BFUU Board of Trustees
2025-2026 BFUU Board of Trustees Members
Current fiscal year 2025-2026 approved Board Agendas and Minutes
Note: folders are empty until approved Agendas and Minutes are available.
Previous fiscal year 2024-2025 approved Board Agendas and Minutes
Previous fiscal year 2023-2024 approved Board Agendas and Minutes
Previous fiscal year 2022-2023 approved Board Agendas and Minutes
Previous fiscal year 2021-2022 approved Board Agendas and Minutes
Previous fiscal year 2020-2021 approved Board Agendas and Minutes
Margaret Hurlbert (she/her) President
Margaret Hurlbert has been coming to the Fellowship for many years, and has been active in the Choir, Chair of the Music Committee, and has taken part in many events and concerts. She has also been active in the Social Justice Ministry. Some projects she has worked on include going to ICE detention centers and protesting the internment of children, going to Climate Change marches with BFUU, helping with concerts and dances and the ukulele group at BFUU, and organizing making soup at BFUU for Consider the Homeless.
Mike Gardner (he/him)
My adventures with BFUU began when my first wife and I were married in Fellowship Hall in 1967. We began attending and were inspired by the spiritual message of the minister, Clark Olsen, and his activism, and that of the Social Action Committee, now the SJC. We joined the Fellowship and became active members. In 1980 I stepped away from BFUU.
However, after years of trials and tribulations I realized that again I was seeking to grow and express a sense of spirituality for both my political and scientific interests. In 2014 I rejoined BFUU, along with my wife Jinky. Since then I’ve been a member of the Ministerial Relations Committee, a member of the Personnel Committee and a member of the Board of Trustees. I’ll work on the new Board to help keep things moving forward spiritually, socially and financially in these difficult times.
Gillian Fynn (she/her), Vice President
Gillian joined BFUU in 2024 out of a deep need for a community that would embrace both spirituality and social justice and no longer finding those needs adequately met in mainstream churches. She has enjoyed being a liturgist at services, and gave the address on Mother’s Day.
Gillian has been a lifetime activist in causes ranging from the movement for a Bi-lateral Nuclear Freeze, to Witness for Peace in Nicaragua, and running for office to advocate for Health Care Access. Currently, she is fully involved in resistance to the Trump regime, and BFUU’s support of Immigrants. As a member of the Board, Gillian is interested in keeping BFUU strong, encouraging increased membership, and welcoming children into the community.
Phoebe Sorgen (she/her)
Phoebe Sorgen became a BFUU friend 27 years ago when she enrolled her boys in the RE program. Though unavailable on Sunday mornings due to work, she became active via the Social Justice Committee, which she eventually chaired. After becoming a BFUU member, she was elected to the Board during the time that BFUU transitioned from lay led and hired Rev. Kurt Kuhwald in hopes of increasing membership. She served on the then newly reconstituted Personnel Committee, and has also been on the Aesthetics and Nominating Committees.
For effective peace, democracy, and human rights advocacy, Phoebe was a 2005 Outstanding Woman of Berkeley and 2015 Tom Paine Courageous Spirit awardee. As a Peace & Justice Commissioner, she wrote many Resolutions that were adopted by the City of Berkeley. Some were adopted by other cities.
Phoebe is a Green Party County Councilor and state delegate to the GP-US National Committee (the decision making body.) She serves on the GP-US Peace, International, and Conflict Resolution Committees, and is active in the Women’s Caucus. Despite those responsibilities, and being on the Steering Committees of Move to Amend and Berkeley Citizens Action, she also serves as a BFUU Board of Trustees Alternate because our beautiful BFUU community means the world to her.
Sumi Hoshiko (she/her)
Sumi was raised in a Unitarian household where she absorbed at least a bit of UU culture. Her early adulthood included an internship with AFSC, work as a community organizer and activist with the Jobs With Peace campaign, focusing on the connection between funding jobs/human needs versus the military. This theme still resonates, although now amid growing concerns about authoritarian rule. She is the author of an oral history book on abortion.
For fun, she has performed original monologues at The Marsh theatre. She was drawn to BFUU because of its social activist focus, where she co-taught a class on Non-Violent Communication some years ago. After her retirement from public health as a research scientist, she became a life coach (and has been trying to keep up with technology by consulting for a software company). She has enjoyed meeting new friends at BFUU and teaching her class designed to help people make change in their life. Sumi is the mother of two children and now a granddaughter! She enjoys outdoor running, travel, art, and is an avid reader of books and news. As a potential Board member, she is interested in exploring ways to support and grow the BFUU community and its activities.
Betsy Nachmann (she/her), Alternate
Betsy grew up in Chicago as a Unitarian Universalist. She got a bachelors degree in International Relations and a masters degree in Teacher Education/ Early Childhood. Betsy directed Griffin Nursery School in Berkeley for twenty-four years. She especially loved helping children separate comfortably from their parents and resolve their conflicts. Now that she’s retired, Betsy owes it to the memories of her civically active parents and to this frightening and opportune time in history to be a political activist. She recently joined the BFUU to have more of a community than she’s had in recent years and to join with other BFUU members to restore, maintain, and improve the common good. Betsy loves writing, wildflower hunting, rudimentary geology, singing, stuff like that.
Hank Pellissier (he/him), Alternate
Hank is founder/director of Humanist Mutual Aid Network, a nonprofit working mostly in Africa. He’s been an activist with CodePink and Extinction Rebellion, and he rented Fellowship Hall twice for Peace Gatherings. He lives in Piedmont with his wife Carol, they raised two bio-daughters, and they’re now guardians of a foster refugee girl from Ethiopia, plus Hank has a bio-son (he was the sperm donor to two lesbian friends). Hank is currently a contracted education writer for GreatSchools.org, he was previously managing director for a futurist think tank, the Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technology, and a columnist for Salon.com, SFGate.com, and NYTimes (SF edition) His main interest is wealth distribution/global egalitarianism/poverty alleviation; he just launched a website titled Eat The Rich. He also writes limericks and doggerel, decades ago he was a performance artist and a SF Slam Poetry co-champion.