Dr. Deborah Avery is the Founder, President, and CEO of Yehuda University and Seminary, where she steers the direction of the University in its mission to foster the faith and growth of students academically, spiritually, and professionally.

Academically and professionally, Dr. Avery has earned a Bachelor of Arts in Biology and Health from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro going on to become an executive in the pharmaceutical industry. She also earned a Master’s in Divinity from Duke University and a Masters in Agency Counseling from North Carolina A&T State University as well as a Juris Doctorate from Hamline University, and she received a PhD in Christian Leadership and Business from Higher Place Christian University. While studying law, Dr. Avery clerked in the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office, and later worked for the District Attorney’s Office in Sacramento, California, where she was the only one of her peers to win her criminal jury trial. She has served as Senior Counselor for male inmates transitioning back into society, where she not only counseled male inmates, but created and led the entire interfaith religious program serving Muslim, Catholic, and Protestant inmates.

Dr. Avery went on to fulfill her calling to ministry by becoming a licensed and ordained Baptist minister, a Hospital Chaplain at Durham North Carolina’s Veterans Hospital, Wake Forest Medical Hospital and Associate University Chaplain at Hamline University for Minority Undergraduate students while she was in law school. Dr. Avery has started and led three different congregations within various institutions throughout her ministry. In her search for Biblical truth, self-study led Dr. Avery to discover the truths of spiritual authority, faith, and inheritance that Jesus died to give the Body of Christ, as revealed in the Word of Faith movement as well as the Messianic truths of Jesus found in the marriage of the Old and New testaments.

This unique combination of theological exploration, academic achievement, professional experience and an apostolic calling to build churches is what led Dr. Avery to found Yehuda University.