Desirée "Pastor Dez" Elder is a pastor, writer, and cultural architect whose work lives at the intersection of faith, community, and honest storytelling.

She serves as Pastor of Development and Innovation at First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem — one of the country's most progressive Black congregations — where she has spent over a decade building spaces that invite people to wrestle, heal, and rise.

She is the founder of Church Girl in Recovery, a community for women doing the slow, sacred work of reclaiming faith on their own terms — a gathering place for women who love God, have serious questions about the institution, and are done performing a version of themselves God never required.

As Executive Director of the FCBC Community Development Corporation, she oversees The Dream Center and The Hope Center, providing free, healing-centered programming in education, the arts, mental health, and economic empowerment. Under her leadership, the CDC has secured over $3 million in competitive grants, launched Hope on Wheels — Harlem's first mobile mental health unit — and built more than 45 cross-sector partnerships serving thousands of Harlem residents annually.

As Artistic Director of New Heritage Theatre Group — one of the longest-running Black theatre companies in the country, founded in 1964 — she is the first woman to hold this role in the history of the organization.

A Union Theological Seminary alumna, she is a member of the Writers Guild of America East, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., and a 2026 New York Foundation for the Arts Executive Leaders of Color Fellow.

Her debut book, Gaslit by God: How I Unlearned My Shame and Reclaimed My Faith (Broadleaf Books, January 2027), is a memoir-driven recovery guide for women unlearning what the church got wrong and reclaiming a faith that honors their full humanity.

She lives in Harlem with her twin daughters.