Rev. Lauren Levwood is a Unitarian Universalist minister serving part time at two congregations: the UU Community Church of Washington County, Oregon (virtual) and the UUs of the Blue Ridge, Virginia (in person). Prior to becoming a UU minister, Lauren worked in women’s health as a massage therapist, doula, and Birthing From Within childbirth mentor, and as a professional modern dancer and improvisational dance theater artist. Lauren currently serves as the Chair of the UUMFE Board of Directors. A religious naturalist, she is spiritually nourished by embodied experiences of awe and wonder arising in our natural world.

Betsy Tomic is a finance and business professional and attends the UU Congregation of the Hudson Valley in New York State. She has been a UU for over 15 years. Besides serving as Treasurer of UUMFE for the past 5 years, she has served on her congregational Board, Green Sanctuary, Membership, Arts, and Buildings & Grounds committees.  

Since retiring from a career in higher-education policy and management positions, Anne-Marie has oriented her life around earth-centered activities. In addition to community volunteer positions, she leads the Earth Care Team at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Richmond (VA). She has also served as Treasurer, Co-Leader of the Capital Campaign, and Chair of the Endowment Committee. She enjoys reading, hiking, playing the ukulele with her husband, and visiting their sons’ families in California.

Over her life of service to humanity, Swamini Adityananda Saraswati has worked with national and international nonprofit and interfaith organizations from the ground level to the United Nations and World Bank levels, working on climate change, hunger, water scarcity, violence, global poverty, interfaith harmony, and other crucial issues. Swamini was the founding Director of an interfaith environmental and humanitarian alliance in India; the Interim Executive Director of the world’s largest interfaith organization, United Religions Initiative; the Associate Executive Director of the Elijah Interfaith Institute, working closely with the Pope and Dalai Lama; and co-founder of Chicago’s Pan-African Association; and has spearheaded rights-based campaigns and communications with ActionAid. She completed her Clinical Pastoral Education at Northwestern University’s Central DuPage Hospital, and served as an Intern Minister with First UU Church of San Diego. Recently, she was certified as a Mindfulness Meditation teacher through the University of California Berkeley’s Center for Greater Good and the Awareness Training Institute. A Hindu-UU, in 2012, in the high Himalayas, she became one of the world’s few western females to be ordained in a traditional Hindu order of Adi Shankaracharya. She is now proud to also be a Candidate for UU Ministry, and is delighted to be serving as the Vice Chair of UU Ministry for Earth.

Rashid Shaikh, Ph.D., is a seasoned research executive with over four decades of experience in the leadership and administration of diverse scientific organizations and programs. His scholarly interests encompass the scientific underpinnings of the health effects associated with environmental degradation and climate change, as well as the institutional frameworks that support the generation and utilization of impartial, policy-relevant knowledge. He is active at the First Parish in Cambridge Unitarian Universalist, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Rev. Valerie Freseman is the contract minister at the Unitarian Universalists of Southold, a UU Congregation in the heart of Long Island’s wine and farm country. She graduated from Union Theological Seminary in 2014, where she was active in the Ecology Caucus. She has served congregations in NJ, New York, and Ohio. Prior to her formation as a UU minister, she worked in the non-profit sector in New York City.