Tina Huesing, PhD, President (term to 2027), Germany/USA
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.
Beth O'Connell, Vice President (term to 2025), USA
Beth is a retired journalist who has moved back to the U.S. after living and working in Europe for 21 years. She was a member of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Paris (UUFP) and the European Unitarian Universalists (EUU), focusing on social action.
She participated in ICUUW’s pilgrimage to Bolivia in 2015 and the Asilomar Convocation in 2017. She has been an ICUUW board member since 2019.
Peg Swain, Secretary (term to 2025), USA
Peg was Co-Director of Religious Education at Jefferson UU Church in Golden, Colorado (1980s) before moving with her family to Davis, California, where she is an active member of the UU Church of Davis and its partner church outreach. A feminist anthropologist by trade, Peg taught at UC Davis, where she co-directed the Women’s Resources and Research Center and Gender and Global Issues, a program begun in the 1990s with Ford Foundation support for international women activists from environmental, reproductive, and social justice movements to participate in an annual seminar.
Her anthropological research focused on indigenous women involved in tourism development in Panama and Southwest China and gender inequalities in tourism. Now retired, Peg continues mentoring, traveling, researching, and writing, and is happy to connect with ICUUW and U*U global sisters. She was actively involved with the 2017 Asilomar Convocation, serving as Health and Reproductive Stream Chair.
Geri Kennedy, Interim Treasurer (past term 2018-2024), USA
Geri has served on the ICUUW Board of Directors as its treasurer since June 2018. A UU for about 30 years, she is a member of the East Shore Unitarian Church in Bellevue, WA. Before her retirement, Geri spent 25 years managing homeowners’ associations, partly in a company of her own.
In the early ’90s, she got involved with the Pacific Central District’s Women & Religion Task Force, serving as its co-convener and then its treasurer. Geri was the UU Fellowship of Redwood City’s bookkeeper for about 15 years and is a former board member of UUPCC and current board member of Continental UU Women & Religion.
Dr. Rica Lamar, Director (term to 2027), India
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 co-founder 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 counseling, 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.
Renee Hills, Director (term to 2026), Australia
Renee discovered Unitarian Universalism in the small Brisbane UU Fellowship (BUUF) in Australia in October 2005, ending almost a decade of searching for an inclusive, dogma-free faith. She became president of the BUUF management committee a few years later, leading services and organizing retreats. Renee joined ICUUW’s pilgrimage to Bolivia in 2015, and subsequently attended the Asilomar Convocation in 2017.
An ICUUW board member since 2021, she is also a member of the Leadership and Design Team of the U/U Collaboration group that is working to set up a new international U/U organization. She brings an Asia-Pacific perspective to both this team and ICUUW, drawing on the experiences she and husband James have had with UUs in the Philippines and with members of the Khasi Hills Unitarians who attended the inaugural Asia-Pacific UU conference in 2019. A former teacher, journalist, and student counselor, Renee is the author of a children’s picture book titled Turtle Love and is working on a memoir about her healing journey from being born into a fundamentalist Christian sect.
Gizella Nagy, Director (term to 2026), Romania
Gizella (Gizi) is vice president of UNOSZ, the National Association of Unitarian Women of Romania, and has served as ICUUW Vice-President. Gizella was the president of the Second International Convocation of U*U Women and People of Liberal Faiths held in Transylvania in 2012. Since then, she has been instrumental in engaging young and middle-aged women in congregational life and designing programs for her local women’s association.
Gizella has also coordinated a joint ICUUW-UNOSZ leadership program for women in Transylvania and is currently engaged in helping people with mental health challenges as a certified grief recovery method specialist. She has a master’s degree in Mental Health from Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj/Kolozsvár, Romania.
Sylvie Nyiramana, Director (term to 2026), East Africa
Sylvie Nyiramana is a Unitarian Universalist from East Africa. She joined ICUUW’s virtual Tuesday gatherings in 2020, at the very beginning of this popular ongoing program. She also attended ICUUW’s international young adult network program in 2022-2023.
She is delighted to be the torchbearer for the next generation of ICUUW leaders, following in the footsteps of the remarkable women that started this worthy organization.
Erika Orbán, Director (term 2025), Hungary
Erika Orbán is a trained Unitarian minister from Transylvania, living in Budapest since 2012. She has also studied social work and mental health, and during the years she has worked as a religious educator, community minister, and chaplain in a large hospital in Sepsiszentgyörgy/Sfântu Gheorghe (Romania). She led several supportive groups for cancer patients and their family members; and also for helping professionals for burnout prevention. She is familiar with UUism in the US, as she was a Balázs scholar at Starr King School for the Ministry (Berkeley, CA; too many years ago...). They also lived in Washington, DC, for several years through her husband's work.
After moving to Budapest, she's working for an institute supporting the Hungarian minorities within the Carpathian basin, outside of Hungary (Research Institute for National Strategy). She's a dedicated mental health counselor, working with individual clients and teaching related courses (healing conversations, case studies, and mental health projects) at Károli Gáspár Reformed University. Erika is an active member of the largest Unitarian Church in Budapest, being a member of the board of trustees, too. It is a great joy for her to give sermons, by substituting for her colleagues every once in a while. She participated actively in the first, third, and fourth Convo.
ICUUW Staff
Karen Kortsch, Interim Executive Director, USA
Karen was an ICUUW board member for 2 terms, since June 2018, and its president from June 2020 to June 2024. An active member of North Shore Unitarian Church in Deerfield, IL, Karen also volunteers for several other organizations working to advance gender equity, including the American Association of University Women, National Organization for Women, and National Nurses United.
A registered nurse, she worked with the mentally ill at Capt. James Lovell Federal Health Care Facility in Chicago, IL.
Gretchen Ohmann, Marketing Director, USA
Gretchen is a long-time UU. After holding various leadership positions in her local congregation, she joined the Central MidWest UU Women and Religion Committee where she served as treasurer, conference liaison, and webweaver, then part-time office manager, computer trainer and archivist. She is the Storekeeper and one of the co-convenors of the Continental UU Women and Religion. Gretchen also worked several years as Administrator for SW UU Women and served on the board of the UU Women's Federation.
Now retired from her day job as Technology Coordinator for the UUA MidAmerica Region, she also designs and hosts web sites. She believes that gathering and connecting women is one of the keys to re-balancing power in society, along with reverence for Mother Earth and the interconnected web of our existence.
Nikki Steele, Bookkeeper, USA
Nikki started with the ICUUW in May 2023 as the bookkeeper. She has been putting her bookkeeping skills and Non Profit Management Masters degree to use in Unitarian Universalist churches since she founded her company - Your Bookkeeping Department, LLC - in 2019. Nikki first discovered Unitarian Universalism in Houston, TX in 2013. She loved the Unitarian Universalist community and was hired as Congregational Administrator at First UU Church of Houston. She later moved back home to Virginia with her wife and son, to be there to help her mother as she was entering hospice. In addition to her work supporting small organizations with their bookkeeping, she is the Congregational Administrator at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington - where she and her family are also members.
Founders
Barbara Kres Beach, Founding President, USA
Barbara Kres Beach is an educator, artist, dancer, business executive, writer, and non-profit leader, passionate for women’s empowerment worldwide. As founding president of ICUUW, Barbara helped design and develop projects in Romania, India, the Philippines, Bolivia, and Uganda. For her efforts to revive UU international partnerships as a founding member and board member of the UU Partner Church Council (UUPCC), the UUPCC gave her the Louis B. Cornish “Living the Mission” award in 2012. Barbara and her husband Kim were Creative Sageing Award recipients in 2018, an award given by the UU Retired Ministers and Partners Association in recognition of outstanding service and creativity in pursuing new ventures after retirement and building on one’s experience in creative ways. She currently serves on many nonprofit boards including the U.S. Chapter of the International Association of Religious Freedom and Virginians for the Arts, and is president and CEO of the Madison County Education Foundation.
Laura Nagel, Founding Executive Director, USA
Laura Nagel was the administrator of the 2009 Houston Convocation. She is a past president of Southwest UU Women and past co-convener of UU Women and Religion. Laura has served as president of the First Jefferson UU Church in Fort Worth, TX, and as fundraising consultant for the UUA. She is presently on the board of directors of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Monterey Peninsula. In 2004, she began doing international work through the UU Partner Church Council and was instrumental in conducting the first community capacity building program in Árkos/Arcuș, Transylvania. Laura is committed to the Global Sisters Process, a grassroots democratic planning process that has been a foundational element of ICUUW gatherings and convocations and for setting organizational priorities. She holds a Master’s Degree in Public Affairs and Policy Analysis from the New School for Social Research.