Gillis said Koinonia Board members created a profile of the person they sought who would, “best work with the Board and community to carry out the vision. “It was the unanimous consensus that Bren Dubay was the best person.”

“She has exceptional leadership skills as shown in her past vocations. She has had extensive training in spiritual development and been a very successful fund-raiser. Perhaps most important of all she feels a calling to lead Koinonia into the future,” said Gillis.

Ms. Dubay's application said she had read “everything I could collect and read about Clarence Jordan and the history of Koinonia Farm. ”She wrote that she is seeking to integrate the three parts of her life including her, “spiritual life, my literary life and my administrative life.”

In a message to the Koinonia family, Dubay said, It is your hospitality that has drawn me. It is your history that has inspired me. It is your heart that has touched me.”

She went on to say that, “moments into my fist visit to Koinonia, I knew it to be a holy place, a place I would return time and time again, but never did I imagine I would return to you (as executive director). She sees “listening as her first responsibility and from that we will forge a path together.”

Since 1997 to the present Dubay has served as a faculty member and spiritual director for St. Catherine’s Montessori School in Houston, TX. Her first experience with Koinonia was when she brought a group of students on a service trip for Habitat for Humanity International to work on the Global Village in Americus. Her visit to Koinonia Farm led her to believe that she wanted to serve a “supportive, hard-working, life-giving community.”

Dubay's work at St. Catherine's, a Dominican school founded in 1966, has involved founding the program to expand the school through the seventh, eighth and ninth grades. Her responsibilities include interdisciplinary curriculum design, hiring and supervision of six faculty members and over seeing the Montessori program. Her teaching duties include creative writing, arts administration and spirituality and theology.

As spiritual director Dubay provides one-on-one direction and conducts several days of prayer and retreats each year.

Previous to her work at the Montessori school she was a development consultant, guest playwright for Rice Players and a Playwright in Residence and lecturer for William Marsh Rice University and worked in development, marketing and grant writing for other theaters, festivals and foundations in the Houston area.

She is a 1981 Summa Cum Laude graduate with a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Houston and a 1973 Cum Laude graduate with a Bachelor of Liberal Arts from the University of St. Thomas. She completed in 2002 a three-year program in spiritual direction at the Spiritual Direction Institute, Houston and is presently working toward a Level II certification in the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd Religious Education Program in Houston.

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