Dr. Kit Evans-Ford (MDiv ‘12) is a social entrepreneur, spiritual director, and autism advocate. She’s the founder and director of Argrow’s House of Healing and Hope, a safe space where free services are offered to women healing from violence in the Quad Cities region on the Iowa-Illinois border.
“I am from a very small, conservative town in North Carolina,” Evans-Ford shared, “I grew up Methodist in a community of religious women. We loved and served with our whole heart; however, we never addressed issues connected to race, poverty, sexuality, and class.”
At Pacific School of Religion (PSR), Evans-Ford says she was given the tools to take the love she was taught by the Christian women in her family and combine it with the bold and radically inclusive Gospel taught at PSR. Together they gave her, “A lens to become radically inclusive and to serve as a chaplain and now social enterprise founder with a heart of compassion for all.”
In her long career Evans-Ford has taken on many roles: professor, speaker, community organizer, and author, but founding Argrow’s House, named for her late grandmother, was the most deeply personal. The vision for its creation grew from her experiences as a child witnessing the violence experienced by women in her life. Argrow’s House is also a successful social enterprise where women create bath products that provide a living wage for themselves in a safe space that celebrates who they are.
In 2019, Evans-Ford was given the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Award for Outstanding Public Service Benefiting Local Communities by the Jefferson Awards Foundation for her work at Argrow’s House. The award, given to just five people nationwide each year, recognizes people who are “multiplying good” in their communities and proving that one person can make a difference.
Evans-Ford will also be recognized as one of PSR’s 2023 Distinguished Alumnx at this year’s Distinguished Alumnx Gathering and Banquet on Saturday, April 22nd, 2023.
In addition to earning a Master of Divinity from PSR, Evans-Ford received a Bachelor of Arts from UNC Chapel Hill, a Master of Arts in Teaching from Trinity Washington University and a Doctor of Ministry from Garret-Evangelical Theological Seminary. She is a Teach for America and United States Peace Corps Alumni.
More recently, Evans-Ford also founded Autistic & Loved, a company that provides silicone ‘chewelry’ for children with sensory issues while celebrating the diversity of autistic children.
Shop Argrow’s House bath products and Autistic and Loved
Watch Dr. Evans-Ford’s powerful and inspiring sermon at PSR’s Community Chapel in December of 2022.