Lisa Hackney-James

The Very Rev. Lisa Hackney-James (email) joined the Cathedral staff in July 2015 as an interim associate priest, was named Sub-Dean in October 2015, and elected Provost in October 2022.

Lisa was ordained at St. James Cathedral in 2003 and returned to the Diocese of Chicago in 2014 after nearly a decade of ministry in Cleveland Heights, an inner-ring suburb of Cleveland, where she served two Episcopal congregations in the Diocese of Ohio. While there, she pioneered a collaborative partnership between her two parishes and the local public school, supporting both academic excellence among the students, and racial reconciliation among their families. 

Lisa also provided executive leadership in co-founding Greater Cleveland Congregations, an Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) organization of over forty institutions working to organize across lines of difference for the transformation of the Greater Cleveland community. In addition to her work at the intersection of the church and the broader community, Lisa has a passion for building up the Body of Christ at the parish level, expressing God’s hospitality by welcoming the stranger, and continually inviting members into greater service in the church and into deeper relationship to God and one another.