Gloria White-Hammond

Reverend Gloria E. White-Hammond, born Gloria Elaine White (born 1951), is a pastor, community organizer, and activist from Boston, Massachusetts. She is a co-pastor of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) in Boston, and is the co-founder and Executive Director of My Sister's Keeper. She has been involved in community service projects for the city of Boston and the global black community. She has traveled to Africa as a medical missionary under My Sister's Keeper, a women-led human rights initiative that focuses on rectifying effects of the Sudanese civil war (2023–present) on women and girls in particular.

Early life Born in August 1951 in Texas, White-Hammond moved frequently during her early years due to her father's military status. She lived in Texas until she was a toddler, then moved to Tennessee, New Hampshire, Guam, and Indiana. She spent most of her adolescent years in New Hampshire and graduated high school in Indiana. White-Hammond knew she wanted to be a doctor at a young age. She was inspired to pursue a career in medicine by a book she checked out of the library titled How to Be a Doctor.

However, in the 1980s she and her husband decided to pursue spiritual goals. They founded the Bethel AME Church in Boston. Their target audience was the younger demographic of Boston in response to rising youth violence in the city. As part of their efforts, their church joined forced with the Boston TenPoint Coalition, This inspired her to start up "Do the Write Thing," a creative writing ministry for girls in the city of Boston that held meetings in the AME church and in juvenile detention centers. On this trip, she learned that Sudanese women and girls being enslaved because of the Sudanese civil war (2023–present). Through the organization, White-Hammond built a school in Sudan for the girls and an adult literacy program for their mothers. She later became the chair of the Save Darfur Coalition group. As the Managing Director of the Coalition, she led the call for President Bush to send a presidential envoy to Sudan through a petition signed by political and NGO leaders.

Published articles

When We Label Goals of Care as “Aggressive”: Moving Away from Unintended Harms Towards Respecting Faith, Hope and Miracles in African American Christians at End-of-Life, (2022) with Elizabeth Chuang, Shena Gazaway, Moneka Thompson, and Ronit Elk. Witnesses and Victims Both: Healthcare Workers and Grief in the Time of COVID-19, (2021) with Michael W. Rabow, Chao-Hui Huang, and Rodney O. Tucker.

Personal life White-Hammond's husband, Ray, is the president of the Boston Foundation. The American Jewish Committee's Boston chapter presented Gloria White-Hammond and her husband with the Norman S. Rabb award for their humanitarian efforts in October 15, 2007.

In 2023, she was recognized as one of "Boston’s most admired, beloved, and successful Black Women leaders" by the Black Women Lead project.