Racism in America with Kris Voss-Rothmeier

Rev. Kris Voss-Rothmeier is a Presbyterian minister and middle school teacher in Portland, Oregon. Right after college, Kris worked and lived in a homeless shelter through a volunteer organization in an inner-city neighborhood in Washington, DC. He also worked as a full-time volunteer with Habitat for Humanity in San Antonio, TX and Baltimore, MD before living at Holden Village as the fire chief from 1990 to 1992. He and his wife, Susan, met at Holden in 1991. He began seminary at San Francisco Theological Seminary in 1992 and spent his internship year in the Philippines in 1994. Upon graduation, he pastored two multi-racial churches in St. Louis, Missouri in the late 1990s. In 1997, Kris was trained as an anti-racism workshop leader in St. Louis through the National Conference for Community and Justice and has preached and led workshops on anti-racism themes since then. In 2000, he and Susan moved to Portland where he served as Associate Pastor for youth and Christian Education at Milwaukie Presbyterian Church for five years. In 2006, he earned his M.Ed from Portland State University and he currently teaches Social Studies at Clear Creek Middle School in Gresham, Oregon. Clear Creek has a very diverse student population where white students are the minority. In June 2017, he completed a year-long course of study at the University of Portland which focused on equity training for educators. His wife works in the Multnomah County Library as a social worker. Their two children, Henry and Ellie, are both adopted from the Philippines and attend schools in Portland.To learn more about Holden Village, visit: www.holdenvillage.org or to listen to more audio recordings visit: http://audio.holdenvillage.org