About Roman

Roman Popov comes from a Russian family five generations deep of Christian leaders who’ve had to pay a high price for living out their faith. In that tradition, Roman began his Christian leadership by planting a church with a young colleague at age sixteen. Encouraged to keep doing more for God, he eventually found himself in an unhealthy place, burnt out and disillusioned. Like many other Christian leaders, he had become exhausted by trying to find his identity in ministry rather than in God.

This led Roman on a journey of faith and leadership, discovering how to let God love him and then lead out of the overflow of that love. Roman began sharing what he was learning with others, and found his calling in helping leaders become healed, healthy and whole. Beginning within Russia and extending across the former USSR, he equipped and walked alongside hundreds of leaders. Now, many years later, God is expanding his audience to a global scale through becoming DAI’s International Director/CEO. Roman is passionately invested in DAI’s mission of equipping effective, servant-hearted leaders, and is humbled to be able to invest his gifting and experience in the leaders DAI serves.

Roman has a wide educational background, with degrees in Theology & Pastoral Ministry (St. Petersburg Evangelical Theological Academy, with Fuller Theological Seminary), Philosophy (Russian Christian Academy), Psychology (Siberian Institute of Phenomenological & Existential Psychology) and Organizational Leadership (DAI’s own MAOL, through Lanka Bible College).

For over a decade, Roman has been a valuable partner of DAI’s, collaborating and consulting with DAI’s senior staff. He even oversaw the development and wrote most of the curriculum for DAI’s Walking Groups, a program which has brought remarkable spiritual growth to DAI’s global staff and is now beginning to be replicated among the leaders DAI serves.

Roman and his wife, Angela, currently live in the United States and have two daughters and two sons.

Since late 2023, Roman has been in a leadership transition with outgoing DAI President/CEO Jane Overstreet. This period will end on January 31, 2025, when Jane becomes President Emeritus and Roman assumes full responsibility for leading DAI.