Nominating Committee Report
We nominate Tina Huesing, PhD, and Dr. Rica Lamar for three-year terms on the ICUUW Board of Directors. We feel that both candidates will be valuable contributing members of the board.
We regret that we have not been able to find a board member ready to serve as Treasurer, and recommend that the position be left unfilled for the time being until a suitable candidate comes forward. In the meantime, Geri Kennedy will continue, possibly with the help of one or more volunteers, to do the work of the Treasurer.
Tina Huesing, PhD, USA (2024-2027)
Tina Huesing has been involved with our organization from the very beginning. In February 2009, Tina attended the Houston convocation that led to the establishment of the International Convocation of Unitarian Universalist Women as a non-profit organization. And she was hooked! A group of powerful women working together to make the world a better place for women, and by extension, for all! Tina took the ideas from the first convocation back to her home organization, the European Unitarian Universalists, where she started a Global Sisters group that led to a revitalization of the social action committee and a youth exchange program with the Unitarian High School in Transylvania.
Tina also attended the Second Convocation in Romania in 2012 and served as the Program Chair for our Third Convocation in California in 2017. She has been active in ICUUW as a Board member (2013-2016), and as the Chair of our Development Committee since 2020.
This year, Tina is serving on the task force that is renewing ICUUW’s Strategic Plan; she also heads up the scholarship task force for the Fourth Convocation. Tina is a member of our UN Advocacy group, serving as a representative for ICUUW at the UN Commission on the Status of Women meetings in New York City for the past two years.
When she is not working on ICUUW issues, Tina is a professor at Montclair State University, NJ, where she teaches management.
Dr. Rica Lamar, India (2024-2027)
Dr. Rica Lamar, a Doctor of Medicine in Jowai, Meghalaya, India, has been a member of ICUUW for several years, having attended the Third Convocation in Asilomar in 2017. She is active in Seng Kynthei, the organization of Unitarian women in the Khasi and Jaintia Hills in northeast India, and has been recognized for outstanding social work by her Unitarian community.
Dr. Rica’s enthusiasm for leadership training for women and her interest in women’s issues are expressed in her current professional work: she is a cofounder of the Manbha Foundation, a non-profit organization working on substance abuse, HIV/AIDS, and women’s issues, including domestic violence, single mothers, female sex workers and destitute women. Within this framework she does counselling, detoxification and follow-up of drug users and alcoholics, awareness generation, dissemination of health issues and prevention of high-risk behavior amongst the youth. She is also a founder of the Unitarian Charitable Health Centre, in Shillong, India, which administers free health checkups and health care for children and supervises medical care in rural areas.
Among other work, Dr. Rica provided guidance for a “train the trainers program” on teaching life skills and drug awareness to children in February 2024, reported in our Spring/Summer 2024 newsletter.
Nominee to the ICUUW Nominating Committee
Vicki Roberts-Gassler has agreed to continue for a second two-year term. Working with Gevene Hertz, she can provide continuity to the work of the committee.
Vicki Roberts-Gassler, PhD, USA, for a second two-year term (2024-2026)
Vicki Roberts-Gassler once brushed off missionaries from a different faith by asserting that she was a “devout Unitarian,” thinking it was a joke. She realized the significance of the UU community in her life when she joined the UU congregation in Greensboro, NC in 1981. As a UU, she co-directed Religious Education (RE) programs, served on church boards, and co-coordinated Cakes for the Queen of Heaven, a woman-honoring adult RE curriculum.
During the 23 years she and her family lived in Brussels, Belgium, she was active in the European Unitarian Universalists (EUU), attending many of their twice-yearly retreats and serving in various capacities, including as an EUU representative to the International Council of Unitarians*Universalists. When she and her husband retired, they lived with the Khasi-Pnar Unitarians in India for nearly a year and volunteered as English tutors in the high school in Jowai. Now living in Everett, WA, Vicki joined the Edmonds UU Congregation, where she is a member of the Advocates for Women committee. In her spare time, she volunteers with her local League of Women Voters, quilts, embroiders, and enjoys her small family.
Vicki attended ICUUW convocations in Romania and the U.S.; she looks forward to the Fourth Convocation and nurturing the inspiring connections that ICUUW’s twice-a-month global U*U women's gatherings provide.