Clergy

Rev. Ana Levy-Lyons, Senior Minister ana@firstubrooklyn.org

The Rev. Ana Levy-Lyons is Senior Minister at First Unitarian. She brings to her ministry a passion for social and environmental justice and a belief in the power of liberal religion to transform our world. She also brings a love of creative, embodied, music-centered worship from a previous life as a musician.

Prior to First U, she served as Acting Associate Minister at the Unitarian Church of All Souls in Manhattan. Before that she served as Minister of two Chicago congregations: the Beverly Unitarian Church and the UU Community Church in Park Forest, Illinois.

Ana holds a B.A. in Music from Brown University and an M.Div. from the University of Chicago Divinity School. She has won numerous awards for her sermons including the Borden Sermon Award, the Jerry Davidoff Sermon Award, and the Dana Greeley Sermon Award. Her sermons and articles have been published in UU World, Criterion (a University of Chicago publication), and Tikkun magazine where she is a contributing editor.

Ana grew up in Tenafly, New Jersey. After college, she moved to the west coast where she started a web design business and worked as an account manager in online advertising. Her clients were Fortune 500 companies and she got a quick education in the corporate media world, learning the secrets of advertising and the religion of technology.

Simultaneously, Ana was pursuing a career writing and performing music. She spent five years as a singer/songwriter and recorded an album called “Hunger.” She was a winner of the International SIBL Songwriting Competition for her song “Hunger” and her songwriting received a rave review in Billboard magazine.

Ana lives in Manhattan with her husband Jeff and twelve-year-old twins Miriam and Micah.

Rev. Meagan Henry, Assistant Minister, Religious Education & Pastoral Care meagan@firstubrooklyn.org

Meagan has two decades of experience in Religious Education.  She studied World Religions in college and has a Master’s Degree in Philosophy and Religious Studies from the University of TN, Knoxville and a Masters of Divinity from Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago. She was an adjunct professor at UTK for three years after graduation and taught several classes on Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam. While attending the University and teaching religion classes, she served as the part-time Youth Ministry Coordinator at the Tennessee Valley UU Church. Meagan and her husband, James, were married at TVUUC and her daughter, Starling, grew up in the RE program. In July of 2006, Meagan and James moved to Alexandria, VA where she served as the Director of Religious Education (DRE) at the Mt. Vernon Unitarian Church for 6 years. Following that, she served as the DRE at All Souls Unitarian in Washington, DC for 15 months before moving to Brooklyn.  Meagan is passionate about UU religious education. She is a lifelong UU, raised at the Meadville Unitarian church in Northwestern Pennsylvania. From ages 8 – 14, Meagan, spent her summers at The Mountain Center, a UU camp in the mountains of Western North Carolina where her father and step-mother served on the staff. Her UU summer camp experience was deeply formative and she has been something of a nature-lover and outdoor adventurer ever since. Meagan enjoys hiking, camping, canoeing and kayaking. Being in nature is one of the ways she grounds herself and finds spiritual inspiration. She believes we never stop learning and growing and developing our spiritual selves, and as such, she is an advocate of holistic, life-long faith formation.