© 2020 Larry Bowman
© 2020 The Urantia Book Fellowship
New Councilors Chosen to Fill Vacancies
by Larry Bowman
Due to the graduations of Emilio Coppola and Avi Dogim and the resignation of Paul Anderson of Massachusetts, The Urantia Book
Fellowship General Council chose three replacements to serve on the Council until the Triennial Delegate Assembly in summer 2021.
The three new Councilors are Karen Larsen, Albert Einstein Lassiter, and Sue Snider Seccombe.
¶ Karen Larsen
As a second-generation reader, Karen, who lives in Goshen, NY, has been a reader of the Urantia Book for 23 years. She has been active in study groups since 1999 , the year she attended her first UBF international conference (Vancouver). Since then she has been to all subsequent Fellowship conferences and numerous Summer Study Sessions.
Karen formerly was a member of Urantia Society of Greater New York (USGNY) and was chair of its membership committee for several years. Presently she is a member of Urantia Book Service Corps of New England (UBSCONE) and is its treasurer. She has been a TDA delegate from both Societies. For almost 20 years she has assisted, supported, and presented at yearly retreats at Angel House in Massachusetts. She attended three Parliaments of the World’s Religions and has created several Facebook pages and online study groups. Karen’s professional life has been as a Peer Specialist, Family Development Specialist, and DC Operations Manager.
¶ Albert Einstein Lassiter
Many will remember Albert playing the trumpet in the back of the auditorium while Joshua Wilson played the organ at a morning plenary of the Salt Lake City 2011 UBF conference. At the time, it was mentioned
his name was Albert Einstein. Recently we learned of a son named Isaac Newton. A year ago his wife Jena Lassiter was elected to General Council, and since then Albert has helped her on the Web Content Committee and is an adjunct member of the Fellowship Judicial Committee, demonstrating his knowledge of the UBF Constitution and ByLaws. He and Jena live in Coeur d’Alene, ID, and are members of Inland Northwest Urantia Society.
Albert’s decades of experience in Research and Development and Quality Assurance at Hewlett Packard and other companies have enabled him to gain experience and skills in areas that can benefit the Fellowship, such as User-Centered Design, User Interface Design, Web Development, Team Building, Inclusivity, Working with Multi-site International Teams, Leadership Styles, Performance Management, Project Management, Managing Organizational Change, Issue Tracking Systems, Structured Systems Analysis and Design, and Big Data.
¶ Sue Snider Seccombe
Sue is one of several children of Mary and the late Paul Snider, who was the first President of the former Urantia Brotherhood from outside of Illinois. Sue and all her siblings were raised on the teachings of the Urantia Book and have each contributed to the Urantia movement in some manner. Her sister Cayce briefly served on General Council last decade.
Sue lives in Naperville in suburban Chicago, is a Member at Large, and has been a study group leader since 2008. At the 2018 Summer Study Session she conducted a breakout session on “Harnessing the Transformative Power of Small Groups.” For the past nine years she has been leading a women’s community group at a nondenominational megachurch.
By profession, Sue is a market research consultant and has been a focus group moderator and meeting facilitator for Fortune 500 clients. A special skill is leading disparate groups in objective listening, goal-setting, collaboration, and inclusion in order to get unstuck, stay on track, and move forward.
Those skills will come in handy serving on General Council.
Social service is the result of moral thinking and religious living. UB 5:5.4