Dr. Lea Schweitz is the program manager for the Innovative Preaching and Eco-Justice Initiative at Union Theological Seminary and the Center for Earth Ethics. She is also the CEO/Founder of Playdates with Death,™ a community of beautiful mortals who do end of life planning together. She brings more than 15 years of experience in theological education, leadership development and program direction to her commitment to helping faith leaders engage their communities for justice. 

As an educator, she was awarded fellowships from the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning, ran a curriculum grant from the Templeton Foundation that was featured in a special issue on theological education in The Christian Century and served on the advisory board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Science for Seminary program. Her scholarship lies at the intersection of eco-justice, environmental racism, nature spirituality and urban ecology. Articles and essays have appeared with the University of Chicago Press, Zygon: Journal for Religion and Science and Oxford University Press on topics ranging from an encounter with an opossum to G.W. Leibniz’s view of human life. As a program director, most recently she led an interfaith fellowship program that trained leaders to use documentary films for community-engagement. Before that, she worked in family ministries at local churches, was an associate professor at the Lutheran School of Theology and past director of the Zygon Center for Religion and Science. 

She holds a Ph.D. in philosophy of religion, an M.A. in religious studies from the University of Chicago Divinity School and a B.A. in philosophy and science from Luther College. She lives outside of Chicago with her two children and a hilarious cat named Goose.