UUSM - About Us - Search Committee Members
Search Committee Members
 Cynthia Cottam (Chair)
I was married in UUCCSM in 1981. I have raised three children in the church from infancy. I have taught RE, served on the Long Range Planning Committee, and facilitated a women’s church group, organized around the issues of midlife. For the past 6 years or so, I have been a facilitator for Our Whole Lives, our lifespan sexuality education program.
I am a lifelong Unitarian, having grown up in the First Unitarian Society in Madison, Wisconsin. I attended Sunday school, and was active through high school and college. I have benefitted from the ministry of four great UU ministers. I have seen my professional work-- as a family physician for almost 20 years and, briefly, as an algebra teacher to failing high school students--as an attempt to have a positive impact on other people’s lives. My volunteer passion has been the public school system, where I served twice as a PTA president in addition to countless other efforts.
I practice the discipline of attending Sunday services regularly. I believe strongly in the free church, in tolerance and in the continuing quest for truth. I hope that we will continue to add our good works to those of others in our community. I also feel it important that our community help guide us to be our best selves, to practice kindness and to feel gratitude.
 Karen Canady
Karen was raised in a Disciples of Christ congregation in Denver, where she served on a ministerial search committee as a teen after complaining to her parents that church was boring. She later started thinking about the contradictions between a merciful, loving God and the threat of hellfire and damnation. She avoided all things religious for the next 18 years. Undecided about whether she was an atheist or agnostic, she concluded it didn't matter.
Two children and a divorce later, she realized she'd been a UU all her life, but just hadn't known it. She came to UUCCSM for a spiritual home where she could raise her kids with a sense of religion without being phony. She has been involved in teaching RE and OWL, hosting and attending Dining for Dollars events, and taking the family to church camp weekends. She sees this church as providing an extended family in a city where she lacks biological relatives.
Karen is a fan of the early service, where she enjoys the beautiful music, contemplative atmosphere, connecting with friends, and getting an early start on her Sunday. On weekdays, she is a patent attorney specializing in biotechnology. She enjoys bicycling, drumming and knitting.
 Rebecca Crawford
Rebecca Crawford is a life-long Unitarian who grew up in the Santa Monica Church. Although she only returned to UUCCSM eight years ago, she was actively involved as a UU at Throop Memorial Church in Pasadena, starting in 1977. Her activities there included choir, pledge chair, president of the congregation, and co-chair of a ministerial search committee. She spent a week at leadership training for the PSWD.
During the time Rebecca was involved with Throop Memorial, her mother, Gaye Deal, continued an active involvement with UUCCSM--including being on the search committee that brought Judith. Gaye's involvement allowed Rebecca to still have some connection to the happenings in Santa Monica, even from a distance.
Other activities she is or has been involved with at UUCCSM include choir member, treasurer and board member. She is also involved in two book discussion groups—for one of which, the Science-Nonfiction Group, she is the contact person.
Career-wise, Rebecca is a professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Loyola Marymount University---finding the Jesuit approach to life jives very well with a Unitarian’s.
 Ian Dodd
Raised in a religiously anti-religious home, as a young adult I went seeking that something-greater-than-the-self that I had experienced for fleeting moments in various introspective workshops and retreats. Somewhere along the way I read “The Tao of Physics” where I found myself more enchanted by the physics than the Tao. But I did find great value in the Eastern traditions, especially buddhism, with its emphasis on direct experience, non-judgment and compassion. Recently, I learned the term “aweist”: a person who finds his spirit filled when contemplating that which inspires awe, be it the cave paintings of Lascaux or the sweep of the Milky Way, and I realized that I am an aweist.
My family and I joined UUCCSM 5 years ago. I was drawn to working with the teenagers in Coming of Age where I spent the next three years as an RE teacher. I love challenging the young people to think about their beliefs in spirituality, moral choices and finding meaning in life. For me, wrangling with these questions is my own Coming of Age class. As a co-teacher remarked, “For a guy who doesn’t believe in God, you spend more time thinking about him than anybody I know.”
In the off-time from my job in film & TV, I enjoy raising a pair of teenagers who think for themselves, sharing that joy with my wife, and filling up my soul by woodworking, challenging my brain with lectures at CalTech, engaging my senses with music, or taking in the awe-inspiring views of the cosmos through my telescope.
 Pat Gomez
I was raised in a large Irish Catholic family in Queens, NY and participated in the rituals of Catholicism into my late teens, despite the fact that from an early age none of it made sense to me. Coming of age during the Vietnam War the Catholic Church’s lack of activism against the war was the impetus to leave and never look back. For the next 16 years church visits were limited to weddings and funerals.
In the early Nineteen Eighties my husband, daughter and I moved to Northern New England. On a cold December day I set out to explore the custom of visiting Church Christmas Fairs. In one particular church I was impressed by the warmth and friendliness of the church members who were enjoying working at their fair.
A few months later my daughter asked why she didn’t go to school on Sunday as her friend did and that started the family conversation about religion and what to do about it. Catholicism, being the only religion my husband and I knew well, was not an option. Remembering the Christmas Fair at the Unitarian Church in the next town a visit was planned. A few months later we both felt that we had finally come home as we stood before the congregation along with other new Church Members to be welcomed. Over the next 21 years I participated in teaching RE, serving on the Church Council, chairing a number of committees including RE, Nominating, Intern Minister, and the major church fundraiser, the Christmas Fair, as well as participating in regional UU activities and events.
In 2003 when planning a move to Los Angeles I knew that finding a new UU community and home would be a first priority. I joined UUCCSM in early 2004 and was part of the team responsible for getting Covenant groups started. I currently chair the Membership & Leadership committee.
I enjoy the multitude of cultural activities available in Los Angeles, am still amazed that flowers are in bloom during the winter months and love that outdoor dining is available year round. Professionally I am an IT Systems Analyst and Project Coordinator in the Insurance Industry.
 Karl Lisovsky
I was baptized in the Congregational Church (the most liberal church available in my hometown), and I joined its youth group, even becoming a Jesus-freak for a spell, mostly (I realize now) because I loved the sense of community and togetherness I got from playing guitar and singing spiritual songs with a group. I grew up part of my life in Barcelona Spain, a thoroughly Catholic country at the time. I was excused from religion classes at school, but enjoyed going to mass with our maid anyhow. I went to a boy-scouts-type camp in the Pyrenees many years, the camp being run by priests and seminarians from the Escuelas Pias, a Franciscan type order with a tremendous devotion to nature, one they cultivated in sublime mountain-top outdoor masses using a rock for an altar and the mountain and heavens as a sanctuary.
But I have been a UU in spirit all my life. My mother joined the Unitarian Church in Ann Arbor MI when I was in high school, served as its secretary for some time, and even got me a job as a janitor there for a year or so while I was in college. I have always been rational and inquisitive and have developed my worldview based on evidence. And the evidence has always shown me that this is an awesome universe we inhabit, "we" being the warm and bright stardust evolved into humans in a cold, dark universe. There is no time to waste, only moments to live, to celebrate and to see.
I teach writing for a living, still enjoy making (and even writing a little) music, gardening, working on my house and reading good books. I am not dogmatic, no matter what my kids might tell you.
You can learn more about me on my infrequently-updated webpage: http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/wp/faculty/Lisovsky_K/Welcome%20KFL.html .
 Katie Malich
Katie Malich joined UUCCSM 10 years ago. Born and raised in the liberal UCC tradition, she's evolved into a religious humanist. Katie was drawn to UUCCSM by its strong community presence and support for social action. Katie loves the world religions banners adorning our sanctuary and appreciates the strength and diversity of our music program. Her deepest, most moving religious and spiritual moments are experiental, not theological or subject to rational analysis. Retired early from California state civil service, she's combining volunteer work and contract work assignments while reinventing herself and her career. Katie has headed the Greeter Program, taught RE, worked on the No on Prop. 8 campaign, served on the Green Committee, been active in book and poetry groups, attended Adult Programs classes, given many rides, made many hospital and deathbed visits, and led papermaking workshops at the DeBenneville Pines all-church weekend. Katie's known for co-hosting creative Dining for Dollars field trips and special events. Currently single and pet-less, she feels honored that her fellow congregants have chosen her to be one of the members of the Search Committee.
 Jacki Weber
The first time Jacki visited UUCCSM she decided this was her place. It was the Friendly Beast (holiday) pageant, December 2001. Her son was five months old. Infants slept lazily on a parent's shoulders wearing the crowns of "wise people" as their parents held the reigns of wooden camels in the manger where baby Jesus lay. There was talk of Buddha and Confuscious, a lot of wisecracking from the program narrator and audience participation throughout the sanctuary. Jacki was looking for a place to steep her son in "moral tea," and a community in which to cultivate compassion, attention, reverence and gratitude herself.
Eight years later, she has three kids in Sunday school. She has organized RE events and served on a strategic RE planning committee, as well as the Stewardship and Long Range Planning committees, and headed up the all-church retreat weekend to DeBenneville Pines. She's participated in small group ministry and more. Jacki loves the community, the camaraderie, the spark and moxie of her fellow UUCCSM members, and the incredible musical talent of Louis Durra in Sunday services. When she's not at church, or thinking about it, she is fundraising for The Broad Stage in Santa Monica.
To contact the Search Committee, e-mail search@uusm.org , leave message with church office at 310-829-5436, or look for committee members wearing blue "Search" name tags on Sunday.
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