A Message from the MUUSJA Board of Directors

Dear MUUSJA Community,

We are entering a time of big transition at the Minnesota Unitarian Universalist Social Justice Alliance (MUUSJA), and we are ready for this moment.

MUUSJA’s executive director, Rev. Ashley Horan, has informed the Board of Directors that she will be ending her tenure as Executive Director in July. We deeply appreciate Ashley’s work with our organization over the past five years, and in the coming months, we will celebrate her leadership and her ministry, and offer you the opportunity to do so as well.  

MUUSJA has consistently grown in strength and influence, in Minnesota and beyond. We are boldly living into our mission to build a more just and loving world. We have deepened our racial justice focus, expanded our network in Greater Minnesota, partnered with faith leaders from Unitarian Universalism and other spiritual traditions, built critical partnerships with movements for justice, and grown the size our staff.  We are proud of all we have accomplished together, and the Board is confident that we are extraordinarily well-positioned to enter the next chapter of our story, led by a talented new Executive Director who will carry on MUUSJA’s joyful, spiritually-rooted justice work.

As MUUSJA enters its 19th year, the call for Unitarian Universalists to show up has never been greater. Communities of color, indigenous people, immigrants and refugees, the LGBTQIA+ community, disabled people, and women continue to experience mounting threats to justice that further impede our collective liberation. We continue to resist these threats, working to bring people together within, across and beyond congregations, and building capacity and spiritual grounding for effective justice-making.

The MUUSJA Board of Directors will lead a search process for a new Executive Director that is broad, inclusive, and rooted in our faith and values. In the coming weeks, we will be opening the position and publishing a job description, and we welcome your help in spreading the word and identifying qualified candidates.  As we guide this transition over the next several months, we look forward with optimism to identifying and embracing MUUSJA’s next Executive Director.

We are moving from strength to strength.

You are critical to our faith-based movement for justice. We appreciate your support and will keep you updated during this transition.

In faith,

Sherri Knuth and Taylor Putz
MUUSJA Board Co-Chairs

A Message from the Executive Director

Dear Ones,

As we approach this impending leadership transition, I am profoundly grateful for the nearly five years of powerful work in which I have been blessed to engage as MUUSJA’s Executive Director.  This ministry has been both deeply challenging and incredibly life-giving, and I will be forever shaped by what we have dreamed up, collaborated on, and accomplished together. It seems right that in July, just after my fifth anniversary with MUUSJA, we will part ways, each of us to move into the next chapter with thanks for what has been and excitement about what is to come.  

I have been working closely with the Board over the past two months since I told them of my departure to offer support as they prepare to search for MUUSJA’s next Executive Director, and to ensure the transition to new leadership goes as smoothly as possible.  As Sherri and Taylor say above, I believe we are incredibly well-positioned to identify an exciting, talented, spiritually-rooted Executive Director to lead MUUSJA into its next iteration. I am also deeply confident in (and profoundly grateful for) the entire MUUSJA Board of Directors, both as they conduct the search process and as they continue to provide the centered, faithful leadership that is the backbone of our organization.  I also have huge gratitude to my beloved colleague, Pastor Danny Givens, who will continue to serve as MUUSJA’s dynamic Statewide Organizer and skillfully hold much of MUUSJA’s programmatic work through the transition.

I look forward to a very full, very exiting last few months of work with MUUSJA.  Onward, with gratitude!

In faith and solidarity,


     Rev. Ashley Horan, Executive Director
     ashley.horan@muusja.org