Josh Messner is communications manager at Luther Seminary, where he earned a Master of Arts in Islamic Studies in 2008. He previously worked in communications and international education at the University of Michigan and the University of Minnesota and in academic publishing.

Grace Duddy Pomroy is the director of the Stewardship Leaders Program at Luther Seminary. She’s a lay, millennial stewardship leader, speaker, and financial educator based in Allyn, WA. She is the author of Funding Forward: A Pathway to More Sustainable Models for Ministry and co-author of the stewardship book, Embracing Stewardship: How to Put Stewardship at the Heart of Your Congregation’s Life. She is also a consultant with Relèven, a charitable organization that preserves, restores, and repurposes under-utilized churches into community hubs and affordable housing.

Trina Smith currently works as an institutional research analyst at Luther Seminary, where she oversees human subjects’ research, including Pocket Surveys, and serves as the institutional review board chair. She oversees the seminary’s new annual alumni surveys and has also done qualitative research for various projects. Beyond her staff role at Luther Seminary, she is also pursuing a graduate certificate in Bible, history of Christianity, and systematic theology. Smith received her PhD in sociology and MSW from the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities.

Jessi LeClear Vachta has served in admissions at two seminaries with a combined tenure of more than eight years in the field. In addition to her role in enrollment services, she also serves as the co-convenor of Luther’s Staff Leadership Team, a roundtable of people managers at the seminary who make policy recommendations to senior leadership and the co-convenor of the admissions cohort of the seven seminaries of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. She also serves as the Access and Equity subcommittee chair for the seminary’s Accountability, Belonging, Inclusion, Diversity, Equity strategy teams. She is a regular attendee and recent co-presenter for the ATS Student Personnel Administrators’ Network conference and Admissions Peer Networking group and a 2023 participant in the Association for Graduate Enrollment Management’s nine-month Leadership Academy. She also has nine years of previous experience in association management, multifaith networking, and international community development. She received her MA in systemic theology from Luther Seminary.