Diana Davies

I (she, her, hers) graduated from Meadville Lombard’s M.Div. program in spring 2017 and was ordained by the UU Congregation of Princeton and First Unitarian Church of Baltimore in December 2017. Last spring, I was called to serve as lead minister at the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City. Since completing my Community Studies volunteer service at the Rescue Mission of Trenton (assisting with a reentry program for men transitioning from the prison system) and doing my Clinical Pastoral Education at Bellevue Hospital in New York City (serving as a student chaplain to patients in Rikers Island mental health units), I’ve had a special interest in prison ministry. During my two-year internship at First Unitarian Church of Baltimore, I volunteered as a teacher for the Prison Yoga Project, teaching yoga and meditation to men and women in correctional facilities in central Maryland.

I completed my Ph.D. in Comparative Literature (with a dissertation on Russian and Cuban exile writers) at the University of Rochester, and went on to teach Russian language and literature at SUNY Binghamton and the University of Iowa. At Binghamton, I co-founded the national Consortium for Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum. Shifting my focus to international education, I became the Director of International Programs at the University of Iowa and went on to become Vice Provost for International Initiatives at Princeton University. I served on the Boards of the Association of International Education Administrators, Princeton in Africa, and other international education-focused organizations. I remain fully committed to intercultural learning and see my ministry as an expansion of this work. In 2017-2018, I was honored to serve as a consultant for Meadville Lombard for its two ATS internationalization grants. I am a qualified administrator of the Intercultural Development Inventory and hope to apply this knowledge in my service to the MLTS Board.

I am married to Jim Reilly, an independent consultant in the field of financial compliance, and we are the proud human companions of greyhounds Bran and Rua.