The Rev. David Copley is the Director of Global Partnerships and Mission Personnel on the Presiding Bishop’s staff and has been working at the Episcopal Church Center since 2006 when he was appointed as the Mission Personnel Officer.

David is a native of Nottingham, England and began his career as a pediatric nurse in 1981. He traveled to Liberia during the civil war in 1991 as an emergency medical relief worker with GOAL (Ireland) and UNICEF. Initially, he was assigned to the rebel-held region of Capemount County where he worked to re-establish 13 rural health clinics, before the war drove out all health workers from this area. He later helped with vaccination campaigns in Buchanan and initiated a health education program with UNICEF in Monrovia. It was during this time in Liberia that his faith was renewed and where he met his future wife, Susan.

The Copley’s served as appointed missionaries in Bolivia for four years, working initially with Amistad Mission, an orphanage in Cochabamba, where they helped to nurture the spiritual lives of the children and coordinated short-term mission trips from the US. They later served as lay leaders of a small Anglican house church, La Trinidad, and became involved in prison, youth, and rural development ministries.

On receiving a call to ordination, David and Susan returned to the US in 2000 to attend Virginia Theological Seminary. After completing their studies in 2003, they were appointed as assistant rectors at St. John's Episcopal Church in Hampton, Virginia.

Over the past 11 years David has travelled throughout the Anglican Communion and has extensive practical experience of the global mission activities of The Episcopal Church within the Anglican Communion. As Director for the Office of Global Partnership he coordinates a team which serves as a bridge for developing and strengthening relationships between the Episcopal Church and our partners around the Anglican Communion.