Philip R. Love, a former business CEO, has been appointed managing director of the Center for Faith and Culture at Yale Divinity School.
Love, the retired CEO of the Kansas-based Pryor Resources, Inc., has served on the YCFC advisory board since 2012. He succeeds Harold “Skip” Masback, who now leads the new Youth Ministry Institute at YDS.
“We are very fortunate to have Phil Love join us as managing director of the Center for Faith and Culture at YDS,” Dean Greg Sterling said. “Like Skip Masback, 
he has led much larger organizations but has joined us out of a commitment to serve the causes for which we stand.”
Miroslav Volf, Henry B. Wright Professor of Systematic Theology at YDS and YCFC Founding Director, said, “I am fortunate to count Phil Love among my friends and to have him now as the Managing Director of the Center. Over the last three years, Skip Masback has done a fantastic job in guiding and managing the expansion of the Center, and I am confident that Phil will do equally well in the new phase in the Center’s life.
“Given his work experience, it goes without saying that he is an accomplished manager. But Phil also has a well informed and wonderfully curious theological mind. Equally important, Phil shares with all of us at the Center the passion for critical exploration of Christian visions of flourishing life and for promoting truth-seeking cultural conversations about flourishing life.”
For Love, the path to YDS began after his 2000 retirement from Pryor Resources, a provider of business training seminars. After retiring, Love completed a Master of Arts in Religious Studies at Central Baptist Theological Seminary and went on to serve on the seminary’s board of trustees. In that capacity, he became acquainted with Volf’s work—and then with Volf himself.
The pair’s budding friendship and strong mutual interests led to Love’s appointment to the YCFC board of advisers. And when Volf sought a successor to Masback, he invited Love to consider and, eventually, accept the position.
Love says he is excited to administer the joy and human flourishing work YCFC is undertaking with its $4.2 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation. “I am delighted to have the opportunity to contribute to the project of returning joy, the good life, and human flourishing to the center of theological discourse and the discourse of the wider public,” Love said, “whether in the church or in academia.”
Love also serves on the President’s Advisory Council of his alma mater, William Jewell College, where he received his B.A. in philosophy in 1971. Love completed his M.A. in counseling from the University of Missouri at Kansas City in 1975, and received a post-graduate diploma in Bible and the Contemporary World from the University of St. Andrews in 2014.
In addition to his professional and board work, Love was, for many years, an avid flyer and volunteer pilot. He served for 12 years on the board of Angel Flight Central, a non-profit that arranges charitable flights for healthcare, disaster response, and other humanitarian purposes. In 2007, Love was awarded the “Volunteer Pilot of the Year” award.
Love has also served as chair of the congregational board at Country Club Christian Church in Kansas City and enjoys leading classes exploring theological themes in films.
Love and his wife, Patty, have two married children and five grandchildren, with a sixth expected soon.
“We thank Phil and Patty for their willingness to set aside their personal plans and Phil for lending his exceptional talents to us,” Sterling said. “We welcome them both!”