Vashti Murphy McKenzie (born May 28, 1947) is the President and General Secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA.

[6] She was named after her maternal grandmother, Vashti Turley Murphy,[7] who was one of 22 women who founded the Delta Sigma Theta sorority in 1913, while a student at Howard University.

In her junior year, she left school to marry Stan McKenzie, who was playing for the Baltimore Bullets in the NBA.

Vashti McKenzie went back to school, and earned a Bachelor of Arts in journalism at the University of Maryland.

In an interview for a Christian Post article in 2019, she noted that running for bishop meant '"[h]elping people to take a look at your ministerial track record in your pastorate.

'Being able to get that message out, being able to show people that it’s not just me being female, that I have had experiences, I'm qualified, and take a look at how God has blessed our ministry as an indication of what we can do in the future.

Carolyn Tyler Guidry, the first woman to serve as presiding elder in the Fifth District of AME Church, also ran for election.

In her acceptance speech, she is quoted as saying, "Because of God’s favor, the stained-glass ceiling has been pierced and broken.”[11] She was consecrated as the 117th bishop in the AME Church, and became the first woman to be elevated to the episcopacy .

[12][15] In her first post as bishop, she was named to the 18th district, which has oversight for AME churches in Africa, mainly in Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique and Swaziland.

[17] In 2012, she moved to the Tenth Episcopal District in Texas, where she presided until her retirement in 2021 at the 51st General Conference in Orlando, FL.

[24] McKenzie was among a number of African American women from around the United States who endorsed Hillary Rodham Clinton for President in 2016.