studied developmental psychology at Harvard and Yale, helped build youth organizing programs for Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation and the Red Cross, managed progressive campaigns, and performed stand-up comedy in thirteen states. It’s been a wild ride, and I’m excited to bring all this experience to the AHA!
TheHumanist.com: How did you first learn about humanism?
I first learned about the AHA when my father, Pete Stark, accepted the AHA’s Humanist of the Year Award in 2008. I remember that banquet and the ways people talked about humanism—a belief system that believed everyone counted and mattered, believed in giving people the tools to live life on their own terms, believed in seeking truth and confirming it by way of reason not by edict of authority. And I realized it was where I belonged.
I got involved with the student humanist group at Yale back when Chris Stedman was running it, and that’s where I deepened my understanding of it. And I’m excited to have enrolled in programs at the AHA Education Center to go even further.
TheHumanist.com: Did you grow up in a traditional religious faith? How did it impact you?
Growing up in my family, we believed deeply: in people, our obligations to one another, the importance of respecting human dignity, and the power of collective action to solve problems. But not in God.
Other families went to church on Sunday—the only thing I remember doing routinely on Sunday was that in the fall of an election year, we went to the union hall, got our door-knocking packets, and went out canvassing. I still got donuts and I got to go outside, so I felt like I was getting the good end of the deal.
When I was in middle school, I had a brief dalliance with Christianity that started with a fear of death. My dad was about 75 at the time and had had some health scares—I was terrified of losing him, and very aware of my own mortality. And at some point I got it in my head that maybe the way to feel better about all of this, to not be so scared and worried about loss and nothingness, was to get right with Jesus.
I was probably the only twelve-year-old boy in America who was nervous to tell his parents he wanted to start going to church. They were a little confused, but of course they were cool about it—but I felt too awkward asking them to take me when I knew no part of them wanted to be there. So for three years, I went to church exclusively when I was at summer camp. They would ask on Saturday night who would want to go to church on Sunday morning, and I’d get up early to meet the three other kids who were devout enough to spend a summer camp Sunday at church out by the dining hall, and we’d go to the Lutheran church in Hackensack, Minnesota. I learned about praying, and I would try to pray. I heard about what God wanted from me—which seemed, really, like a list of what he didn’t want me to do, the thoughts I had that I wasn’t supposed to have—and I really tried to be good because at a certain point I was not just hoping to be forever with my family in heaven but, after a few good sessions at church, terrified of hell.
And after a few years I just realized it was not for me. No offense to people who it is for. I gave it the old college try and never felt a genuine connection or true feeling of belief. And while I’m sure this was more about the specific churches I semi-attended and the perpetual pressures of adolescence, I don’t remember ever feeling more shame or fear than I did when I thought about how bad I was at following the doctrine.
The singing was the best part, but even then, I couldn’t get through “Trust and Obey.” That’s never been me. I wasn’t particularly good at obeying the authorities in my life on earth, and the idea of obeying something I wasn’t sure I believed in started to get my back up the more I heard it.
And so around 2008, I went back to being “nothing in particular”—around the time I encountered the AHA, and started referring to myself as a Humanist. Later, after college and living in West Virginia, I found Unitarian Universalism and became a member of that community as well.
TheHumanist.com: What interested you most about working for the American Humanist Association?
The AHA’s work is needed now more than ever.
As religious fundamentalists work to enact theocratic policies across America, we need organizations that will full-throatedly fight for the secular traditions that protect us all from coerced belief—nonbelievers and believers alike.
As the loneliness crisis deepens, we need to strengthen the community institutions that connect humanists and allow us to nurture and support one another.
As more and more young people come of age disconnected from religion but yearning for meaning, we want to offer them something to believe in: A framework to rejoice, hope, serve, and make meaning without the need for a God.
The AHA’s work unites the three things that have driven me my entire career: building a world where people belong, helping people flourish, and fighting for social justice. And what an honor to do that with such an incredible team.
TheHumanist.com: What book has influenced you the most?
As a kid, my dad was determined I should get an education in the classics—which to him meant any humorist who’d been dead at least fifty years. We read a lot of O. Henry, Leo Rosten, and James Thurber together.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty—not so much a book as a story—was one of his favorites, and one of mine too. Yes, it’s a bit of a tragicomic story, in that Mitty’s grand visions of his marvelous life are never quite real. On the other hand, it’s a good reminder of something I’ve always believed—that we, not the world, get to choose our stories, are always in control of how we see and define ourselves.
Another book we read together – that I still re-read on occasion—is A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole. Do I ever wish there were more books by John Kennedy Toole! It’s a favorite not just because it’s such a comic romp—but because it’s a good reminder about humility and the limits of academic knowledge, and the emptiness of misanthropy. “You learned everything, Ignatius, except how to be a human being”—for an overly educated nerd, that’s a good quote to have ringing around in your head.
TheHumanist.com: If you could have dinner with any three people in the world (living or dead), who would they be and why?
First – AOC. Whether or not you like her politics—and I happen, personally, to like her politics—she has given us a masterclass in how to shift the public narrative and center of gravity on issues, and do it with a smile and style.
Second – Quinta Brunson. What an insanely talented comedian and someone who has figured out how to make media that is both very much about social justice, and also deeply funny. I want to peer into her mind and see how it works.
And of course, my dad. I miss him like crazy and we have a lot to catch up on.
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