Meet Our Pastors
rev. dr. gabby cudjoe wilkes • Pastor & brand strategist
Rev. Dr. Gabby Cudjoe-Wilkes is a strategist, faith leader & proud New Yorker. Dr. Gabby has been featured in publications including The New York Times (2022); Essence Magazine (2016 & 2019); Forbes (2020); Yahoo News (2020); CBS News (2020), The Vineyard Gazette (2017) & others for on her work on faith, culture & leadership.
Dr. Gabby travels the country as an Innovation Coach & Preacher, equipping countless leaders with the skillsets they need to better lead & transform their organizations. She continues to bridge the divide between innovation, strategy, faith & culture.
She is also The Director of The Technology, Innovation & Digital Engagement Lab Fellowship at Union Theological Seminary in New York City & the Vice President of the Yale University Divinity School Alumni Board.
Dr. Gabby works daily as a passionate co-founder of her Brooklyn church & takes seriously the privilege and responsibility of leading, serving and loving the people God has entrusted to her care.
Dr. Gabby is a 3rd generation preacher, a music lover, a wife, a pastor & an entrepreneur. She lives in a cozy Bedford Stuyvesant brownstone where she has just published her first book (co-written with her husband), Psalms for Black Lives: Reflections on the Work of Liberation (August 2022, Upper Room Books), which is also available on Audible.
Dr. Gabby recently partnered with HarperCollins Christian Publishers to have her sermons featured on their UrbanFaithStudy.com platform & was tapped to be a part of Dr. Henry Louis Gates’ second Black Church documentary for PBS, This is Our Story, This Is Our Song, as a lead interviewee.
In the fall of 2022 to the Martin Luther King Jr. Board of Preachers at Morehouse College.
She is a recurring on-air contributor to the nationally syndicated Radio-One morning show, GET UP MORNINGS with Erica Campbell (Mary Mary) where she hosts a segment called “Make it Make Sense.”
Dr. Gabby wrote her doctoral dissertation on Social Innovation & The Black Church. Her doctoral advisors were Duke Divinity School Dean, Dr. L. Gregory Jones & Duke Fuqua School of Business Professor, Dr. Keisha Cutright.
In the spring of 2020, Dr. Gabby was invited as one of 40 clergypersons to serve on then Mayor Bill DeBlasio’s COVID-19 clergy Task-Force. She was also tapped by mayoral candidate, Maya Wiley to serve as a faith surrogate on Wiley’s 2021 mayoral campaign.
She also served as the 2020 Eastern Regional Convenor of The Black Church Pac and a founding member of the Brooklyn based pastoral initiative: The Black Church Collective.
In 2019, Dr. Gabby was invited by then Brooklyn Borough President (now NYC Mayor), Eric Adams to be a spotlight organization for the Borough President’s 2019 Interfaith Breakfast. She was asked to speak about the work of her church, The Double Love Experience.
Since then, Dr. Gabby has worked to ensure that Double Love Experience has prioritized partnering with numerous NYC community organizations including Brooklyn’s Juneteenth Family Day; Bedford Stuyvesant’s Hancock Community Backyard Garden; The Free Black Woman’s Library; Transparent & Black; The Black Man Can; Haitian Roundtable & more.
Dr. Gabby has received citations & commendations from New York State Senator Leroy Comrie in 2018 & was the 2016 recipient of the prestigious Guy R. Brewer Religious Leader Award in Queens, NY.
In 2018, Dr. Gabby & her husband Rev. Andrew founded their own church in Brooklyn, New York called The Double Love Experience Church. Their first service was held at The Commons Coffee Shop on Atlantic Ave. in downtown Brooklyn, just five minutes away from The Barclay Center. The first service had over 80 in person-attendees & 400 virtual attendees on livestream.
Double Love Experience Church was featured throughout Brooklyn on Link NYC billboards & partnered with local organizations such as The Langston Hughes House for pop-up dinners and The Brooklyn Museum for local exhibits during its preview year.
While in Divinity School at Yale, Dr. Gabby served as President of Yale Black Seminarians; the John Magee Fellow & Senior Brand Strategist to the Dwight Hall Center for Public Service & Social Justice at Yale University.
In 2017, Dr. Gabby was the recipient of the Yale Divinity School Charles S. Mersick Award in Preaching. She also received the Outstanding Graduate Student Award & flagbearer for The Afro-American Cultural Center at Yale University (2018).
In 2013, while working in entertainment PR, Dr. Gabby was hired by Rev. Dr. Floyd & Rev. Dr. Elaine Flake as the co-young adult pastor at the 15,000 member church, The Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral of New York. She worked bi-vocationally as an associate pastor & publicist for 5 years.
While serving at Allen Cathedral, Dr. Gabby was licensed as a minister of the gospel by the First Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. She was later ordained by The Progressive National Baptist Convention, New York State Conference.
While Dr. Gabby loves the work of ministry, she originally moved to New York City to pursue her first love: music. She arrived to the Big Apple first as a Hampton University rising junior & 19-year-old intern in 2005 where she cut her teeth in music PR working for NYC publicist Gwendolyn Quinn (publicist to Clive Davis’ Arista Records roster, Aretha Franklin, Luther Vandross & others).
In 2007, Dr. Gabby returned to New York in as a 21 year-old graduate student at New York University where she obtained her Masters of Arts in Music Business. It was there that she quickly worked her way up through the music business industry by working for record labels & entertainment companies such as BET, Mathew Knowles’ Music World Entertainment, RCA Inspiration & eOne Music Group.
By the time Dr. Gabby graduated from NYU in 2009, she had launched her own PR & events company, working as a promoter, producing live music events at locations including Rustik Tavern in Brooklyn & Gospel Uptown in Harlem, New York.
Anyone who knows Dr. Gabby knows she’s a proud Hamptoninan. It was there that she fell in love with her college sweetheart, now husband, Rev. Andrew Wilkes.
She graduated from Hampton University as a William R. Harvey Presidential Leadership Fellow.
Dr. Gabby is still in love with the city of her dreams—NYC. She is a proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated.
Learn more about Dr. Gabby at www.gabbycudjoewilkes.com
REV. DR. ANDREW WILKES • pastor
Rev. Dr. Andrew Wilkes is the Co-Founding, Co-Lead Pastor of the Double Love Experience Church & the Chief Policy + Advocacy Officer at Generation Citizen, a national civics education organization that prepares students & young people for informed, democratic participation.
Wilkes is also the former Associate Pastor of Social Justice & Young Adults at the Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral of New York (GAC), where he served on the pastoral staff for five years.
He is a bi-vocational, ordained minister who has built his career & calling around a dual commitment to community development, spiritual formation & economic justice.
Rev. Willkes successfully defended his dissertation in the PhD program in political science at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, where he also served as a Graduate Teaching Fellow at City College of New York.
He’s the recipient of several awards including: Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Push Advocacy Award; New York Theological Seminary’s Micah Onstitute Courage Award; the Guy R. Brewer Distinguished Leadership Award & more.
Rev. Dr. Wilkes is a public speaker & writer for multiple national outlets including The Guardian; Stanford Social Innovation Review; The Washington Post, The Huffington Post & Sojourners Magazine. He’s also a published author whose initial work is entitled Freedom Notes: Reflections on Faith, Justice and The Possibility of Democracy.
He resides in Brooklyn, New York with his wife, Rev. Dr. Gabby Cudjoe-Wilkes. Together, they co-authored the recently published work, Psalms for Black Lives: Resources for the Work of Liberation. Rev. Wilkes is also the author of the forthcoming text, Plenty Good Room: Co-Creating An Economy For All.
In 2015, Rev. Dr. Wilkes began his post as Executive Director of The Drum Major Institute (DMI), an organization founded by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., which carries forward the social change legacy of King by promoting economic justice, dismantling structural racism & advancing civil rights.
Under his tenure, DMI executed public affairs events in Dallas, Texas & Washington D.C. to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. To execute the companion events, Rev. Wilkes’ team mobilized DMI principals Ambassador Andrew Young, Martin Luther King III, & Rev. Dr. James Forbes, along with the executive leadership of Values Partnership; Southern Christian Leadership Conference; NAACP & the Progressive National Baptist Convention.
Rev. Dr. Wilkes also established the Beloved Community Initiative, a national resource on spirituality and social justice for faith communities & relaunched the nationally renowned Marketplace of Ideas Forum— a forum for bringing progressive policy ideas to an audience of activists, policy professionals & nonprofit leaders.
Following his tenure at DMI, Wilkes now serves as a member of the Board of Directors for the Labor-Religion Coalition of New York State, the Black Mountain School of Theology and Community & the Institute for Christian Socialism, where he serves as the incoming co-chair.
A native of Atlanta, GA, Wilkes is a proud graduate of Hampton University & Princeton Theological Seminary. At Hampton, he co-started a campus wide Bible Study that clarified & consolidated his call to Christian ministry. In 2005, he was licensed to preach the liberating, love-powered Gospel of Jesus the Christ. In 2007, his graduating year, he preached the senior sermon at Hampton University’s historic Memorial Chapel.
At Princeton, Wilkes received the Edler Garnett Hawkins Award for Scholastic Excellence. In seminary, he developed an intertwined passion for public service & congregational ministry.
His decision to work in the first administration of Newark, New Jersey Mayor, Cory Booker for his field placement distinguished him from his colleagues. While colleagues were serving in churches, Wilkes followed his calling by merging his faith with social policy issues in the nonprofit & public sectors.
Rev. Dr. Wilkes was later hired as a consultant for “Fathers Now,” a division of Cory Booker’s “Newark Now.”
He then pursued the Coro Fellowship in Public Affairs in New York City where he worked with various NYC companies including the NYC Department of Small Business Services; the Brooklyn Navy Yard; Edelman PR’s Public Affairs division, & more.
As a Senior Grants Manager at The American Red Cross, Rev. Wilkes oversaw a $45 million budget for Superstorm Sandy recovery in New York state & Connecticut.
Before that, he engaged 140 faith communities as the Faith & Community Relations Associate at Habitat for Humanity New York City.
In 2018, Wilkes completed his tenure as Associate Pastor of Social Justice & Young Adults at the Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral of New York. In that capacity, he launched a social justice initiative called Micah 6:8, which calls for faith communities to initiate civic renewal by pursuing justice, compassion & peacemaking within our society.
You can reach Andrew on Instagram & Twitter (X) through the following handle: @AndrewJWilkes.