Clergy
Rev. Ana Levy-Lyons, Senior Minister
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 ten-year-old twins Miriam and Micah (who love to sing and play the drums).
