Elias Hage is a former Youth Minister with experience creating sustainable middle school and high school youth programs in the Greater Boston area. His hands-on experience working with youth, families, and local communities inspires his work in higher education. Elias earned a Master of Arts in Religious Education from Fordham University where he researched current trends in optimism among Millennial youth and young adults and developed a curriculum for moral education that incorporates the philosophy of Karol Wojtyla. He also earned a Research Master in Philosophy with a concentration in phenomenology from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium where he was fortunate to study under Grant Ramsey, William Desmond, and Nidesh Lawtoo. His research at Leuven was on human nature, subjectivity, and mimetic theory and was published in the Proceedings of the XXIV World Congress of Philosophy and Journal of Humanistic Psychology.