Sarah
Kissel

Sarah Kissel is a manager in Raben’s Issue Campaigns and Movements practice area, where she contributes her experience in nonprofit program management, advocacy, and strategic planning.

Prior to joining Raben, Sarah was part of The Petey Greene Program team, where she trained volunteers to provide tutoring and career support for incarcerated students. She also supported the leadership team at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, developing strategic planning materials and senior staff visioning retreats.

Sarah holds a Master of Theological Studies (MTS) with a concentration in Religion, Ethics, and Politics from Harvard Divinity School, where she conducted projects that examined the influence of religion on the United States’s criminal legal system, labor market, and social welfare programs. She is particularly fascinated by the ways in which religious commitments cohere and motivate communities and institutions, and further advance narratives around responsibility, punishment, redemption, and individualism that are foundational to US society.

While at Harvard, Sarah was involved in several organizing groups that seek to address and end the harms of the prison-industrial complex. She was also a member of the MTS Curriculum Committee, where she evaluated the success of HDS’s MTS program, developing a framework of goals and assessment metrics alongside faculty and administrators.

Sarah also holds bachelor’s degrees in religious studies, political science, and English literature from Indiana University. While at IU, she completed an honors thesis on Reformation-era Protestant theology and the poetics of George Herbert, and served as the Panhellenic representative on the University’s task force to manage University-Greek relations. She also served on an advisory board to former IU President Michael A. McRobbie, where she conducted a year-long evaluation of the state of student healthcare on IU’s Bloomington campus and provided recommendations in preparation for the construction of the $557 million IU Health Bloomington Hospital. Upon graduation, Sarah received the Kate Hevner Mueller Award for leadership and service to the University.

In her spare time, Sarah can be found running (very slowly) along the Potomac, singing (very loudly) to Brandi Carlile, and cheering on the US Women’s National Soccer Team.