FGC Quaker Friends General Conference

of the Religious Society of Friends (Quaker)

Meet the Clerks

Clerks by Committee:

Links are to clerks with biographies further down this page.

Officers:

Committee Clerks

Marian Beane

Marian is Presiding Clerk of FGC Central Committee. Before that she served as committee clerk of FGC's Ministry & Nurture, the Discernment in Long Term Planning, and Long Range Conference Planning. Marian lives in Charlotte, North Carolina where she is an active member of the Charlotte Meeting and is currently clerking its Long Range Envisioning Committee. She has previously served as clerk of her meeting and also of Piedmont Friends Fellowship (PFF). Her life is enriched through her daily work as the Director of the International Student & Scholar Office at UNC Charlotte. Daily interactions and connections across cultures remind her of the beauty and universality of the human spirit. Centering for her comes in various ways including the daily practice of tai chi and a good brisk walk that helps to clear her mind and bring renewed energy.

Lois Forrest

I'm Lois Forrest, clerk of the Personnel Committee. I retired in 2000 after having served twenty-one years as the executive director of Medford Leas, a Quaker continuing care retirement community in New Jersey. Prior to that assignment I served as the executive director of the YWCA of Philadelphia.

Currently, I am involved in a variety of volunteer activities that include clerking the Friends Fiduciary Corporation of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting; president of Camp Dark Waters, a Quaker camp and conference center and as a member of Medford Township's (NJ) Environmental Commission.

My husband and I have four children, nine grandchildren and will soon become great-grandparents. We particularly enjoy outdoor activities from hiking to gardening and love reading and the arts.

It is a privilege to work with the dedicated staff of FGC, together with the other volunteers who serve on the Personnel Committee.

eing an unemployed full time volunteer for FGC and other good causes.

David Miller

David has been involved with FGC in various capacities since the mid-1980s. He currently serves as clerk of the Long Range Conference Planning Committee. He has previously been Clerk of the FGC Finance Committee, FGC Treasurer, a member of DiLTP, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting representative to Executive Committee, and co-clerk (with his wife, Mary Ellen McNish) of the 1988 Gathering. Dave and Mary Ellen met at the Gathering in 1983. They now live in the Torresdale section of Philadelphia and are members of Byberry Monthly Meeting. Dave has three adult daughters by a previous marriage. On the rare occasions when he isn't traveling in his role as a mass transit planning consultant or on FGC business, he enjoys watching the boat traffic on the Chesapeake from the porch of a small cottage in Cecil County, and plans to learn to sail "real soon."

Beckey Phipps

Beckey serves FGC as clerk of the Traveling Ministries program.

She is a member of North Shore Monthly Meeting, New England Yearly Meeting. She is also a member of the FGC Committee for Ministry on Racism. Beckey carries a concern for adult religious education and spiritual formation. She completed the "On Being a Spiritual Nurturer" course of the School of the Spirit in 1994. In 1997 she received a Master's degree in Theology from the Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, MA, where her focus was Christology and Spirituality. She served as the coordinator of the Boston-area Quaker Studies Program for several years. With Margaret Benefiel, she co-authored a chapter on "Quakers and Social Transformation" in Mysticism and Social Transformation (Syracuse University Press, 2001).

Beckey and her partner, Tania, live in Massachusetts. In her free time she travels to their log cabin, which is situated on a beaver pond in northeastern Vermont. An avid student of theology, history, and literature, she is deeply interested in the Jewish roots of Christianity and the religious philosophy of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

Byron Sandford

Byron is Treasurer of FGC. He has also served as clerk of the 1993 Gathering,as the clerk of FGC's Finance Committee and until 2005 as clerk of FGC Development Committee. Byron is a member of Friends Meeting of Washington of Baltimore Yearly Meeting. Byron is the Executive Director of William Penn House, a Quaker Center on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC. On the web: WmPennHouse.org. Email: byron@wmpennhouse.org.

Working for a Quaker organization has strenghtened his spiritual journey by creating harmony between many areas of his life. Prior to working for William Penn House, he worked as a mortgage banker and real estate developer in Texas and was active with Hill Country Monthly Meeting, Friends Meeting of Austin and South Central Yearly Meeting. Byron is married to Susan Griffin and he has two children; Adam, a software engineer for Microsoft in Redmond, WA and Stephanie who for the Olde Ale House in Ballard. Both Adam and Stephanie live in Seattle.

Warren Wilson-Reiner

Warren serves as clerk of the Publications and Distribution Committee.

He is a member of Friends Meeting of Austin, South Central Yearly Meeting. He found his home in the Religious Society of Friends in 1987, and attended his first FGC Gathering of Friends in 1988 where he met his spouse, Bill Reiner. He has served as clerk for his monthly meeting and yearly meeting, as well as for Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Concerns. his previous service on Central Committee was as a member of the Religious Education Committee.

He lives in Austin, Texas, and has worked at The University of Texas at Austin since 1974. His current position is senior systems analyst for The University Libraries. He and Bill married under the care of Friends Meeting of Austin in 1998. He has a passion for reading--particularly mysteries and history--and needle work. He especially enjoys communing with nature with Bill where together, they experience the presence of the Spirit.

Penelope Wright

I discovered that Quakers were not all dead and gone 1978 and in doing so found my spiritual home. For many years I acted locally while thinking globally in the Religious Society of Friends. Gradually I became familiar with Monthly Meeting particulars through service on most of the committees, clerking some and serving as Treasurer, Recording Clerk and Clerk. Along the way I began to become active in my yearly meeting, SAYMA, but the learning curve was much more gradual. I felt hampered by the paucity of training and preparation for positions of responsibility, but benefited from workshops offered at various Gatherings. My attendance at Gatherings was spotty as family and professional commitments soaked up the time.

During the year of 1998 I experienced a convergence of life changes that culminated in retiring from professional life (nursing), becoming a grandmother for the first time (Nicholas) and being asked to serve as Clerk of SAYMA. With this, my life blossomed in ways I had never anticipated. The first flower was an invitation to attend Central Committee, by virtue of being a yearly meeting clerk. I had no idea of the depth of nurture and seasoning that was opening before me, and continues to do so. My service as yearly meeting clerk was inestimably enriched by the models of rightly ordered process provided by Central Committee and the yearly meetings I have been privileged to attend on behalf of the FGC Yearly Meeting Visitor program. Having completed a three year term as yearly meeting clerk, I am now delighted to be an appointed representative to Central Committee and find myself in the delectable position of clerking the awesome Ministry and Nurture committee.

My three sons, Timothy, Justin and Ben, now being grown and in the midst of their careers and family building provide me with way stations along the route to Central Committee meetings. My dear spouse of 35+ years couldn't be more supportive of my spiritual life and while we sometimes feel like ships in the night because of our respective travel schedules, we have learned to be more intentional about our relationship when we are both at home.

See also: Focus on FGC | Meet the Staff