Meet Our Staff
Sabbatical Ministers
Peter House
Summer Minister
7/19/23 to 9/1/23
The Rev. Margaret Weis
Sabbatical Minister
9/1/23 to 11/20/23
The Rev. Lane-Mairead
Campbell
Settled Minister
The Rev. Michelle Yates
Minister of Lifespan
Faith Development
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(585) 325-5092
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By appointment only
Currently on sabbatical until 11/20/23
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(585) 310-2484
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By appointment only
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Currently off for the summer until 8/27/23
Dr. Brock Tjosvold
Music Director
​Emma Barry
Office Manager
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(585) 546-2826
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Work Week: Tuesday-Friday
In-Building Office Hours:
Tue & Thu 9am-4pm
Closed on Mondays
McCormack Chew
Sunday Tech Assistant
Carol Williams
Nursery Care Provider
N/A
Finance Assistant
Albert Lawson
Sexton
Coretta Broussard
Nursery Care Provider
Our church emails are listed below. If you have received an email from another email address that you suspect is not from us, especially any requesting immediate financial help or requesting you purchase gift cards, it is likely part of a phishing scam. Please feel free to check with us about any emails that claim to come from any staff or leadership of the church.
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Any emails from our staff will have an email address ending in uuroc.org!
About Peter House
Peter House is a graduate of Meadville Lombard Theological School. He has served as intern minister, and summer minister at the First Unitarian Congregation of Toronto. He served as the summer minister at First Unitarian in Rochester, and since 2007, has been the summer minister here at the First Universalist Church.
During the school year, Peter is a special education teacher working with fourth grade students. Peter and his husband Michael live in the Upper Monroe neighborhood with their cats Abey and Anna.
About Reverend Margaret Weis
TBU
About Reverend Lane-Mairead Campbell
Rev. Lane-Mairead Campbell is a lifelong Unitarian Universalist who realized a call to ministry and leading worship in the midst of Young Religious Unitarian Universalists (YRUU). Their journeys in ministry have brought them to Berkeley, CA, Kansas City, KS, Columbus, OH, and now the First Universalist Church of Rochester, where they were called to be the settled minister in 2018.
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Rev. Lane-Mairead is active in addiction recovery and co-edited the collection, This Day is Recovery from Skinner House Books, which won a Silver Nautilus Prize in 2022. They are committed to justice, specifically in the areas of racial justice, LGBTQIA2S+ rights, and houselessness advocacy in downtown Rochester, NY. They openly identify as genderqueer and queer of all kinds are are working on an upcoming collection of Queer Theyology of Unitarian Universalism and beyond.
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In their free time, Rev. Lane-Mairead enjoys hiking in the beauties of Western New York, spending time with their two cats, listening to live music, and cooking all kinds of vegan food. They live alone with these two incredibly playful cats in the 19th Ward neighborhood of Rochester, NY.
About Reverend Michelle Yates
Michelle grew up in the Buffalo NY area. She earned her undergraduate degree in Psychology and Health & Human Services from SUNY Buffalo (UB) and her Masters of Divinity from Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School. Michelle is passionate about Lifespan Faith Formation which to her means opportunities to explore wisdom, joy, and love in our world, in each other, and within ourselves. She aims to coordinate such opportunities for all age ranges in our spiritual community.
Michelle lives in Rochester with her husband Mike, three teen-aged step-children, a preschooler, and a small menagerie of animals. She looks forward to meeting with members of the community of all ages, and helping match them up with a mode of faith exploration that works for them.
About Dr. Brock Tjosvold
Brock has a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Piano Accompanying and Chamber Music from the Eastman School of Music. He is originally from Kimball, NE, and was previously living in Bloomington, IN.
Brock stays busy with a varied music career as a pianist, organist, chamber musician, vocal coach, and choral conductor.Brock enjoys attending concerts and movies in his free time. He also loves to hike and explore new areas while traveling.
About Emma Barry
Emma grew up in Rochester and the surrounding area and recently moved back after an exciting series of adventures in San Francisco and New Orleans. She has her BFA in graphic design, and is obsessed with typeface and is also passionate about helping people and contributing to the greater good.
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Emma also works as a freelance graphic designer and photographer. She is passionate about social justice work, especially in the Rochester area. She enjoys donating platelets, and often works as an election inspector in Monroe county.
When she is not working she enjoys reading, knitting, baking, kayaking, video games, board games, movies, and overall being a huge geek. She lives in Rochester with her partner and two rescue cats, the delightfully tetchy Malachai, and the sweet-tempered Haplo.
About McCormack Chew
McCormack grew up in Exton, Pennsylvania and has been in Rochester since 2019, when he began attending the University of Rochester. He graduated in the spring of 2023, earning his BS in audio and music engineering and a minor in music, and he will be continuing his education at the University of Rochester next fall, pursuing a master’s in electrical and computer engineering with a focus in audio. Eventually, he hopes to work at the cutting edge of audio software, and he is particularly interested in audio for virtual reality and video games. He has worked for the university’s Event Support team for four years and has had a lot of fun working with live sound and lighting for various events around campus. His favorite part of the job is attending various cultural celebrations where he can watch performances and learn from others. He is excited to join First Universalist as a tech assistant and be a part of a welcoming community working for noble social initiatives.
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McCormack’s greatest passion is music, and he began playing piano at the age of 4. He now plays piano, guitar, drums, bass, trombone, and he enjoys singing. He spends much of his free time playing instruments, and he writes and produces his own music, as well as playing in a band with some of his good friends that he met in school. He plans to release music and play lots of live performances in the coming years. Other hobbies include video games, board games, skateboarding, and solving logic puzzles.
About Carol Williams
Carol works in the nursery every Sunday morning with children six weeks to kindergarten age. She has a Red Cross certification in CPR and is interested in helping children develop their kindness skills. She teaches the children that they are important, and emphasizes life lessons, such as hands are for helping, not for hurting.
During the work week, Carol provides in-home day care. In her spare time, she enjoys collecting dolls, traveling to foreign countries, trying new recipes, and spending time with her four grandchildren.
About N/A
To be updated!
About Coretta Broussard
TBU
