Rev. Mashaun D. Simon is an equity and inclusion advocate who centers his preaching, writing, and scholarship on cultural competency, identity, and equity.
A metro Atlanta native, Mashaun is the founder of Project Joshua. In its infancy, Project Joshua is a social impact endeavor committed to providing grief-focused wellness support for those who identify as Black and LGBTQIA. Project Joshua is informed by his ministerial work, as well as his doctoral studies. He is a doctoral candidate at Columbia Theological Seminary, where his research engages grief in the Black LGBTQ+ community and its connection to church hurt. He is the former senior pastor of House of Mercy Everlasting (HOME) in College Park, GA.
Along with being an accomplished preacher and public speaker, Mashaun is an award-winning writer and journalist. He has written for NBC News, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Black Enterprise, Bloomberg News, Ebony Magazine, and Essence Magazine, the Counter Narrative Project’s (CNP) The Reckoning, and others. Most recently, he was a Local News: US South contributor for GLAAD. Before GLAAD, he served as co-associate editor of Geez Magazine, a seasonal, non-profit, ad-free, print magazine about social justice, art, and activism for people at the fringes of faith in both Canada and the US.
Mashaun has created and managed cultural competency and affirmative action programming and training, including Kennesaw State University’s 2018 Faith and Sexuality Symposium. He’s also provided media relations and marketing support to several institutions of higher education and non-profit organizations, including Spelman College and currently the Tony-award-winning Alliance Theatre.
Mashaun is a 2022 DO GOOD X startup accelerator Fellow, a member of the 2022-2023 class of Collegeville Institute’s Emerging Writers Fellowship, a member of the inaugural class of Sojourners’ Rising Leaders Fellowship (2021-2022), and a CNP Narrative Justice Fellow (2021-2022). He also served on the 2024 CNP Leadership Council, the AID Atlanta advisory board from 2018-2020, the inaugural PRISM board of Teach for America Metro Atlanta from 2019-2020, and the advisory board for the CNP from 2018-2019. In 2005, Mashaun became the first openly gay student representative on the Board of Directors for the National Association of Black Journalists. He has also held leadership roles within local chapters of NABJ on both the professional and student level.
Mashaun holds a professional writing degree from Georgia Perimeter College (not Georgia State University), a Bachelor of Science in Communications from Kennesaw State University, and a Master of Divinity from Emory University's Candler School of Theology.
