Geneva Blackmer is a five precepts lay Buddhist within the Kwan um School of Zen since 2014. She is a Ph.D. Candidate at Amridge University, earned a Master’s of Ecumenical Studies from the University of Bonn in 2023, and a Master of Arts in Religious Studies in 2019 from Athens State University. She is the current Interim Executive Director for the Interfaith Center at Miami University, and a Research Assistant at the University of Bonn in the Seminar for Religious Pedagogy (previously in the department of Intercultural Theology). She has served as a Global Council Trustee for the United Religions Initiative (URI) North America since 2020. Her background consists of interreligious and ecumenical cooperation at a grassroots level, working with numerous other interfaith organizations in varying capacities, including the North American Interfaith Network, the Interfaith Council of Southern Nevada, the Interfaith Council of Metropolitan Washington DC, Faith Communities Go Green, Interfaith Cincy, the Greater Kansas City Interfaith Council, and the World Faiths Center for Religious Experience and Study (CRES). In 2019, she founded the Kansas City Interfaith History Project, with guidance from the Rev. Vern Barnet, DMn, and the Rev. Larry Guillot, sacrae theologiae doctor, to preserve the unique and rich interfaith history of the greater Kansas City region.
