Rashard Owens is the Founder, Chairman of the Board & Chief Executive Officer of Spirit of Refuge, Inc., a faith-based charitable, educational, and humanitarian organization headquartered in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He provides executive direction, governance leadership, and strategic oversight for the organization’s programs, partnerships, institutional development, and long-range expansion. He founded Spirit of Refuge from a governing conviction that refuge must be more than an ideal: it must become a tangible place of safety, dignity, restoration, and sustainable opportunity for people navigating homelessness, displacement, crisis, and profound vulnerability.

An Apostolic Prophet and the Presiding Prelate of the Embassy of YHWH, Prophet Rashard Owens understands compassionate service as both sacred stewardship and public responsibility. His ministry is distinguished by prophetic clarity, apostolic order, sound teaching, pastoral care, and an unwavering commitment to the dignity of every human life. This spiritual foundation informs the culture of Spirit of Refuge without limiting the breadth of its service: the organization exists to serve people of every background without discrimination, meeting individuals where they are while helping them move from immediate crisis toward stability, restoration, and renewed purpose.

Rashard is a multidisciplinary executive whose professional experience spans decades across information technology, digital systems, education and workforce development, healthcare education and life-support training, communications, financial empowerment, entrepreneurship, and nonprofit leadership. He is also licensed by the State of Mississippi, through the Mississippi Department of Education, as a Career and Technical Education educator, formally uniting his industry experience with workforce-aligned instruction. He brings to Spirit of Refuge a rare combination of disciplined administration, creative vision, structured problem-solving, and compassionate leadership. His ability to unite people, systems, resources, and strategy enables the organization to address urgent human needs while simultaneously building the institutional infrastructure required for lasting community impact.

His leadership is neither distant nor ceremonial; it is informed by direct engagement with individuals and families experiencing homelessness, housing instability, food insecurity, health-related hardship, and social displacement. Under his direction, Spirit of Refuge advances street outreach, housing stabilization, essential-needs relief, care navigation, health and wellness coordination, education, financial literacy, life-skills development, workforce readiness, spiritual care, and strategic referral services. He is committed to ensuring that every program preserves human dignity, strengthens individual agency, and connects compassionate intervention with measurable pathways toward long-term stability.

Rashard’s vision extends beyond episodic charity toward the establishment of enduring systems of refuge—communities in which housing, healing, education, cultivation, workforce integration, economic mobility, and spiritual restoration operate together. Through principled governance, responsible stewardship, and partnerships across the public, private, faith, healthcare, and community sectors, he is positioning Spirit of Refuge to become a trusted regional model of humanitarian service and transformational care. His leadership embodies the conviction that where compassion is rightly stewarded and justice is faithfully pursued, Glory Draws Near.

True to the heart of our Chairman & Chief Executive is Isaiah 58:12 · “And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.”

Repairing the breach.

Restoring paths to dwell in.

Building until glory draws near!