Appleseed Welcomes Executive Assistant Keely Sutton

By Keely Sutton

My name is Keely Sutton and I am delighted to be Carla’s new Executive Assistant at Alabama Appleseed. For years I have used Appleseed’s reports and succinct summaries of important social justice issues in Alabama—mass incarceration, economic justice, racial justice, and government accountability—as jumping off points for deeper explorations into intersecting issues like poverty, race, gender, education, and religion.

I have always been interested in the forces that can both drive people together and separate them. Because of this, I chose as a lens to examine these issues one of the arguably strongest forces: religion. Specifically, interreligious dialogue, cooperation, and conflict.

I began my studies with a BA from Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, where I studied a variety of religions and philosophical viewpoints. Later, I went to Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC for an MA in Religion. It was there that a professor told me to “follow my bliss” (a quote from popular author Joseph Campbell) and so I went to Austin, Texas to get a doctorate in Asian Cultures and Languages from the University of Texas at Austin. There, I focused on the south Indian state of Kerala, where Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Muslims had lived and worked side-by-side for centuries.

Keely with friends during her studies in India

I traveled to India multiple times for research, to learn languages, to study and translate literature. I saw supportive communities. I saw divided communities. I saw the effects of caste. I saw the effects of colonialism. I saw religious cooperation and (sometimes) conflict. I fell in love with India and its people.

In 2015 I was hired as a professor of religion at Birmingham-Southern College. In 2017, I became the director of the Poverty Studies program. In that role, I taught about the intersections between religion and social justice, and I worked with students in the program who did internships and projects centered on issues like disparities within healthcare, the legal system, religion, food deserts, and local Birmingham advocacy groups and efforts.

When Birmingham-Southern closed in 2024, a little part of me died with it. But it was not a surprise, exactly, because we had been fighting to survive for years. Towards the end of that period, while I loved teaching, I decided that I would probably not continue my academic career as a professor. I wanted to do something different, to engage in a more direct way with the efforts that I taught about and the issues that I had discussed in the classroom.

Besides, by then I had spent a lot of time thinking about and teaching about issues specific to the south and Alabama. I saw supportive communities. I saw divided communities. I saw the effects of race and class. I saw religious cooperation and (sometimes) conflict. I had made Alabama my second home.

Keely taught for a decade at Birmingham-Southern College, including as Director of Poverty Studies

I am proud to contribute meaningfully to the organization that I admired for so long. Alabama Appleseed uses a holistic approach to address inequality in Alabama: they combine research, community organizing, education, coalition building, litigation, and care of individuals. Alabama Appleseed does good work. I look forward to contributing to its efforts to make Alabama a better, more just place for people of all backgrounds to live and flourish.