Unitarian Universalist Ministry for Earth is led by a growing board of directors, staff, and many dedicated volunteers. Interested in volunteering? Contact us!
Board of Directors
Rev. Lauren Levwood
Chair
About Rev. Lauren
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
Treasurer
About Betsy
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.
Swamini A. Saraswati
Vice Chair
About Swamini
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.
Dr. Rashid Shaikh
At Large
About Rashid
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.
Staff and Consultants
Mary Ellen Morgan
Executive Director
About Mary Ellen
Mary Elen Morgan is a forty year Unitarian Universalist, who has served five of our congregations as Administrator and one congregation as Director of Religious Education. She is now the ministerial intern at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Redwood City, CA and will graduate from Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago, IL in May with a Masters degree in Divinity. As someone who grew up in farm country, she has a life-long love and deep fellowship with the earth and has dedicated her life, along with her late husband, to making their home with as small a carbon footprint as possible.
Audrey McCann
Communications Coordinator