About

Alex Hunter - DCE CEO and Board President

Alex Hunter is a Commercial Health segment leader, with more than 30 years of healthcare experience leading and supporting the transformation of healthcare for his clients. His work focuses on the design, development, and implementation of transformational initiatives at the strategic, financial, and operational level. He has developed and implemented large-scale performance improvement plans for hospital-affiliated physician organizations, including operational restructuring, overhead reduction, and revenue cycle and organizational improvement.

Prior to co-founding EthosPartners Healthcare Management Group, he served as the managing partner for Cejka Consulting for more than 12 years, where he consulted with healthcare organizations in the design and implementation of physician-hospital compensation methodologies, fair market value analyses, and strategic medical staff development planning. Alex has served on the Board of Directors of Hope Worldwide, Ltd. for over five years.

David Pocta - DCE Executive Director

David Pocta (PhD Spirituality) is a scholar, ministry builder, and educator.

He and his wife Beth served in the full-time ministry for nearly three decades in Minneapolis, Chicago, South Africa, and San Antonio. More than half of that time was devoted to developing leaders and curriculum to strengthen family culture in congregations.

In 2017, David returned to school for his PhD. His dissertation addressed how the spiritual journey of Christians, when in their own wilderness, exposes the need for a reimagined church culture in Protestant evangelicalism. His work blends his experience in pastoral ministry with spirituality scholarship. His research interests include the spiritual journey, spiritual wilderness, contemporary evangelical church culture, and Christian mysticism.

David is a collaborator and builder. He enjoys creating spaces for honest dialogue and authentic learning. He is passionate about teaching and helping Christians to know and walk with God more intimately.

He lives with his wife of more than thirty years in San Antonio and treasures having his daughters, son-in-law, and grandchildren nearby.

Jeffery Jones - DCE Advisor

Jeffrey Jones has practiced law in the fields of business, estate planning and real estate for 40 years. Jeffrey has studied leadership skills extensively and both as a lawyer and business leader, achieves results by advocating collaboration, inclusion and building successful teams. Jeffrey has used these skills not only in the practice of law, but also as a Board member of non-profit organizations. He has been a Board member of a global non-profit for many years and has served as a Board member on several local non-profit organizations. Jeffrey seeks to use his many years of business experience to lead and empower others to develop a culture of leadership and achieve results with effective teamwork.

Jeffrey lives outside Atlanta, Georgia with his wife Janet.

Kevin Grady - DCE Board Member

Kevin Grady is an operations-minded Chief Financial Officer with proven leadership, possessing extensive international experience, including living overseas in Japan, China, and Korea. His global industry experience includes: Automotive Tier 1, Bio-Pharmaceutical, Food and Beverage, and Big 4 Accounting amongst others.

Kevin's experience spans close to 40 years serving as a business leader and he has served in high-profile companies and organizations in senior-level leadership positions throughout his career. These include Millipore Corporation, Mando Corporation, and Inteva Products LLC.  His most recent position was Chief Financial Officer for two related entities: Dura Automotive Systems LLC and Global Automotive Systems, LLC, serving simultaneously. Kevin recently rejoined the Board of Directors of Hope Worldwide, Ltd. in 2020.  During his previous tenure from 2010 to 2015, he served as an Executive Committee member and Chairman of the Finance and Investment Committee.  Kevin was also recently appointed to the Board of Sihanouk Hospital Center of Hope, a Cambodian social enterprise.

Kevin and his wife, Nanshil, live outside Detroit, Michigan.

Patti Hunter - DCE Board Member

Patti Hunter has a passion for studying and teaching the bible and inspiring others on their spiritual journey.  Through creativity and humor, she brings the bible alive. She teaches with zeal and compassion from her own experiences, mistakes, joys and fears, and is relatable to others in all walks of life. Patti speaks with a vulnerability and realness.  Patti has spoken to groups in Savannah, Athens, and Atlanta, GA.  She has been keynote speaker and teacher in Raleigh, NC; Durban, South Africa; and Kingston, Jamaica. 

Patti is founder and director of Farmstead on the River a private retreat farm along the Etowah River in Canton, Georgia. On the farm, she guides silent and contemplative art retreats.   She finds joy in offering others a place of solitude and creating a space for others to connect and commune deeply with God through nature and art. Patti has her BS and MA Degrees in Industrial Technology Education from Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana.  And is currently earning her Master of Arts in Christian Ministry (MACM) degree from McAfee School of Theology, Mercer University, Atlanta.

Patti and Alex live in Johns Creek, GA.

Steve Staten - Consultant and DCE Advisor

Steve Staten is a trainer, speaker and organizational health consultant. He has worked with single and multisite churches of 250 to 6,000 members in Hawaii, Alaska, California, Florida, the Midwest, Canada and the UK, as well as a global nonprofit and a nonprofit in Asia.

Steve’s early professional life began at Fermilab in 1979 and spans nine years in engineering, where he worked with high energy, sound, radar and computer design. In 1988, Steve and his wife went into ministry full-time, where he acquired over twenty-five years of experience in church leadership, overseeing staff education, pastoring and managing conflict. He has a Master’s degree in Theology (1997) and a Master’s degree in Conflict Management (2013). And Steve is certified with a Safety / Risk Management method and philosophy called Just Culture. He's a big proponent of collaboration and recently published, The Art of Breakthrough: Collaborating on Audacious Undertakings.

Steve was the project coordinator for D.C.E. operations and board liaison for three years, and lives in rural North Carolina with his wife Tricia.

Valdur Koha - DCE Board Member

Valdur Koha and his wife, Irene, are the proud parents of five sons and an adopted daughter from Romania. Valdur founded an internet software company that is now Openwave. He retired a few years ago to devote himself to his family, charities and his church.

Valdur and Irene live in Lexington, Massachusetts.

Carlos Santos

Carlos Santos was born in Lima, Peru, and moved to Spain when he was 11 years old, where he has lived since. He became a disciple at 15 years old and has continued to be faithful and interested in discovering deeper truths.

Carlos is a PhD candidate in Christian Philosophy at the Universidad Comillas Pontificia de Madrida in Philosophy of Religion. Carlos’ main interests are found in the intersection between Philosophy and Theology, more specifically, secularism and faith.

He obtained his bachelor’s degree in English Literature and Linguistics in 2016. He then obtained his master’s degree in History of Philosophy and Contemporary Thought in 2020. For his master’s thesis Carlos focused on the concept of Christian love and resentment from the philosophical conception of Friedrich Nietzsche and Max Scheler. From this investigation, the book Amor y Resentimiento was published in 2021.

Regarding his roles in ministry, he currently serves teaching, preaching, and translating in his local congregation in Madrid, Spain. Carlos has also been serving on the leadership team for five years, and previously interned in the campus ministry for a few years.

Hannah Desouza

Hannah Desouza grew up in England and was baptized in the East London Church of Christ as a teen in 2009. She studied English Literature and Spanish at King’s College London and went on to get a Masters in Victorian Literature from Oxford University in 2016. where her Hannah’s research centered on feminism and theology and the use of biblical allusions in the works of the Brontës. 

A dream of being on the mission field took Hannah to Boston in 2018 where she joined the New England School of Missions and served as a young professionals and campus minister for the Central and Downtown regions of the Boston Church of Christ, while also a part-time violin teacher. 

In 2021 Hannah moved to Chișinău, Moldova to serve as a missionary as part of the RevivEE (Revive Eastern Europe) team. After the war began in neighboring Ukraine, her role extended to assisting in a large refugee relief effort: coordinating a program of activities for Ukrainian teenagers and functioning as mediator between refugees and charities in the UK to find long-term accommodation. 

Hannah is passionate about service and has also worked closely with HOPE worldwide, leading volunteer corps in Papua New Guinea, Bolivia, Zambia, South Africa and the Philippines as a Global Service Intern.

This past August Hannah returned to Boston where she is currently studying to get earn her Masters in Theology at Harvard Divinity School. She hopes to pursue doctorate study upon graduating in 2024. Her interests are in the relationship between religion and literature, gender and theology, biblical languages and liberation theologies.

Mati Simm

Mati Simm was baptized in Tallinn (Estonia) in 1994. He has been married to Monika since 1999 and is a happy father of two girls. Mati has degrees in Music, Theology as well as Business Administration, before starting his full-time PhD studies in theology at the University of Tartu University, he had been earning his living as a CEO of a financial services company. In the past, Mati worked in full time ministry and had led churches in Tallinn, Tartu (Estonia) and Riga (Latvia) and served as a missionary in Moscow (Russia). At the moment, Mati serves in church as a teacher, a small group leader and is also a part of the leadership group of the Tallinn church. Mati’s dream is to see all Christians honouring God in their daily lives and dedicating their life to the cause of Christ by using their gifts to the fullest.

Sherie Gayle

Sherie Gayle is a Women’s Ministry Leader in the Greater Baltimore Church in Baltimore Maryland. She has served in the ministry for over 20 years, 14 of which she served as a full-time staff member. Converted at 16 in Kingston Jamaica, she would go on to lead both Youth/Family and Singles ministries in the Northern Virginia and Baltimore churches and co-lead a Mission Team at the University of Connecticut and surrounding communities. She emigrated to the Washington D.C. suburbs in 1998. Here she received an undergraduate degree in Government and International Affairs from George Mason University in 2002. As an undergraduate, she co-led the Campus Ministry at George Mason University.

The call to minister to the needs of singles and women more effectively was the seedbed in which a desire to pursue scholastic formation in Theology was effectuated. In 2018, Sherie earned a Master of Theological Studies from Loyola University Maryland where she was named the 2018 Emerging Scholar in Theological Research for her thesis, Perspectives of Contemporary Christian Women in a Pluralistic Society. Sherie is currently in her 3rd year of doctoral coursework in Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. Her research interests and training center on constructions and conceptions of gender and power within the scriptural traditions of the Abrahamic (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) religions. Sherie is fluent in Spanish and French, proficient in Latin, and served as a Johns Hopkins University summer language instructor of Attic Greek. She has completed two years of Classical Arabic.

Sherie’s most recent article, Justice for Dry Trees: Barrenness, Single-hood, and Other Foreign Bodies in the Body of Christ was published in the Winter 2022 issue of the Teleios Journal. Sherie is also featuring a series called The Humiliating Cost of Christian Singleness on her YouTube Channel Good Life.

Thomas (TJ) Paresi

Thomas (TJ) Paresi is a first-year PhD student at Baylor University in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. He holds a Master of Theology from Princeton Theological Seminary and a Master of Divinity from Lincoln Christian University. Thomas worked with the Youth & Family and Campus Ministries in New York and New Jersey for 10 years. During that time, he helped facilitate the merger of two congregations, led youth camps and teen conferences, as well as campus ministry retreats and conferences. Additionally, he served in the teaching ministries of the Boston Church of Christ and Mercer County Church of Christ. Currently, he and his wife, Kaitlyn, are members of the Northside Region of the Austin Christian Church.

His research interests include Biblical theology, identity in the context of empire, the reuse of stories across the Biblical canon, diaspora, and family, especially as they relate to the relationships between different groups/individuals and how people navigate faith when the surrounding world does not share their belief. The texts that most interest him are the Joseph Novella (Gen. 37-50), Exodus 1-14, and Ezra-Nehemiah.