Education
Harvard University.
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Vanessa Southern
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Vanessa Rush Southern is an American Unitarian minister notable for increasing church membership as well as being a progressive liberal advocate of issues such as reproductive health care options for women, diversity and racial tolerance, affordable housing including projects for Habitat for Humanity, human rights, and remembrance of civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King.
Career
She was minister of the Unitarian Church in Summit from 2001 to 2014. Her father was the director of an acting school in New York City called the School for Film and Television and her mother was a hematology technologist at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. She wrote two books, This Piece of Eden and Miles of Dream.
Southern was minister of the Universalist National Memorial Church in Washington from 1995 to 2000.
The congregation supported relief efforts in Darfur, Haiti, New Orleans, Pakistan, Guatemala and elsewhere, as well as social action projects including tutoring sessions in an Irvington school, local food banks, a program entitled Summit Helping Its People, a transition program for homeless people called Homefirst, house-building efforts, and other charitable projects. In 2010, Southern"s congregation was honored by the Unitarian national assembly as being one of four "breakthrough congregations" in North America for increases in membership and charitable activity.
She was quoted in the Dallas News thanking utility workers from Texas who helped restore electric power in New Jersey in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
