Shonda Nicole Gladden

Phone:

317-278-8330

Email:

sngladde@iu.edu

Campus:

IUPUI

The Reverend Shonda Nicole Gladden joined the Multicultural Center as the Social Justice Education Specialist August 1, 2022. She is the proud mother of a high school scholar, a local pastor, and the founder and CEO of Good to the SOUL, a social enterprise that energizes individuals and institutions to flourish and do good, especially good that promotes the “spirit of universal liberation (SOUL).” A 2022 graduate of the American Studies PhD program at IUPUI, her research sits at the intersections of philosophy, art, gender, and cultural studies; it explores the plantation as a trans-historic materiality that influences modern American institutions. She is also passionate about representations of identity and the framing of movements- social, spatial, and spiritual- as cultural productions that inform Blackness, and Black aesthetics, within the colonial project of the Americas.

With a passion for justice, advocacy and faith, she has led and participated in short term humanitarian projects throughout the continental United States, Canada, England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Czech Republic, South Africa, Kenya and South Korea and has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the IUPUI 3MT Competition First Place Award (2022), the IUPUI Elite 50 Award (2021) and a JAG Action Grant (2020), as well as a Reflective Leadership Grant from Leadership Education at Duke Divinity (2018), a Do Good X Fellowship from The Forum for Theological Exploration (2017) and The Wabash Pastoral Leadership Award from Lilly Endowment, Inc. (2014). Little known fun facts about Shonda include the fact that she is a classically trained vocal musician, her favorite color is orange, and in her spare time she enjoys creating an urban oasis in the backyard of the family home in the Brightwood neighborhood of Indianapolis. She is a proud member of the Chi Chi Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.