FROM LIVED EXPERIENCE TO A NEW KIND OF INSTITUTION
MissionWake Foundation is the charitable and public-benefit arm of the larger MissionWake institution, established to investigate transformational work unfolding in real-world fields and help others learn from the experience of those pursuing it.
Through investigation, research, knowledge development, public-benefit media, and strategic equipping, the Foundation helps preserve hard-earned learning and carry it into new places where people are pursuing transformation.
What Is Learned SHould Not Be Lost
Across the world, people are pursuing transformation in communities, cities, ministries, and mission fields. Their work generates stories, strategies, discoveries, successes, failures, and hard-earned experience.
Yet much of what they learn remains within the places and relationships where it developed. Valuable knowledge can disappear when leaders move on, initiatives end, or the next generation begins without access to what came before.
MissionWake Foundation exists to investigate, preserve, and develop that experience into credible learning that can strengthen others pursuing transformation.
The next movement builder should not have to begin from zero.
From Documentary Storytelling to Living Laboratories
MissionWake emerged from more than two decades of documentary storytelling, global missions, and firsthand experience with people pursuing transformation.
For more than a decade, its founder helped build and document the Jesus Week Movement across New York City, New Jersey, and Philadelphia. Churches, ministries, and leaders worked together through prayer, evangelism, creative outreach, leadership development, and sustained community engagement.
Over time, something valuable accumulated: stories, relationships, strategies, experiments, successes, failures, adaptations, and questions that could only emerge through years of lived experience.
What began as a movement-building effort had also become something else.
A living laboratory of transformation.
The realization was significant. A sustained pursuit of transformation could generate knowledge capable of strengthening the pursuit somewhere else.
MissionWake was established to investigate that experience, preserve what was learned, and develop it through masterful storytelling, research, and strategic equipping so others could build upon it.
The first living laboratory became the starting point for an institution designed to learn from many.
Learning From One Field To Strengthen Another
Documentary organizations tell stories. Research institutions investigate. Training organizations equip. MissionWake brings these capabilities together around one sustained pursuit of transformation.
The Foundation is helping build an institution capable of investigating lived experience, developing credible knowledge, and carrying what is learned into new fields through media, strategic equipping, and participation.
Each field offers something to discover. Each new application creates more experience to learn from.
Transformation is the destination. Participation is the path.
Stewarding the Mission. Protecting the FOundation.
MissionWake Foundation is governed by a Board of Directors responsible for safeguarding its charitable purpose, providing strategic and fiduciary oversight, and ensuring that its resources are used responsibly.
The Foundation’s leadership carries out its mission through investigation, research, public-benefit media, knowledge development, strategic equipping, and partnerships.
As part of the larger MissionWake institution, the Foundation works alongside affiliated entities and independent partners while maintaining its own governance, financial accountability, and charitable responsibilities.
Meet Our Board of Directors
Leadership, Oversight & Stewardship
MissionWake Foundation’s Board of Directors brings experience across ministry, media, governance, community development, and global missions. Together, they provide oversight and guidance as the Foundation develops its investigative media-to-movement work.
Rev. Dr. Michel Faulkner
Board Member – Strategic Governance & Community Leadership
Rev. Dr. Michel Faulkner is a nationally recognized pastor, civic leader, nonprofit executive, and former NFL athlete with over 30 years of experience in ministry, public policy, and urban transformation. He has served as Executive Director of U.S. Programs for World Vision, founded New Horizon Church in Harlem, and currently serves as CEO of the Philadelphia Council of Clergy. Dr. Faulkner has advised mayors and governors, run for public office, and led city-based coalitions for justice, education, and anti-poverty initiatives.
His leadership spans the intersection of faith, governance, and social reform, offering the Foundation strategic wisdom on organizational growth, movement scaling, and community impact.
Contact Rev. Faulkner
Isaac Hernandez
Board Member – Media Strategy & Faith-Based Storytelling
Isaac Hernandez is a trailblazer in Christian television with more than four decades of experience as a producer, director, and broadcast executive in faith-based media. He helped launch the first Christian streaming platform (Parables TV), directed flagship shows for TBN, and currently hosts Faith On Film, seen across more than 19 platforms worldwide. Isaac also serves on the board of ICVM (International Christian Visual Media), where he produces the annual Crown Awards to celebrate excellence in Christian storytelling.
As a global consultant and mentor to media ministries, streaming platforms, and filmmakers, Isaac brings experience in media strategy, production, and audience development, helping inform the Foundation’s approach to public-benefit storytelling and media.
Contact Isaac Hernandez
Candy Marballi
Board Member – Global Discipleship & Children’s Ministry
Candy Marballi is the President & CEO of The Prayer Covenant, a global ministry that has reached over 6 million children in 86 countries with Christ-centered tools for prayer, discipleship, and evangelism. With more than 30 years of children’s ministry experience in the U.S., Japan, and the Philippines, she is a trusted voice in next-generation spiritual formation. Her award-winning book, The Power of the Prayer Covenant for Children, is used by major ministries such as Every Home for Christ, Campus Crusade, Compassion International, and the Lausanne Movement.
Candy brings experience in global discipleship, grassroots mobilization, and international ministry partnerships, helping the Foundation understand how transformational work develops and expands across different cultures and communities.
Contact Candy Marballi
Melisa Page-Bailie
Board Member – Family Advocacy & Foster Care Impact
Melisa Page-Bailie is a seasoned advocate for children and families, with over two decades of experience in foster care, adoption, trauma-informed outreach, and church-based family support. She has opened her home to more than 200 children and adopted 10 through the foster system, while serving on the State Foster/Adoptive Board for eight years. A former missionary throughout North America and now the NY Metro Area Director for Promise686, she equips churches to care for vulnerable children through family support ministries, CarePortal initiatives, and holistic outreach.
Melisa brings invaluable wisdom on how public-benefit stories and missional resources can strengthen families, protect children, and transform communities from the inside out.
Contact Melisa Page-Bailie
Meet Our Executive Director
From Storytelling to Strategy—Leading with Purpose and Mission
Mick Richards
Founder, MissionWake | Executive Director, MissionWake Foundation
Mick Richards is a documentary filmmaker, media strategist, author, and movement builder with more than 25 years of experience in television production, global missions, and community transformation initiatives.
As the creator of the Building a Difference documentary series, Richards spent years documenting the work of nonprofit organizations and mission movements around the world. His experience as a media missionary brought him into communities and mission fields where transformational work was unfolding.
He later co-founded and helped lead the Jesus Week Movement across New York City, New Jersey, and Philadelphia, working alongside hundreds of churches and leaders pursuing saturation to transformation.
His two books, including The Jesus Week Movement and Saturation to Transformation (soon to be released), emerged from that experience, examining the movement’s history, stories, strategies, and hard-earned lessons. Together, the books helped shape MissionWake’s investigative media-to-movement model.
As founder of MissionWake and Executive Director of its Foundation, Richards is leading the development of an institution that investigates lived experience, discovers the stories and strategies within it, and carries what is learned through media and strategic equipping to strengthen others pursuing transformation.
MissionWake Foundation draws upon experienced ministry, movement, media, and organizational leaders who offer perspective, expertise, and strategic counsel as the institution develops. The Leadership Advisory Council provides non-governing guidance, helping the Foundation consider opportunities, strengthen partnerships, and remain grounded in its theological convictions and charitable purpose.
Pastor David Beidel
Founder, Urban Hope NYC | National Director, Christ Together | Co-Founder, Jesus Week Movement
Pastor David Beidel is a visionary leader, author, and pioneer in city-reaching strategies who has dedicated his life to uniting churches for the transformation of urban communities. As the founder of Urban Hope NYC and the national director for Christ Together, he has been at the forefront of equipping local churches to bring holistic change to neighborhoods marked by poverty, violence, and systemic injustice. He is the co-founder and architect of the Jesus Week Movement—a multi-regional initiative that mobilizes thousands of churches, leaders, and volunteers for Gospel saturation across New York City, New Jersey, and Philadelphia. David’s Christ-centered vision has helped churches adopt hundreds of zip codes, engage in long-term discipleship, and bring measurable change to their communities.
David Bryant
Founder, Proclaim Hope! | Former President, Concerts of Prayer International | Global Messenger of Christ Awakening
David Bryant has spent more than five decades calling the Church to a renewed vision of the supremacy of Jesus Christ. As an author, speaker, pastor, and movement leader, he has helped inspire and strengthen prayer and Christ-awakening initiatives across the United States and beyond. Through Proclaim Hope! and his longstanding work with Concerts of Prayer International, Bryant brings theological perspective, experience in collaborative Christian movements, and a commitment to Christ-centered transformation.
His counsel helps MissionWake remain attentive to the spiritual foundations of its mission as the Foundation develops its investigative, media, and movement-building work.
MissionWake Media Advisors & Collaborators
Experience Across Media, Production & Distribution
MissionWake draws upon experienced producers, creative executives, media strategists, and legal professionals who contribute expertise to the development of the larger media-to-movement institution. These individuals serve in roles within the broader MissionWake ecosystem. Their involvement does not constitute governance authority over MissionWake Foundation, whose charitable activities remain under the oversight of its Board of Directors.
Bryan Hickox
Executive Producer, MissionWake Media
Bryan Hickox is an Emmy-winning producer with a prolific career spanning 71 television movies and mini-series, earning 16 Emmy nominations, 7 wins, and two Peabody Awards. His feature films, including The Perfect Wave (starring Scott Eastwood and Cheryl Ladd) and Global Day of Prayer, have reached audiences of over 300 million worldwide. Hickox brings unparalleled experience in long-form television and global storytelling, positioning MissionWake as a world-class, impact-driven media platform with Hollywood-caliber production that carries a powerful faith-based message.
MICHAEL BLANTON
Branding and Marketing Development, MissionWake Media
Michael Blanton is a legendary music and entertainment executive, best known for launching Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, and Rich Mullins, selling over 70 million albums through Reunion Records and shaping contemporary Christian music. As a film and media producer, he has worked on major publishing, television, and film projects, including partnerships with Film Cowboy Entertainment and Oscar-winning producer Terry Benedict (Hacksaw Ridge). With deep industry expertise, he brings unmatched experience in branding, production, and audience development helping to craft its strategy for reaching mass audiences and making faith-driven storytelling a mainstream force.
Ed Nicholson
Producer / Artist Development, MissionWake Media
Ed Nicholson is a Grammy-recognized songwriter, performer, and producer with deep roots in both Christian and mainstream music industries. As a former member of Three Crosses, Ed has toured with Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, and DC Talk, co-writing and producing hits for Jason Aldean, Luke Bryan, and Phillips, Craig & Dean. With a gold and platinum track record and extensive experience in live event production, Ed plays a critical role in designing MissionWake’s high-energy programming, ensuring its content remains engaging, dynamic, and relevant to a broad audience.
JEFFREY T. JONES. ESQ
General Counsel, MissionWake Media
Jeffrey is an experienced Entertainment Industry attorney with twenty five plus years of experience in the fields of Entertainment Law, Estate Administration, Estate Planning, Literary Publishing, Copyrights and Trademarks. Jeffrey’s clients have been responsible for the sale of tens of millions of records, gold and platinum records, grammy winners, grammy nominations, multinational tours, multinational music licenses and music legislation.
Protecting the Mission. Stewarding What Is Entrusted.
MissionWake Foundation operates as a distinct charitable organization within the larger MissionWake institution, with its own Board of Directors, governance responsibilities, and financial accountability.
The Foundation advances its charitable mission through investigation, research, public-benefit media, knowledge development, strategic equipping, and partnerships.
Charitable Independence
The Foundation maintains responsibility for its charitable resources, programs, and funding decisions. Its work may involve affiliated MissionWake entities and outside partners, with relationships structured to protect the Foundation’s charitable interests.
Financial Stewardship
The Foundation is accountable for how resources are received, allocated, and used. Funding commitments are tracked according to their intended purposes, with financial oversight and reporting that connect investment to the work it supports.
Governance & Integrity
The Board of Directors provides fiduciary and strategic oversight, safeguards the Foundation’s charitable purpose, and oversees appropriate governance and conflict-of-interest practices.
The Foundation’s responsibility is to advance its charitable mission while maintaining the independence, transparency, and accountability entrusted to it.