Leadership Team
Meet our Staff
Rev. Terri Burnor
Acting Executive Director
Rev. Terri (she/her) has been involved with MUUSJA in various consulting and volunteer capacities since 2017. She is an ordained UU minister, community organizer, and professional communicator who inspires people to reflect, act, and lead grounded by their faith, spiritual practices, conscience, and values. Terri delights in making connections and discovering the creative spark that moves individuals and communities to grow and live differently. Terri is a life-long Minnesotan who grew up outside of Duluth. She lives in St. Paul with her spouse and two dogs.
Leslie Mills
Community Outreach
Leslie (she/her) is a third-generation Unitarian Universalist who joined the MUUSJA team in 2023. She has trained in the peaceful Japanese martial art of Ki-Aikido for over a decade and focuses her work through that lens. Living in an artist’s loft in St. Paul, she is a writer, painter, singer, knitter, gardener, gluten-free baker, and tea maker. Her favorite kind of travel is aways based in relationship building, service learning, and justice work. Leslie was ordained in 2016 and has worked with UU congregations around the Midwest, volunteering regularly to work with youth on both a regional and national level.
Dallas Rising
Program Management
Dallas (she/they) is an activist, yoga instructor, somatic grief worker, and interfaith chaplain. She came to the UU faith as a teenager and spent the 90’s deeply involved in UU youth leadership from the local to national level. After a 20-year hiatus from church, she rejoined in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd during the pandemic, seeking a way to be more resourced during a particularly tumultuous time. With decades of grassroots organizing work in liberation spaces and experience in secular nonprofits, she’s enjoying approaching social justice work from a space of spiritual grounding. She lives in Minneapolis with her spouse and two rescue dogs.
Meet our Board
Michael Elliott
Michael’s grandparents introduced him to Unitarian Universalism in 1992 by inviting him to a church they found after leaving the Presbyterian Church where he was confirmed. While listening to Rev. Roy Philips from Unity Church in St. Paul, he was intrigued and delved more deeply into this faith.
As a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Minnetonka since 2006, he has served many roles – Finance Chair, board member, vice president, president, teacher, and many other roles to help the church become what it is today. He is currently the Social Justice Facilitator overseeing the following groups – Healthcare Justice, Climate Justice, Racial Justice and Housing Justice. It is in this role that he feels he can truly live out what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist.
Since retiring in 2020 as an airline pilot for Delta, Northwest before the merger, he has challenged himself to branch out in a different direction seeking to influence our elected leaders and others in making this a more just world for all of us. He would like to empower, connect and support UU congregations throughout our region in knowing that we are all in this together and every voice is valued and important.
Meleah Houseknecht
Bio Coming Soon.
Kathy Peterson, Co-Chair
Bio Coming Soon.
Shelly Rohe, Co-Chair
Shelly is a disability advocate and activist. She works as the Social Justice Coordinator at the First UU Church of Rochester as well as a Disability Awareness and Inclusion Trainer for Disability:IN MN. Shelly lives in Rochester, MN where she works, volunteers with numerous organizations, and is a freelance writer.
Jeff Snyder, Treasurer
After living in Rochester for 38 years, and attending First Universalist Unitarian Church of Rochester for the last seven of those years, Jeff and his wife Karen moved to Minneapolis in June of 2014. While at First UU, Jeff served as a member and chair of the Finance Committee and was on the Board of Directors serving as Treasurer at the time of his departure. Jeff and Karen are now members of First Universalist Church. Jeff’s primary interest in the social justice arena is in the area of environmental justice. He is currently retired and plans to stay that way after a long career with IBM as an engineer and project manager. Jeff and Karen have an adult daughter and son living in Los Angeles and Minneapolis respectively.