In April, 2019, after several years’ planning, my husband, Bob, and I moved to Rome. We had worshipped at St. Paul’s Within the Walls on several previous visits to Rome, so we were sure we’d feel welcome and at home here. During our early days of becoming acclimated to a new country and during the difficult days of Lockdown, this faith community has been a source of witness and inclusion for which we are very grateful. My candidacy for Vestry is rooted in my gratitude for this community and my hope that my prior church experience might be useful here. And, in truth, I just like Church. I admire the way communities of faith come together to worship, to achieve good things, to mark the milestones of our common life and of our individual lives. I have been blessed to see and experience Church as the Beloved Community, not always fully living into that call, but collectively striving toward it.

I am a “cradle Episcopalian” and a sixth generation Californian. Apart from that branch, my family are Louisianans of multiple generations which was a factor in my choosing LSU New Orleans for college. I never expected to leave there but career decisions eventually led me back to San Diego. Like many of us who studied Liberal Arts, I ended up working far afield from my education. My first career was in retail branch banking and eventually in managing departmental transitions as the “big banks” merged and consolidated their operations and backroom functions. After more than 30 years in banking, I was invited to consider a position as Administrator at my church (since 1996), St. Paul’s Cathedral, in San Diego, in 2003. This turned out to be a much more gratifying and much more complex position than I had anticipated. It included providing infrastructural support to the ministries of St. Paul’s, including the management of finance and budgeting, human resources, insurance and risk management, office operations, information systems and technology, facilities, grounds and special events.

It also included the initial organization of our participation in the annual rotational shelter, an interfaith effort across the city in which churches provide meals and sleeping space for those without housing. During my tenure, I completed the Education for Ministry program (a four-year program of scripture study, Church History and life integration through the Episcopal Seminary at Sewanee), became a group mentor for the program and, ultimately, Diocesan Coordinator for it. I attained a Certification in Church Business Administration from the multi-denominational professional organization for church business administrators. Certification required two summer residential programs at partner seminaries (in my case, one year at California Baptist University and one at St. Paul’s Seminary at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota), as well as completion of a substantial, documented action project which would contribute to the work of Church Administration. My project was a detailed review of the environmental impacts of our church’s activities, including cleaning formulas, disposable hospitality items, printed materials, lighting and energy efficiency. Each of these, of course, has a potential impact on staff workloads, costs, and the experience of worshippers and visitors to the campus. In anticipation of retirement, I began a 3-year certificate course offered by Loyola Marymount University, in Spiritual Direction, which I completed in 2013.

At the end of 2014, I retired as Canon for Administration. As is customary for those leaving senior positions in the church, I wanted to find a new church home and spent the first 18 months or so of my retirement visiting other churches in our Diocese, a rich experience that gave me a renewed sense of the many ways Episcopalians worship and respond to God. Until relocating to Rome, my parish was All Souls’ in San Diego, where I served on the Stewardship Committee, as a lector, acolyte and chalice bearer and mentored an EfM group. I continue to serve as a Convener for Parish Discernment Committees for those seeking ordination in the Diocese of San Diego (thank you, Zoom!).