Who We Are

Photo by Bethany Birnie

We are designers, theologians, practitioners, strategists, and gatherers. We are animated by joy, inspired by tradition, and motivated by the future.

Who We Are

We are designers, theologians, practitioners, strategists, and gatherers. We are animated by joy, inspired by tradition, and motivated by the future.

Who We Are

We are designers, theologians, practitioners, strategists, and gatherers. We are animated by joy, inspired by tradition, and motivated by the future.

Founders & Principals

Angie Thurston

angie@sacred.design

More and more of us are alone in our spiritual lives, and I want to help reverse that trend. My passion is creating new structures to support spiritual deepening in community. One recent effort was the Formation Project, a year-long pilot in spiritual formation designed for people who don’t live in the same place or share a set of religious beliefs. Some of my inspirations in this work include the Church of the Saviour in DC, Alcoholics Anonymous, and communities of women religious.

My most consistent personal practice is taking 20 minutes every day to go inward and spend time with spirit. I’m also an avid student of the Urantia Book and an active participant in the community of Urantia Book readers. I have loved volunteering at Recovery Café DC since spring of 2019.

I take great joy in co-creating with others, and Casper and Sue are two of my all-time favorite collaborators. I went to Brown University and Harvard Divinity School, where I served as a Ministry Innovation Fellow from 2016-2021.

I live in Alexandria, VA with my husband Vipin Thekk and our son Orion.

Casper ter Kuile

casper@sacred.design

Nothing makes me happier than learning from religious traditions to inspire new ways for us to live lives of greater connection, meaning, and depth. In the midst of enormous changes in how we experience community and spirituality, I bring people together to create projects that ennoble the everyday and help build a world of joyful belonging.

My own core practices include harmony folk singing and keeping a tech sabbath, and I’ve spent the last six years experimenting with new forms of text study on my podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text.

I hold Masters of Divinity and Public Policy degrees from Harvard University, and served as a Ministry Innovation Fellow at Harvard Divinity School from 2016-2021. My book, The Power of Ritual (HarperOne) was published in 2020 and I live with my husband Sean Lair in Brooklyn, NY.

Nothing makes me happier than learning from religious traditions to inspire new ways for us to live lives of greater connection, meaning, and depth. In the midst of enormous changes in how we experience community and spirituality, I bring people together to create projects that ennoble the everyday and help build a world of joyful belonging.

My own core practices include harmony folk singing and keeping a tech sabbath, and I’ve spent the last six years experimenting with new forms of text study on my podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text.

I hold Masters of Divinity and Public Policy degrees from Harvard University, and served as a Ministry Innovation Fellow at Harvard Divinity School from 2016-2021. My book, The Power of Ritual (HarperOne) was published in 2020 and I live with my husband Sean Lair in Brooklyn, NY.

Nothing makes me happier than learning from religious traditions to inspire new ways for us to live lives of greater connection, meaning, and depth. In the midst of enormous changes in how we experience community and spirituality, I bring people together to create projects that ennoble the everyday and help build a world of joyful belonging.

My own core practices include harmony folk singing and keeping a tech sabbath, and I’ve spent the last six years experimenting with new forms of text study on my podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text.

I hold Masters of Divinity and Public Policy degrees from Harvard University, and served as a Ministry Innovation Fellow at Harvard Divinity School from 2016-2021. My book, The Power of Ritual (HarperOne) was published in 2020 and I live with my husband Sean Lair in Brooklyn, NY.

Sue Phillips

sue@sacred.design

I am relentlessly curious about liberating ancient wisdom to solve complex problems. I’m passionate about inspiring spiritual flourishing, designing for meaning making, and witnessing the transformation that happens when people roam around in what matters most.

My wife and I share our 30-minute “family chapel” every morning, to remember who we want to be and what we care about, and to cultivate imagination for “the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.”¹

I’m part business strategist, part design geek, and part monastic. On any given day I might read liberation theology, human-centered design briefs, or business school case studies. Ideally all of them side by side. I graduated from Colgate University and the Episcopal Divinity School, and taught at Harvard Divinity School, where I served as a Ministry Innovation Fellow. My wife and I live in Tacoma, WA with whichever of our five children is passing through.

I am relentlessly curious about liberating ancient wisdom to solve complex problems. I’m passionate about inspiring spiritual flourishing, designing for meaning making, and witnessing the transformation that happens when people roam around in what matters most.

My wife and I share our 30-minute “family chapel” every morning, to remember who we want to be and what we care about, and to cultivate imagination for “the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.”¹

I’m part business strategist, part design geek, and part monastic. On any given day I might read liberation theology, human-centered design briefs, or business school case studies. Ideally all of them side by side. I graduated from Colgate University and the Episcopal Divinity School, and taught at Harvard Divinity School, where I served as a Ministry Innovation Fellow. My wife and I live in Tacoma, WA with whichever of our five children is passing through.

We have been inspired by Charles Eisenstein’s vision of the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.

Elders & Ancestors

Sacred Design Lab is fueled by collective human wisdom about how to engage what matters most. We are of course not the authors of that wisdom but the inheritors of it, and are grateful beyond measure to ancestors and elders who have stewarded and taught us this priceless wisdom, especially

Sr. Sue Mosteller, Sr. Anne Curtis, Sr. Carol Zinn, Sr. Mary Dacey, Gordon and Mary Cosby, Elizabeth O’Connor, John O’Donohue, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Howard Thurman, Henri Nouwen, Marilyn Thie, Stephanie Paulsell, Kerry Maloney, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Dudley Rose, Mary Hunt, Mark Jordan, Richard Holloway, Victoria Safford, Margaret Wheatley, Charlotte Miller, Richard Rohr, Gustavo Gutiérrez, Gil Rendle, Peter and Eileen Laurence, Steve and Bobbie Dreier, Laura Geller and Richard Siegel, Killian Noe, Marsha Foster Boyd, Joseph Deck, Mike Little, Djalòki Dessables, Kim Montroll, Alicia Forde, Gabriel Wilson, LaWanda Thompson, Lisa Greenwood, Cornell West, and bell hooks.