Biography
The Early Years
Grace Y. Kao was born in Brooklyn, New York the same year her family emigrated from Taiwan. After a short stint in Omaha, Nebraska, they moved to Southern California where Grace and her older brother attended K-12 public schools.
Grace was active in student government, Model United Nations, and cheerleading. Though she grew up in Huntington Beach–“Surf City USA”–she does not know how to surf. 🙂
She credits Evangelical Formosan Church (EFC) for her early Christian formation and for instilling in her a strong sense of Taiwanese culture and pride.
Higher Education
Dr. Kao graduated from Stanford University with departmental honors in philosophy & religious studies (1996) and a co-terminal Masters degree in philosophy (1997). She also received the Golden Medal for Excellence in Humanities and Creative Arts for her undergraduate thesis, “The Ethical Status of Filial Duties: A Demythologization of ‘Filial Piety’ (孝, Hsiao), under the direction of Philip J. Ivanhoe and became the inaugural recipient of the Howard M. Garfield Award. She relishes the time she spent with her friends in her Christian fellowship, sorority, and study abroad program at Oxford University.
She then studied theology and philosophy at Harvard University and wrote a dissertation on human rights theory under the guidance of Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, David Little, and Ronald F. Thiemann (PhD: The Study of Religion, 2003). She also honed her pedagogy through various teaching fellow opportunities and received two Certificates of Distinction in Teaching for her work in Michael Sandel’s legendary “Justice” course.
Building Her Career and Family
Dr. Kao then began working as Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Virginia Tech. In those formative years of personal and professional development, she won a College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences (CLAHS) teaching award, became an active member of two churches (Grace Episcopal Church in Georgetown and Blacksburg Presbyterian Church in Blacksburg, VA as she deepened her feminist Christian sensibilities), and gave birth to her first son. Sadly, she also lived through the April 16, 2007 campus shooting tragedy that claimed 33 lives.
After six years of living in Southwestern Virginia, Dr. Kao accepted a position in 2009 as Associate Professor of Ethics at Claremont School of Theology and Associate Professor of Religion at Claremont Graduate University. The following year until Summer 2022, she also co-directed or (solo) directed CST’s Center for Sexuality, Gender, and Religion.
She gave birth to her second son during her first year on the job. In 2010-2011, she received CST’s first ever Faculty Teaching Award by student vote. The following year, Dr. Kao published her book, Grounding Human Rights in a Pluralist World (2011). A few months later, she became the first Asian American woman to earn tenure at her institution.
In 2015, she co-edited Asian American Christian Ethics with Ilsup Ahn–the first book of its kind in a new subfield of study. In 2016-2017, she won the Fisher Faculty Teaching Award again by student vote. In 2018, she was promoted to (full) Professor and also published her second co-edited anthology, Encountering the Sacred: Feminist Reflections on Women’s Lives with Rebecca Todd Peters. In June 2021, she was appointed the (inaugural) Bishop Roy I. Sano and Kathleen A. Thomas-Sano Chair in Pacific and Asian American Theology. In August 2023, she published a combo ethical analysis of surrogacy + memoir of her time as a former surrogate under the title My Body, Their Baby: A Progressive Christian Vision for Surrogacy.
Family fun on the Rio Sarapiquí, Costa Rica (2019)
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