The UU Class Conversations Steering Committee members have more than a dozen decades of combined experience as facilitators and social change agents. They have pastored congregations, led Unitarian Universalist organizations, and/or been active in UU social justice organizations and projects.
Denise Moorehead, co-founder is a marketing, communications and training strategist who has worked with organizations committed to promoting the common good. She is the principal at Moorehead Creative Solutions, a small national communications and training firm. Earlier, she served in various management capacities at the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and has worked with similar organizations that promote social and class justice. She cofounded UU Class Conversations with the late Rev. Dr. Dorothy Emerson and Dr. Betsy Leondar-Wright.
Denise is a member of First Parish in Framingham, Mass. An only child for her first 11 years, she has been shaped by two “striver” African-American parents who struggled to ensure their family’s “upward” mobility. They benefited from societal changes that resulted from the civil rights movement, in which UUs played a notable role.
Diane Pansire serves as Treasurer of First Parish Brewster UU and as Treasurer for UU Class Conversations. Diane is also a UUCC trainer and has a deep understanding of the circles of oppression and inequality, which she shares with workshop participants with crystal clarity.
With curiosity and accountability, she is committed to using her privilege to create a more just distribution of wealth and power in our country.
Sara Morrison Neil recently joined the UU Class Conversations Steering Committee. She is currently the Church Administrator and Membership Coordinator at First Parish in Framingham UU. Her career has been in nonprofit administration, beginning in 1992 at the AIDS Action Committee in Boston.
Sara facilitates the Diversity and Equity Exploration Team at her congregation, which is one reason UUCC recruited her. She is committed to equity in all of its forms. DEET helps congregation members further their understanding of racism and systemic oppression. Now embedded in the fabric of the congregation, DEET has led book, movie and article discussions with congregation members and the wider community. It has also trained the members for a Listening Project, and helped them become trainers for active bystanders. Learn more about Sara’s work and life from her self-introduction.
Eli Poore, M.Div MA NCPRSS, believes that class issues are important for a number of reasons. Eli comes from a working class background and has been directly impacted by classism, poverty and the experience of houselessness, having confronted classism directly – not only in UU congregations – but in the wider world.
Eli also experienced class issues in the context of carceral systems, being formerly incarcerated and seeing how race, class and other identities come together in the likelihood of an individual’s contact with carceral systems as well as the outcomes of that contact. This perpetuates intersectional disparities and has for decades devastated whole communities. Eli writes, “I’ve seen how my privilege as a white person has manifested in all of these experiences, providing a boon for me in some aspects, as well as the way classism has presented through systemic, interpersonal, and personal disadvantages and biases.”
Eli recently served as an intern minister and cofounded a nonprofit providing ongoing street ministry/community development with communities experiencing poverty and houselessness. Learn more from Eli’s blog post.
