UUPCC is governed by a twelve-person Board of Directors, elected by the membership to staggered 3-year terms. The day-to-day business of the organization is conducted by the Executive Director, two part-time employees and numerous dedicated volunteers.
Board of Directors
| Rev. Morgan McLean, Chair | Rev. Morgan McLean is a lifelong Unitarian Universalist and has been involved in congregations in Wisconsin, Washington, DC, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Illinois. Before entering ministry, Morgan worked on human rights issues with Amnesty International, USA. At Main Line Unitarian Church in suburban Philadelphia, Morgan worked closely with the congregation’s Partner Church efforts, including a visit in 2013 to their partner church in Várfalva, Transylvania and a subsequent visit from eight of the villagers to Main Line in 2014. Her personal experience in Transylvania was transformative as she connected with the historic roots of our shared faith and found new ways to engage that history with spirituality. Morgan is the Assistant Minister for Congregational Life at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Davis, CA. | |
| Anne Greenwood, Vice-Chair | Anne Greenwood was first introduced to Transylvanian Unitarians at the 1984 World Congress of the International Association for Religious Freedom. She has been involved ever since, traveling many times to Partner congregations in Transylvania, including her own partner church of Homoródúfalu. She has served as member, chair and co-chair of the Partner Church Committee at the UU Church of Berkeley since its inception in 1990, and is an active member of the Balázs Scholar Committee, supporting a visiting scholar and their family for the academic year at Starr King School for the Ministry. She also served as a UUPCC networker in the Pacific Central District. | |
| Rev. Eric Meter, Secretary | Rev. Eric Meter has been the Associate Minister at First UU of Columbus OH since August 2008. Born and raised Unitarian Universalist, Eric came to First UU after ten years of ministry in northern California and an interim ministry year in upstate New York. After completing his Masters of Divinity at Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, and then a ministerial internship under the late Rev. Dan O'Neal at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Santa Rosa, Eric served the Unitarian Universalist Church in Livermore, California until 2007. During his tenure there, he was president of the local Interfaith Council, and co-chaired a marketing campaign of 17 UU congregations the San Francisco Bay area. Other highlights of his ministry there included travelling twice to visit his congregation's partner church in Transylvania, leading a youth service trip to New Orleans to help in the post-Katrina rebuilding efforts and preaching in Soweto during a sabbatical month in South Africa. | |
| Rick Irwin, Treasurer | Rick Irwin was an actuary for PricewaterhouseCoopers for 18 years, specializing in health insurance projects for large employers. He retired last September. His responsibilities were tied to analysis of the client's health plan experience, so he is very comfortable crunching numbers to identify trends & outliers and to be sure everything "adds up." Rick says: I am interested in the UUPCC because of the recent choir trip to India. Three of us from UUMAN were able to make the trip (me, my wife Paula Watson, and Pat Lambert). It was fantastic, and I expect to have a continuing relationship with our new friends Banjop, Nangroi and Baria. | |
| Rev. Alicia Forde | Rev. Alicia Forde joins us as the new UUA Director of International Resources, leading the UUA’s engagement with global Unitarian, Universalist and interfaith partners, including supervising the UU United Nations Office and the Holdeen India Program. | |
| Carol Cook | Carol Cook has served on the UUPCC Board since June 2014, and on the UUPCC Communications Committee since January 2010. She is a retired librarian and resides in San Mateo, California. She is co-chair of UUSM's Partner Church Committee, and has served UUSM as Membership co-chair, Treasurer, Financial Secretary, and Board member. Carol has traveled to the Philippines five times to meet UUSM's partners in the Ulay congregation on Negros Island, and in March 2013 organized a large collection of theology books donated by Dr. Richard Beals to the UU Church of the Philippines library in Dumaguete. | |
| Rev. Ilene Tompkins-Gillispie | Rev. Ilene Tompkins-Gillispie grew up in an interfaith Unitarian Universalist family in Alexandria, VA. She is a lover and scholar of world religions and has been a practicing Sikh (a religious tradition from North India), in addition to her lifelong roots as a UU, for almost ten years. Ilene holds a B.A. in Religion from New College of Florida and an M.Div. from Boston University School of Theology. She has a deep commitment to justice work in many forms, including a history of work with the UUPCC in Romania and India. Rev. Ilene has begun her service as the settled minister with the Unitarian Universalists of Transylvania County in the beautiful mountains of Brevard, NC. Before her work at UUTC, Ilene served as a chaplain at the Durham Veterans' Affairs Medical Center in Durham, NC. She completed an intern ministry year at First Parish Church of Stow and Acton and also served as student minister at First Parish Malden Universalist, both in the greater Boston area. On her first trip to Transylvania in 2002, Ilene visited her home congregation's partner church, Szentháromság. Since then, she has visited Transylvania eight times, most recently to lead a pilgrimage trip connecting her internship congregation to their partner church. She has also spent 6 periods of time, ranging from 2 weeks to 6 months, studying various subjects in many parts of India. | |
| Joel Schrag
| Joel Schrag has been a member of the River Road Unitarian Universalist Congregation in the Washington, DC, area for almost fifteen years. As a result of his friendship with several of the founding members of RRUUC's Partner Church Committee and a chance conversation at a social justice interest fair, he became involved in RRUUC's partnerships with Unitarian churches in Fiatfalva, Transylvania, and Mawblang, NE India. These long-standing partnerships date from 1992 and 2007, respectively. For the past seven years, Joel has served as chair of the RRUUC Partner Church Committee. In addition to making several trips to visit both of RRUUC's partner congregations, Joel has organized groups of River Road members to visit both places, and he worked with the other members of his committee to organize a visit to Washington by a delegation of lay members and the minister from the Unitarian Church in Fiatfalva. One of Joel's favorite activities during the year is helping out with the cooking at his committee's annual Partnerfest celebration, which has honed his expertise in cooking a variety of Hungarian and Indian foods and raised funds to support educational and other programs in RRUUC's partners' communities. In his professional life, Joel is an economist at the Federal Trade Commission. | |
| Rev. Howard Dana | Rev. Howard Dana came to First Parish in August 2013, after 13 years serving the Unitarian Church of Harrisburg. A graduate of Starr King School for the Ministry, he previously served as intern minister at Birmingham Unitarian Church outside Detroit and interim minister at the Mission Peak UU Congregation in Fremont, California. Under Howard’s leadership in Harrisburg, his church was designated by the UUA as a Breakthought Congregation, for its visionary acquisition of an inner-city church building to accommodate a growing congregation. Howard made a second trip to Transylvania in spring'18 to see Concord’s partners in Székelykeresztúr. He has enthusiastically embraced Concord’s longtime partnership there and has also found other ways to engage in our global faith—most recently by attending the ICUU Conference earlier this year in Nepal. In his free time, Howard enjoys contra dancing, cooking, painting, movies, bookstores, gardening, travel, and his pit bull, Rosie. An outdoor enthusiast, he loves kayaking, hiking, camping, biking and walking. | |
 | Gwyn Reid Boise, ID Term to 2021 | Gwyn Reid - Boise UU Fellowship, Boise, ID As a lay leader dedicated to partnership, and a seasoned traveler to Transylvania, Gwyn enjoys visiting Boise’s Mészkö partner church in the Alabaster Village. Last year’s Steward of Partnership Award for Gwyn recognizes the depth and quality of her work for the partnership at the Boise congregation. Gwyn is deeply committed to sharing all aspects of partnership along with our Unitarian Transylvanian roots. After reviewing letters from Christine Morgan (wife of Balász Ferenc) to her family members, Gwyn created and wrote a one-woman show called “Letters from Christine”. The play was performed by a member of her congregation at GA in 2008. | |
| Rev. Debra Faulk | Debra Faulk serves the Unitarian Church of Calgary, the same congregation where her parents first recognized themselves as Unitarian and brought her along as a toddler. As a life-long Canadian Unitarian, she has found this religious tradition to be a solid foundation in her life. After serving as the parish minister at the Don Heights Unitarian Congregation in Toronto for 4 years, she was called by the Unitarian Church of Calgary in August of 2010. Debra participated in the Mindful Walk Transylvania pilgrimage in the summer of 2018. Debra holds a B.A. from the University of Victoria (Psychology / Anthropology) and a Master of Divinity degree from the Vancouver School of Theology. When not at the church, she can be found going to concerts, tending plants inside and out, reading, hiking, and connecting with friends and family including five grandchildren. |
Staff
| Roger Bertschausen, | Rev. Roger Bertschausen became the Executive Director of the Unitarian Universalist Partner Church Council in July 2016. Previously he served as the minister of the Fox Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Appleton, WI from 1990 until June 2015. During this time, the membership of the congregation grew from 100 to 700 members, making it one of the twenty largest Unitarian Universalist congregations in the United States. In May 2018, Roger was named Minister Emeritus of the Fox Valley UU Fellowship. Roger also works occasionally as a consultant on church governance with Unity Consultants of Unity Church-Unitarian in St. Paul, MN. He also serves as the Director of the UU House of Study at Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis. (The UUPCC office is located on Eden’s campus.) The Fox Valley UU Fellowship began two partnerships during Roger’s ministry—with the Unitarian church in historic Déva, Transylvania, and the UU church in Banay-Banay in the Philippines. These partnerships have had a big impact on the Fox Valley congregation and on Roger’s ministry and spirituality. So there was no hesitation when Roger was invited to serve on the UUPCC Board, which he did from 2009 until 2015. |
| Trina Priese, | A second generation UU, Trina is a life-long member at Eliot Unitarian Chapel in Kirkwood MO. A retired business and technology teacher, Trina traveled with her church group in 2016 to visit Eliot’s partner village in Transylvania. In 2017 while serving on the board at Eliot , she met Rev. Bertschausen when the UUPCC office moved to its current location in St. Louis. When the opportunity to serve as the partner church office administrator came, she embraced it eagerly and hasn’t looked back. Trina keeps a picture of her partner village congregants as her desktop display and says that working with the UUPCC partner members has enrichened her faith and provided a global understanding that she hadn’t had before. Trina’s favorite part of partnership work is helping members and travelers have the best partner experiences possible. |
| Rev. Andrew Weber, | Rev. Andrew Weber is a proud, life long Unitarian Universalist, currently living in Newark, DE (pronounced new-Ark, not New-erk) with his wife and two small children. Andrew first traveled to Transylvania in 1999 and has returned to Hungary and Romania many times with Habitat for Humanity International and UUPCC pilgrimages and volunteer groups. Through this involvement, he speaks conversational Hungarian. He grew up in a family devoted to Main Line Unitarian Church’s partnership with the Unitarian church in Várfalva, Transylvania. Andrew’s calling is to empower others to reach their full potential, and create space for transformation, self discovery and new energy. This calling continues into cross-cultural church partnerships, as the connections and relationships which are formed help us all live into a better world of understanding and love. Andrew believes strongly in incorporating spirituality and faith identity in travel experiences. He is passionate about mutual partnership because it has changed his life. |
 | Libby Hanna, Bookkeeper office@uupcc.org | |
 | Pat Rodgers, PCC-Chat volunteer pat.rodgers@sbcglobal.net | |
 | Sharon McCarron, Newsletter Volunteer |
