Sally Steele

Sally Steele has spent her career building spaces where people who've been told they don't belong can finally exhale.

She knows this work personally. Sally grew up in a military family with an Italian mother and Black American father. When they moved to the United States when Sally was 12, she watched her mother navigate the immigrant experience while she herself fielded the question, “What are you?” She is proud to be a Black woman and has been called to create sacred spaces that foster belonging and cultivate flourishing—spaces where people don't have to shrink to find connection and community.

This conviction drove her from directing urban mission programs in Washington, D.C. to co-founding City Hope San Francisco, a nonprofit serving the Tenderloin's most marginalized residents.

Over seven years at City Hope, Sally helped build and lead a community center and transitional housing program, provided chaplaincy at the county jail, and helped lead worship services. The work showed her that sacred spaces take many forms—and that everyone needs a place where they belong and feel safe in order to flourish.

Her preaching comes from the same conviction. Sally's sermons invite congregations into deeper questions. She reads scripture through the lens of her own experience, drawing from liberation and womanist theology, thinkers like Howard Thurman, Willie James Jennings, and CS Lewis, and insights from across disciplines. Her preaching draws people toward transformation, deeper connection with God, and love for neighbor.

Sally's conviction that God creates spaces where all people can belong extends beyond the sanctuary. As co-founder and Board Chair of Outdoorithm Collective, she helps create sacred spaces on America's public lands, bringing historically excluded families into outdoor experiences where connection and transformation happen around campfires as readily as in church pews.

She lives in Oakland with her husband Justin and their four daughters, who have taught her more about grace, chaos, and showing up than any seminary class.