BOARD BIOGRAPHIES
Rev. Terra Collier-Young
While in discernment on how to develop her community ministry, Terra conceived of Five Seeds Ministry offering service to Unitarian Universalists and other spiritual folx through these metaphorical seeds: Tending Grief, Communication and Justice for All, Dance as a Spiritual Practice, Celebrations That Honor Life and Death, Artistic and Somatic Insights. These seeds are her Spirit's calling through theological, social, and artistic expressions. You can visit her website at www.fiveseedsministry.com.
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Rev. Jane E. Davis
Rev. Jane Davis describes her ministry as a healing ministry providing spiritual support and connection to community resources supporting those struggling with recovery from addiction and supporting those returning to our community after incarceration. She began this work because she saw such a need for spiritual support for this population in a way that honors diversity and provides support in a non-prescriptive, non-proselytizing way. She refers to this need as a need for Unitarian Universalist Faith Healing.
Rev. Davis is an ordained Unitarian Universalist Community Minister affiliated with First Unitarian Church of Albuquerque and working for Health Care Services Corporation in the Behavioral Health Justice Program.
Ben Gabel
In October 2019, Ben Gabel was selected to serve as the lay community minister Co-President for the UU Society for Community Ministries. He is active in community ministry doing community organizing involving racial, LGBTQ, and disability justice.
Ben is also active at the UUA national level. He is a past Steering Committee member of DRUUMM (2015-2019). He has served as a member and co-chair of the Journey Towards Wholeness Transformation Committee. Ben is currently serving on the UUA Nominating Committee and the Advisory Panel for the Congregational Conflict Engagement Team: Hope for Us.
Professionally, Ben currently serves as the Congregational Administrator for the Northwest UU Church in Southfield, MI. He lives with his husband, Bret, and Labrador retriever,Grover.
Rev. Nikki J Hunt
Nikki has been the UUSCM Membership Director since 2018, and the Board appointed her interim Co-President May 2021. Her full-time community ministry is working as the Development Director for Southern Arizona Legal Aid. She has done nonprofit work most of her life and has a Masters in Public Administration. In 2014 she met her husband, Joe, at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley California. After she graduated with her MDiv, she and Joe moved to Arizona to be with his family; they currently live with their dog Yoda in Tucson. In April 2018, Nikki was ordained by her home congregation in Chico, California. Nikki’s theological grounding is earth rooted-traditions and Buddhism. Her calling is to help individuals and communities flourish.
Doug Jones
Ebony C. Peace
Ebony C. Peace is a Lay Community Minister whose ministries focus on employment consulting, reproductive justice, and leadership development. She is an adult Our Whole Lives (OWL) sexuality education facilitator. As a part of her ministries, she serves as a co-facilitator for the District of Columbia Center for the LGBT Community’s job club and facilitates monthly adult spiritual enrichment classes in sexuality and leadership development through Sunstone Chapel. She also serves in the executive position of Director of HR at the Unitarian Universalist Association where she helps to lead the UUA’s overall commitment to being a workplace where people of all backgrounds and identities can thrive. Ebony is an award-winning preacher, earning the Charles Billings Prize in Preaching from Meadville Lombard Theological School where she also received her Master of Arts in Leadership Studies. As an author, her poems have been published in two Skinner House Books anthologies. She lives in Silver Spring, MD with her spouse, two children, and two cats. You can visit her website at SunstoneChapel.org.
Rev. Dr. Betty Stapleford
Rev. Dr. Betty Stapleford has been involved in social justice since her days of civil rights action in Atlanta, Georgia, in the 60’s and has been involved in numerous social justice causes in Ventura County since her arrival in 1998. She served as the minister of the Conejo Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Thousand Oaks for 12 years, the minister of the UU Church of the Verdugo Hills for 5 years, and is now the Affiliate Community Minister for Social Justice at the Universalist Unitarian Church of Santa Paula. She is also the co-chair of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice Ventura County (CLUE VC) and is President of the UU Justice Ministry of California.
