About Me

I grew up outside of Houston, Texas in the last two decades of the 20th century. My family was very involved in a mainstream Protestant congregation where most congregants were employed in the space industry. This gave me a lot of exposure to both faith and science as a means to explore the universe, and two languages for describing awe and wonder.

I felt a call to ministry from my earliest days. I never seriously wanted to be anything other than a minister. I come from a family that has produced many ministers who hold serious accolades in conservative circles. When I began the coming out process as a teenager, it took me a while to reconcile my call with the reality of who I am in this world. I took a little detour down the path of social work while wrestling with these questions, earning an MSSW (focused on community and administrative leadership) from the University of Texas at Austin along the way.

I discovered Unitarian Universalism while in graduate school. I worked in the nursery of the First UU Church of Austin, and then progressed to being their Youth Program Coordinator. This is when my journey with Unitarian Universalism began in earnest. All of my experiences in UU congregations have been as a professional, which is something that makes me unique among ministers. Over the past 20+ years, I have had the pleasure of working in nine UU congregations in Texas, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Indiana. My roles have ranged from religious education, communications, membership, and of course, minister.

I have been married to Mx. Jesse Beal (they/them) since 2009. Jesse is a leading justice equity, and belonging practitioner and higher education administrator. They are a fifth year doctoral candidate studying gender and sexuality centers using a critical organizational theory lens. We have three children, all of whom were adopted from the foster care system. Our oldest is a young adult, and off exploring life independently. We also have two little ones, born in 2023 and 2025, who light up any room they enter and are always teaching me the value of slowing down to deeply connect. It appears that after all of these years, I am still in need of every tool I can find to describe awe and wonder, but these two little ones can do so with grace and simplicity.