Dr. Barry Corey

President of Biola University

Dr. Barry H. Corey became the eighth president of Biola University on July 1, 2007, officially launching the celebration of the university's centennial year. He succeeded Clyde Cook, who retired as one of the longest-standing college presidents in the nation, serving Biola for 25 years.

Programs developed under President Corey's administration at Biola include the Biola University Center for Christian Thought; the Center for Christianity, Culture and the Arts; the Center for Marriage and Relationships; the Center for Cross-Cultural Engagement and Open Biola — an online database for free educational content created and curated by Biola University. President Corey has overseen the launch of the School of Education and the introduction of online learning. Under his leadership, Biola has seen the highest enrollment in the university's history, with the construction of new facilities accompanying the growing needs of the campus. President Corey has led the university into its second century with the launching of an ambitious, 10-year University Plan (2012–2022) and the largest comprehensive fundraising campaign in the school's history, a $180 million effort titled "A Soul of Conviction, A Voice of Courage," following themes from his inaugural address in November of 2007.

President Corey is vice chair of the board of directors for the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities and is a member of the Convoy of Hope board of directors. He serves on the executive committee for the Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities, the board of reference for the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability and the board of reference for the American Friends of Tyndale House, Cambridge.

Corey, a Massachusetts native, came to Biola from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Hamilton, Mass., where he served as vice president/chief academic officer, and academic dean. Prior to that, he served as Gordon-Conwell's vice president for development, leading all external relations and fundraising programs including a successful $54 million capital campaign.

Corey received a B.A. in English and biblical studies from Evangel University in Springfield, Mo., in 1984. In 1988, he received an M.A. in American Studies with a concentration in literature and religious history from Boston College's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Corey received a Ph.D. from Boston College in curriculum, instruction and administration (a higher education program) in 1992.

Corey was a Fulbright Scholar with Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee and lived in Bangladesh among the rural poor from 1990 to 1991. He has also completed two Boston Marathons, one in 2004 and one in 2006.

Corey is the author of the book Love Kindness: Discover the Power of a Forgotten Christian Virtue (Tyndale, 2016), which explores the radical call of Christ-like kindness and the importance of living with "a firm center and soft edges."

An ordained minister, Corey served from 1993 to 2000 as pastor of The Greek Evangelical Church of Boston’s English congregation.

He and his wife, Paula, have three children: Anders, Ella and Samuel.

Skot Welch

Global Diversity & Inclusion Strategist and Thought Leader/Speaker/Author

Skot is the Principal/Founder of Global Bridgebuilders (GBB) A firm focusing on Organizational Development, Cultural Transformation and Inclusion. Global Bridgebuilders is an international team providing services to enterprises across the globe. GBB bases its work in the core belief that inclusion is a business discipline and that it should be leveraged across all that the enterprise does. To gain this leverage, the firm applies a continuous improvement model, anchored in metrics.

Skot has been a global bridge builder long before he founded the company in 2006. Growing up in a military family gave Skot a unique perspective on diversity that he still carries and a passion for helping organizations tap into the vast experiences of their employees to create stronger businesses.

Currently, Global Bridgebuilders serves a wide range of clients in the U.S. and in 7 other countries. Skot has worked in International business and Diversity/Inclusion Management for nearly 20 years and has developed an in-depth knowledge of diversity, inclusion and workforce development that brings together and maximizes the perfect blend of people and process.

Prior to the launch of Global Bridgebuilders, Skot served as Vice President of Business Development and Benchmarking Services for DiversityInc magazine in New Jersey, where he worked with many of the Fortune 500’s biggest global brands across a broad range of industries.

Skot is also the Author: 101 Ways to Enjoy The Mosaic: Creating a Diverse Community Right in Your Own Backyard; Co-author: Plantation Jesus; Co-author: The Ross School of Business—University of Michigan: Diversity Management as a Generative Strategic Process: When the Business Case Meets Positive Organizational Scholarship; The Diversity & Inclusion Expert In Residence (Silicon Valley) CultureShift Labs Think Tank as well as Inclusion Lead for TEDx Grand Rapids.

He is also the founder of The Mosaic Film Experience—A High School/College Film and Interactive Media Experience focusing on Creativity, Collaboration, Critical Thinking and Career Preparedness on the platform of mobile filmmaking.

Skot received his Bachelors Degree (B.A.) from Albion College and His Masters in Management and International Marketing (M.M.) from Aquinas College.

Skot and the love of his life, Barbara reside in Michigan and have two children.

Doug Lockhart

Senior Vice President of Bible Marketing and Outreach, HarperCollins Christian Publishing

Zondervan executive Doug Lockhart to serves as Senior Vice President of Bible Marketing and Outreach for HarperCollins Christian Publishing. In his role, he oversees marketing efforts for both the Thomas Nelson and Zondervan Bible publishing groups. These teams produce bestselling Bibles, as well as audio and digital content for the Christian marketplace.

Lockhart joined HCCP after serving for five years as Chief Executive Officer for Biblica, a longtime publishing partner of the company’s Zondervan publishing group. Biblica holds the copyright and is the worldwide publisher of the New International Version (NIV) Bible translation, and has licensed its North American NIV publishing rights to Zondervan for more than forty years. Before Biblica, Lockhart’s senior leadership experience in the publishing industry included roles at The McGraw-Hill Companies and Zondervan.

Dr. Carl Moeller

CEO of Biblica

Dr. Carl A. Moeller has been the Chief Executive Officer of Biblica since 2014. Prior to coming to Biblica, Dr. Moeller served three years as a pastor at Saddleback Church before founding Sequoia Global Resources. During his time with Sequoia Global Resources, he helped cultivate philanthropic partnerships to address some of the most intractable global needs, including poverty, autism, and education. He has worked in more than 75 countries around the world and is an ordained minister with the Evangelical Free Church.

Dr. Moeller is an experienced and dedicated leader with keen insight in to how to make an organization succeed. Personable, direct, and visionary, he empowers those in his organizations to rise to their full capacities and potential. He is also a compelling and passionate speaker who enables audiences to clearly grasp a strategic vision and face challenges head on.

Jim Daly

President and CEO of Focus on the Family

Jim Daly is an author and broadcaster, president of Focus on the Family and host of the daily broadcast, heard by more than 6.3 million listeners a week and honored as 2012 Program of the Year by the National Religious Broadcasters.

Under his leadership, the ministry has reinvigorated its traditional focus on helping couples build strong marriages and raise healthy, resilient kids. In just the last 12 months, with the help of Focus on the Family, 770,000 couples have built stronger marriages and 870,000 moms and dads built stronger, healthier, and more God-honoring families.

Daly and his wife, Jean, have two sons and are currently parenting two children in foster care. They live in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Larry Bennett

Executive Director, Nord Compo

As executive director, Larry manages the North American market for French technology company Nord Compo, the leader in providing prepress composition and digital services for book publishers in the French-speaking world. Prior to joining Nord Compo full time, Larry worked on retainer with Nord Compo and a variety of small book publishers, including Christian publisher Heritage Builders, managing their distribution strategies. From 2011-2013, Mr. Bennett was President of Distribution at Bookmasters, Inc., where he was responsible for managing the global distribution business, including print and eBooks. At Bookmasters, he greatly expanded the company’s reach into the CBA market, hiring Noble Marketing to handle sales. From 2007-2011, Mr. Bennett was Vice President of Digital Print Media at Baker & Taylor where he was responsible for developing and managing the company's Digital Print Media (print on demand) business worldwide.

Larry is married with one beautiful Chinese daughter, Olivia Cai Hua, the inspiration for a series of recently published picture books authored by Larry, The Adventures of Ru-lan series. He is a graduate of the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Placing a high value on languages, he is a fluent Spanish speaker and speaks conversational French and Italian.

Brittyne Lewis

Head of Product, LibreDigital

Brittyne has worked in the publishing industry since graduating from the University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelors degree in English. She has worked directly with global publishers in various capacities at LibreDigital over the past 8 years. She has a diverse background in managing software engineering projects, book publishing accounts and relationships with major retailers, and product development. Prior to LibreDigital Brittyne worked as a copywriter and editor for an imprint distributed by Elsevier.

In her role as Head of Product, Brittyne drives the development of products and solutions to meet publishers’ needs by anticipating market requirements, listening to publishers, and monitoring the industry and trends. She maintains the product roadmap for the company across solution sets for both Books and Magazines and manages the entire product line life cycle.

Apart from work, Brittyne enjoys spending time with her family, golfing, reading books to her daughter, and eating tacos and BBQ daily in Austin, Texas.

Dwight Baker

President, Baker Publishing Group

Dwight Baker became the third president of Baker Publishing Group in 1997, following his father, Richard Baker, and his grandfather/company founder, Herman Baker. Dwight entered the book business while in middle school, working in the shipping department at the family bookstore. During college Dwight joined the publishing division part-time, and he became the art director upon graduation. He has served as board chairman for ECPA, Theological Book Network, and Land Conservancy of West Michigan. For the past ten years he has been a tutor and Kids Hope mentor for urban students, who effectively rearrange all his priorities.

Greg Clarke

Group CEO of Bible Society Australia

Dr Greg Clarke is a CEO, author, public speaker and academic, interested in religion in contemporary life. With a doctorate in literature from the University of Sydney, he has written books on topics ranging from The Da Vinci Code to the end of the world, from marriage to the life of Jesus. His latest book, The Great Bible Swindle, argues that every Australian needs a working knowledge of the Bible in order to be truly educated.

Greg is in demand as a lecturer and media commentator on religious issues. Greg is married with five children and lives in south-east Sydney. In 2010 he became the Chief Executive of Bible Society Australia, and was before then a Founding Director of the Centre for Public Christianity in Sydney. Greg splits his time between management, writing, media work, and academia. His passion is for creative, intelligent discussion of the deeper issues of life.

Joyce Dinkins

Executive Editor of Our Daily Bread

Joyce Dinkins is executive editor of Our Daily Bread. Joyce joined Our Daily Bread Ministries US headquarters staff in 2015 after 28 years performing in lead editorial roles, at David C. Cook, NavPress, and New Hope Publishers. As a freelance writer and editor, she has also collaborated on many other Christian publishers’ projects.

Joyce is a member of the Academy of Christian Editors, and the American Writers and Speakers Association has commended her as a nonfiction and fiction editor, in 2014 and 2015.

Joyce earned each of her degrees with very high honors; BA at Northern Michigan University, masters at Colorado Christian University. She continues graduate studies through Our Daily Bread Christian Global University.

She has a passion for family, and for encouraging and mentoring. Joyce and her husband, Steven, have three adult children. They enjoy Michigan’s beaches and dunes, retreating to their farm in the middle of southwest Michigan’s blueberry fields, and frequenting local bookstores.

Our Daily Bread Ministries distributes resources to some 60 million people in more than 150 nations.

Bob Hawkins

President, Harvest House Publishers

Bob Hawkins, Jr., president of Harvest House Publishers, has guided the family-owned business since 1991, when the baton was passed on to him by his father and company founder Bob Hawkins, Sr. Under Bob’s leadership, the company has published more than 3,000 new books on a wide range of topics geared mainly for lay-oriented Christian audiences. Before becoming president, Bob spent his first decade in Christian publishing as a marketing director. Today Hawkins continues to oversee the company’s focused publishing operations and provides fresh vision for the organization’s loyal and dedicated staff. His primary commitment is to encourage and inspire readers of all ages through producing and distributing trustworthy, biblically sound books that emphasize God’s grace and proclaim Jesus Christ as the answer to every human need. An avid runner since his teenage years, Bob can be found pounding the pavement year-round on the riverfront trails of TrackTown USA, otherwise known as Eugene, Oregon.

Jeff James

VP Marketing, Nelson Books

Jeff James serves as the Vice President of Marketing for the Nelson Books imprint of the HarperCollinsChristian Publishing group. In this role, Jeff is responsible for all marketing and publicity for non-fiction books, including New York Times best-selling authors such as Jen Hatmaker, Lysa TerKeurst, Bob Goff, Donald Miller and others.

Jeff has developed a track record of marketing innovation and measurement, first as a senior marketing leader at Microsoft Corporation where he served for fourteen years. He developed effective marketing strategies and programs in business-to-business, channel and consumer market spaces, including leadership of Microsoft Executive Circle program as the U.S. Director of Relationship Marketing; the Internet Lifestyle Channel (which included diverse partners such as Universal Studios, H&R Block, United Airlines and music artists such as *NSYNC and Janet Jackson) in the MSN Internet Access group; and the Interactive Marketing Best Practices Initiative while Group Manager at MSN Advertising Solutions.

In 2007, Jeff launched his own marketing consulting firm, Mythology, to help organizations ranging from Fortune 500 companies to international non-profits build their own effective system to improve how they managed and measured their marketing investments and strategies. At Mythology, Jeff worked with organizations such as Aetna, Cisco, Boy Scouts of America and International Justice Mission to improve their brand, revenue and relationships through digital and traditional platforms.

Jeff joined Thomas Nelson Publishers, a division of HarperCollinsChristian Publishing, as Vice President of Marketing for the Nelson Books non-fiction imprint in 2015. In this role he is working to drive innovation and ROI by infusing data-driven insights and processes into the publishing process - including acquisition, development and marketing - to empower authors to reach as many readers with their content as possible.

Jeff lives in Nashville, TN, with his two very creative daughters and is involved in developing innovation-based opportunities for others through Create WV (www.createwv.org), a non-profit economic development organization he co-founded in his home state of West Virginia. 

Channon Lemon

COO, Urban Ministries, Inc. (UMI)

Channon Lemon, has been driving Innovation, spearheading organizational change, and leading economic development/new business development initiatives for over two decades. After having served at UMI (Urban Ministries, Inc.) as Vice President of Marketing and Sales, Channon joined the Board of Directors and recently returned to UMI in a staff role as Chief Operating Officer.

While serving on the Board of UMI, Channon resided in southwest Ohio where she developed and launched a regional supply chain initiative sponsored by The Dayton Foundation and the Dayton Business Committee. Called the Minority Business Partnership (MBP), the initiative created a regional agenda to increase participation of the Greater Dayton minority business community. After three and a half years from start-up, Channon successfully oversaw the merger of the initiative into the Dayton Chamber of Commerce to become a formalized regional economic development priority. During her tenure with the MBP, Channon galvanized regional business leadership representing a combined spend of more than $4 billion dollars to focus on MBE development and wealth creation and engaged more than 100 minority businesses with combined revenue of more than $700 million.

Most recently, Channon served as the Vice President of Enterprise Vendor Management for CareSource, one of the largest Medicaid managed care companies in the country. She was tasked with establishing a formalized program which combined strategic sourcing, vendor risk assessment and mitigation, and the ongoing management of vendor relationships. She also oversaw the administration of delegated entities to ensure compliance with government and accreditor regulations. Channon's "claim to fame" at CareSource was negotiating the contract for the Affordable Care Exchange IT system which registered the very first applicant for the Healthcare Exchange. 

Dan Lynch

Partner, Brentwood Studios

Dan Lynch is a seasoned publishing and entertainment media executive with a 30+ year proven track record of successes in the fields of product development, team building, marketing, social networking, and on-budget project management. Dan served for over 20 years in kids and teen publishing on the Tommy Nelson (VP Marketing/Branding and Executive Producer) and B&H Kids (Publisher, Executive Producer) teams. Dan also worked as a VP of Marketing in the Christian music industry with labels including Benson and Word Records. Some of the brands Dan has managed and built include Max Lucado’s Hermie and Friends, Sheila Walsh’s Gigi God’s Little Princess, Bibleman, Read and Share Bible Stories, Big Picture Interactive Bible, and Teen to Teen. 

Tim Murphy

Chief Financial Officer, Urban Ministries Inc.

Tim has more than 25 years of progressive responsibility in Accounting/Finance in several medium sized organizations. Tim has been the CFO at Urban Ministries for the past 4 years. Prior to Urban Ministries Tim was the CFO of several mid-size Corporations. He also served as Controller with Oshkosh Corporation, in the Specialty Vehicles division. During his 9 year tenure he implemented Accounting software packages at several plant sites and was involved in several acquisitions and divestures. Oshkosh is a $6 billion dollar manufacturer of large military vehicles.

Prior to Oshkosh Tim was employed at Whiting Corporation for 9 years serving as the Controller for its division, Swenson Technology and had multi-site responsibilities. He was also involved in acquisitions and divestures at Whiting. Swenson is the manufacturer of large Capital Equipment, located in Monee Il. He started his career as an Auditor with Arthur Anderson.

Tim earned his MBA in Finance/Accounting from DePaul University and a B.S. in Finance from Illinois State University.

Tim and Diane, his wife of 25 years have two children, John and Faith who keep them busy with their many activities.

Barb Sherrill

Executive Vice President/Publisher for the McKenzie Group, Harvest House Publishers

Barb Sherrill is the Executive Vice President/Publisher for the McKenzie Group at Harvest House Publishers, the team which oversees both the Children and Family as well as the Lifestyle categories. Her varied 30-year career in Christian publishing has found her doing everything from project editing to print buying, copywriting to manuscript developing, acquiring to marketing. She makes her home in Eugene, Oregon, where all the rain is a perfect fit for her (indoor!) passion for books, movies, and pretty much any tv show having British accents.

Byron Williamson

CEO and Publisher, Worthy Publishing Group

Byron served as President of Word Publishing (Cap Cities/ABC) from 1989 through 1993, publishing Max Lucado, Billy Graham, Charles Colson, and James Dobson. After being acquired by Thomas Nelson, he moved to Nashville to serve as President of Thomas Nelson/Word Publishing through 1999. During those years Williamson launched Tommy Nelson and J. Countryman specialty books. Such best-selling authors as Frank Peretti, John Maxwell, and John Eldredge were signed during his term at Nelson. He resigned from Nelson and founded Integrity Publishers in 2001, producing Sarah Young's Jesus Calling, Beth Moore's Get Out of That Pit, Max Lucado's It's Not About Me, Emerson Eggerichs' Love and Respect, and Newt Gingrich's Searching for God in America. After Nelson acquired Integrity, Williamson left in 2007 to found Worthy Publishing. Since its launch in 2011, Worthy has published such authors as David Jeremiah, Jerry Jenkins, John Hagee, Max Lucado, Franklin Graham, Charles Swindoll, Michael W. Smith, Sheriff David Clarke, Dr. Don Colbert, and Michael Youssef..