PhD Student Profile: Andrea Clark-Horton

September 10, 2021

Area of Study: Pastoral Theology, Personality and Culture

Andrea Clark Horton is a gifted teacher, speaker and pastoral counselor whose passion is equipping and empowering God’s people to live triumphant lives. Andrea currently serves as Staff Chaplain for Women’s Health at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Her work with women in this setting has introduced Andrea to a passion for researching and understanding what role narrative and storytelling play in black women’s overall health and how it may contribute to treatment for emotional distress and anxiety related illnesses.

​​Prior to her work as a chaplain, Andrea worked as the director of an outreach program to homeless and otherwise disconnected young adults in the Rogers Park and Edgewater areas of Chicago and in the northern suburb of Evanston, Illinois. Andrea spent the first decade of her post-graduate career as an attorney for the Chicago Board of Education. She is a past recipient of the National Bar Association’s Nation’s Best Advocates: 40 Under 40 Award.

​Andrea earned her Bachelor of Arts in African American Studies with a minor in Women’s Studies from Oberlin College in 1998 and went on to earn a Juris Doctor from Loyola University Chicago in 2003. She earned her Master of Divinity with a concentration in Urban Ministry from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in 2016. She is the mother of an awesome 7 year-old son, Grant Clark Horton. She makes her home in the Woodlawn neighborhood of Chicago.

Papers and Publications

“Rewriting Herstory: Narrative and Storytelling as Vehicles for Creating Healthy Self-Objects in African American Women,” March 2019. Research presentation to the American Academy of Religion/Southwest Commission on Religious Studies Regional Conference.