Rev. Tamara Lebak, Associate 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.”