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 Chair of UU Ministry for Earth.

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.

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.

Rev. Lauren Spivey Levwood, Acting Director of UU Ministry for Earth, is a long-time member of the UU Ministry for Earth community. A board member since 2022, she served as Chair of the Board of Directors from 2024 – 2025 before moving into the position of Acting Director in 2025. A religious naturalist and longtime environmentalist, Rev. Lauren is spiritually nourished by experiences of awe and wonder arising in our natural world.

A southern Virginia native, Rev. Lauren serves as Minister of two UU congregations in the beautiful western Virginia mountains: the UU Church of the Shenandoah Valley and the UU’s of the Blue Ridge. Her call to Earth advocacy began in childhood and was energized in her early 20’s while working at Charlottesville’s Living Education Center for Ecology and the Arts, through which she met environmentalist and anti-mining activist Larry Gibson, who initiated her by inviting her to witness the first-hand devastation of Mountaintop Removal.

An improvisational dance theater artist, Rev. Lauren draws inspiration from public artists such as Bread and Puppet Theater, Rev. Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, and Bill McKibben’s Th!rd Act’s Rocking Chair Rebellion. Her modern dance and performance art history includes co-direction of SEED Dance Exchange, choreography and performance with the Zen Monkey Project, and co-direction of the site-specific immersive performance “Time for Tea in Times of War.”

Rev. Lauren’s professional background also includes massage therapy, Zen Shiatsu, Reiki, birth and postpartum doula care, Birthing From Within childbirth mentorship, and trauma-informed somatics. An Authentic Movement practitioner since 1999, her decades-long somatics engagement also includes Body Mind Centering, the Alexander Technique, and Contact Improvisation. Her background in bodywork and spirituality inform a personal creative offering, “Embodied Spiritual Practice” (ESP), that she shares through her community ministry, Soma Spiritus.

Rev. Lauren’s academic portfolio includes a Master of Divinity from Starr King School for the Ministry, CA (2020), study at Wake Forest University’s School of Divinity, NC (2017), two Bachelor of Arts in Dance and Philosophy from James Madison University,VA (2002), study in Alexander Technique at the Alexander Technique Teacher Training Centre, VA (2005), and Certification in Massage Therapy from the Boulder College of Massage Therapy, CO (2008).

Rev. Lauren is grateful to be journeying alongside the UU Ministry for Earth community at this time, and hopes to help this small-but-mighty nonprofit “Meet the Moment” (to borrow a phrase from the UUA’s General Assembly) with hope, resilience, creativity, and joy.

Photo credit: Katie Clark at K.M. Clark Photography