To the Starr King School for the Ministry Community,
On behalf of the Board of Trustees of Starr King School for the Ministry, I am delighted to announce that the next president of Starr King will be the Rev. Rosemary Bray McNatt.
Rev. McNatt has been the senior minister of Fourth Universalist Society in New York City since 2001. She served on the Starr King Board of Trustees from 1992 to 1999 and was Board Chair from 1999 to 2001. She has also served on the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) Board of Trustees 2007-2009, the UUA Panel on Theological Education 2001-2007, and was a founding member of the Unitarian Universalist Trauma Response Network and of Disaster Chaplaincy Services-New York, 2004-Present.
Rev. McNatt brings unique and powerful gifts as a preacher, activist, memoirist, journalist, and storyteller. She has consistently raised a strong public voice for progressive religion and social justice. In New York, her work with Moral Mondays and Occupy Faith have established her within a multi-religious activist network that is both local and national in scope. Within theological education, Rev. McNatt has strong relationships with several seminaries, including the one she attended, Drew Theological School, those at which she teaches (Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York and Yale Divinity School), the school at which she’s a mentoring pastor (Meadville Lombard), and of course with Starr King.
Rev. McNatt will succeed Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker, who will retire as President of Starr King on June 30, 2014 after serving for 25 years.
Rev. McNatt was named president after an exhaustive nine-month-long search conducted by the Presidential Search Committee appointed by the Board of Trustees. I wish to offer a special note of gratitude to the Search Committee and its chair, Rev. Glenn Coleman Farley, and to all the members of the committee. They worked tirelessly over an extended period of time to conduct a search that was thorough, thoughtful, and effective. I also wish to thank Hyatt-Fennell, the search firm that assisted the Search Committee and the Board. Rev. McNatt’s appointment as President was approved by a vote of the school’s Board of Trustees on March 31, 2014.
Rev. McNatt will begin her tenure as president in the Summer of 2014.
Please join me in welcoming the Rev. McNatt as the next president of Starr King.
Helio Fred Garcia
Chair, Board of Trustees,
Starr King School for the Ministry
