Rev. Tamara Lebak, Assistant Minister
Tamara comes to us from West Shore Unitarian
Universalist Church in Rocky River, Ohio, where she served her
internship and continued as Sabbatical Minister. Growing up in Oklahoma
City, she moved to Dallas and pursued a 7-year teaching career in
French and Theory of Knowledge in the Garland School’s International
Baccalaureate Program. It was in Dallas, at First Unitarian with the
Rev. Laurel Hallman, that Tamara discovered Unitarian Universalism, and
subsequently, her call to the ministry. She received the Robert Raible
Scholarship from that congregation for all four years of her
ministerial training.
Meadville Lombard Theological School provided
her theological education, and while in Chicago, she completed Clinical
Pastoral Education Units at the University of Chicago Hospitals and
Stateville Men’s Prison in Joliet.
She has recently completed the Organizational
Development Intensive Training Program: Becoming a Better Intervener at
the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland. She also holds a certificate from
the Graham School for Non-Profit Management at the University of
Chicago.
An avid life-long learner, Tamara is also a
musician, playing guitar, singing and studying piano. She founded – and
performed at – Uncle Waldo’s Coffee House at West Shore.
Tamara was awarded the 2006 John Wolf Preaching
Scholarship, and spent much of January with us, working with the
committee to hone her already-impressive preaching skills. During that
time, she was also working with Dr. Lee Barker of Meadville-Lombard
Theological School to develop a course in Large Church Administration;
a project that placed her in conversation with large-church ministers
around the country.
She is also an experienced facilitator and
trainer. In Washington, D.C., she conducted a training for the National
Park Service, “Transcending Boundaries: Facilitating and Managing
Complex Systems Change.”