(Rev.) Deb Hansen has been a border-crosser for most of her life, exploring cultures, geographies, languages, and wisdom traditions. She had a 20-year career with IBM after teaching French in higher education. She served as a hospital chaplain in Detroit and maintains a small life and leadership coaching practice as well as offering one-on-one spiritual companioning.

For the last five winters, Deb has been volunteering in a network of shelters for people from many places who seek refuge from violence, poverty, and political and climate instability at the U.S./Mexico border in El Paso, Texas. She spends summers in beautiful northern Michigan.

Deb experiences the natural world as deeply sacred, worthy of reverence, respect and care. She was active in advocating for clean energy solutions and access to clean, affordable water for nearly 10 years. Her work is focused on individuals and communities reclaiming agency and power — and healing our relationships with one another, with our greater-than-human kin, and with the sacred sources of life we depend on. She has served on a number of boards including Michigan Interfaith Power & Light and the Sexual Assault Crisis Center in Stamford, Connecticut. Deb was part of the steering committee for Oil & Water Don’t Mix, the campaign to decommission Enbridge’s Line 5 crude oil pipelines that lie, exposed, in the heart of the Great Lakes at the Straits of Mackinac.

Deb is a first-time author. Her book, Borderlands: Stories from an El Paso Shelter

is available wherever books are sold. She writes for Riverwise Magazine.