St. John’s 2023 elections for Wardens, Vestry Members, and lay Delegates to the Diocesan Convention will be held at St. John’s Annual Parish Meeting on Sunday, April 23 at 12:00 pm (noon) on Zoom. Voting will be conducted via Zoom poll, so each voter must participate on a separate device.
To inform your voting, please read the bios below and plan to attend the Candidates Forum on Sunday, April 16 at 9:00 am. This forum will now be hybrid: conducted via Zoom, but with the option of attending in person in the Parish Hall.
Please find the meeting links in Crossroads.
Candidates
Senior Warden, one-year term: Kevin Kehus
Junior Warden, one-year term: Janet Hall
Vestry Members
For four three-year terms and one two-year term1:
For a one-year term: Rob Hartmann (incumbent)2
Lay Delegates to the Diocesan Convention
1 The two year term is to fill the vacancy created when Vestry-member Janet Hall, who this past year completed the first year of a three-year term, was asked to stand for Junior Warden.
2 Rob Hartmann is running unopposed for the last year of the term for which he has previously been appointed to fill a vacancy. He is included in this election due to an inadvertent omission in last year’s election process.
Kevin Kehus
Candidate for Senior Warden
Kevin has been a member of the St. John’s Norwood Episcopal Church since early 2013, soon after he relocated to the Bethesda area with his wife, Cathrien Alons, and their three teenage children. Kevin has been honored to have served on the Vestry between 2015 -2108 and again in the role of Junior Warden for the last two years. He has also served as a lay eucharistic minister, member of the St. John’s Men’s Ministry committee, and as the chair of the Stewardship committee.
Kevin’s early career started in international development through refugee relief and low-cost housing programs in Southern and Central Africa while working for World Vision International and Habitat for Humanity. Kevin’s career included starting a fair trade coffee company in Mozambique. While there he also served as the chair of an American International School board of directors. This life experience was fundamental in helping Kevin to see the interdependencies we have across the world, which are also affected by our choices in the global North.
He currently serves as the general manager of a local fair trade and organic focused wholesale coffee company. His remains dedicated to building businesses that are sustainable socially, environmentally, and fiscally.
As Junior Warden Kevin has helped to guide St. John’s as it worked through the pandemic. As Senior Warden, Kevin will work hard to lead the Vestry toward building more effective communication with the parish. He also will guide the Vestry as it rethinks St. John’s governance processes to ensure that our internal systems are robust and well-managed while allowing our program and operations staff to succeed on our behalf.
He looks forward to the 150th anniversary year, which will be a time of renewed fellowship, spiritual depth work, and efforts to understand how we can “work out our salvation” in love and humility (Philippians 2).
Janet Hall
Candidate for Junior Warden
Janet has had the privilege of serving on the Vestry for the past year, during which time she was very involved in the process for hiring our new Executive Director of Operations. That involvement included joining the Personnel Committee last fall to provide additional bandwidth and help accelerate the hiring process. She has worked closely with our Sr. Warden and one of our Chancellors on strengthening St. John’s governance, which has led to the formation of a new Vestry Governance Coordinating Committee. Janet also served as Vestry liaison to the Music Ministry this past year.
She is honored to have been asked to stand for Jr. Warden. Janet values the role of the Church in supporting parishioners through life’s upheavals and in their spiritual development, as well as in providing ongoing nourishment that inspires all of us to engage in the broader community via St. John’s vital outreach and missional programs. She looks forward to supporting Sari, Kevin, and the Vestry as we refine our vision in the wake of all the changes of the last few years and look to balance our needs and desires against our collective resources and energy.
Janet has attended St. John’s since the mid-1990s. She and her late husband sang in the choir in the early 2000s, before his dementia diagnosis in 2004 gradually ended his public life. While managing the demands of his care in the early years, she didn’t attend church regularly until 2016, when his evolving needs enabled her own discernment process. This led to her desire renew her participation in a spiritually nurturing Episcopal community of faith. She knew that the St. John’s community would provide this nourishment. Janet has served on the Altar Guild the last several years, has participated in several Bible classes, and has worked on Reclaim the Vote.
Janet served on the Board of the Cathedral Choral Society at the National Cathedral for ten years, including two years as President. She is hopeful that Karl’s work with the chorister training program, based on the Royal School of Church Music, will offer St. John’s another form of outreach embedded in the Episcopal Church tradition. She knows from her own Board experience at the Sitar Arts Center, a non-profit that provides arts education to underserved youth, how such programs attract families from diverse backgrounds. And music inspires: it led her to the Episcopal Church when she was a college student.
Janet’s career took her from ten years as an intelligence analyst, including a three-year posting in Munich, to the private sector. She ran the product group that launched AOL Instant Messenger and subsequently served as a marketing executive in a series of venture-backed software companies. She was brought in by the American Heart Association to lead commercialization efforts for their data analytics precision medicine platform. She currently serves on the Maryland Tech Council as a mentor to CEOs of technology and life sciences start-ups.
Katherine Krile
Candidate for Vestry
Katherine Krile and her husband, Mark Edwards, joined St. John’s in 2016 and were immediately impressed by the warm welcome they received, as well as the church’s commitment to living its faith both within the walls of St. John’s and outside in the community.
She has had the joy of singing in Episcopal church choirs for more than 20 years, and the honor of serving as a Stephen Minister for four years. She also worked as a literacy volunteer for 14 years in varying roles, from a tutor for both children and adults to a member of the Washington National Cathedral Literacy Program Steering Committee.
Katherine has spent most of her career in the museum sector and manages a team that brings exhibitions from the Smithsonian Institution to museums nationwide, with the goals of increasing organizations’ capacity to foster conversations that matter to communities and catalyzing public engagement to inspire learning. Upon her retirement this year, she will transition to work as a leadership and executive coach.
St. John’s, like churches across the nation, is learning what it means to function in a post-pandemic world. If elected to the vestry, Katherine would be honored to bring her experience in organization development, strategic planning, and consensus building to St. John’s’ challenges and successes. She believes that a church that is strong and healthy internally is key to sharing our faith externally in the world.
Clara Lovett
Candidate for Vestry
Clara M. Lovett has worshiped at St. John’s Norwood for eleven years. She serves our parish as a LEM, a Diocesan Convention Delegate, and an active member of the Gun Violence Prevention Ministry (she survived gun violence in her teens and then again in her twenties). She has assisted with the Refugee Ministry, the church archives, and other projects as needed. She is eager for deeper engagement that will allow her to share her experiences as a senior leader in other religious communities and in the secular world.
Born and raised in Italy, Clara was confirmed in the Waldensian Church, a Protestant (Calvinist) denomination in a predominantly Roman Catholic country. Her religious background still drives her passion for beliefs and practices solidly grounded in theology and church history.
After studying in Italy and the UK, Clara joined the Christian Faith and Life Community in Austin Texas, where she continued her education. The interdenominational CFLC was the first co-educational and racially integrated student community at the University of Texas. The clergy in charge and the students were deeply engaged with the civil rights movement.
A historian by academic training, Clara has held senior leadership positions in higher education: Dean of Arts & Sciences at George Washington University, Provost at George Mason University, and President of Northern Arizona University, one of three public universities in that state. She is also a founding trustee of Western Governors University, the first accredited online university in the United States. She has served on several non-profit boards in the areas of education, the arts, and social services.
In the 1980s Clara sang in the choir and served on the vestry of St. David’s Episcopal Church in Northwest D.C. In the aughts she served on the chapter of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Phoenix Arizona. Two Episcopal churches; two different worlds. At Trinity Cathedral she helped with the Diocesan Border Ministry, providing first-aid to migrants in the Sonoran Desert, and with the formation within the Cathedral itself of a mission to welcome Spanish-speaking families from an adjacent low-income neighborhood.
After the death of her husband in 2011, Clara returned to the D.C. area, settling in Chevy Chase (Friendship Heights Village). She is engaged with county and state officials on issues of gun violence prevention, affordable housing, and the economic and social integration of immigrant communities.
Debra Parker
Candidate for Vestry
Debra was raised Roman Catholic in Brooklyn, New York. Her engagement with Jesuit doctrine created a healthy curiosity about world religions and commitment to Social Justice and service. All her life she has worked, volunteered, and loved music. Debra was introduced to the Episcopal Church through marriage. She and her husband raised three children in the Episcopal church in Connecticut and Bellevue, Washington.
After almost 30 years in the Seattle, Washington, area she returned home to the East Coast. Newly single, Debra moved to Bethesda in 2016 and began attending St. John’s Norwood soon after arriving. The first service she attended was transformative: she was struck by the deep spirituality of Sari’s sermon, the excellence of the music, and Ann Derse’s warm welcome and offer of a flower. She knew right away that she had found her place, her people, and spiritual home. She is a loyal hybrid attendee, loves the community of adult forums, and volunteers to help with social gatherings. She enjoys all opportunities for spiritual growth having recently attended the women’s retreat and is a member of the St. John’s women’s book club.
Debra has worked for the past 7 plus years as a Director of Resident Concierge Services for a mid-Atlantic Property Management Company.
Ann Ramsey-Moor
Candidate for Vestry
Ann Ramsey-Moor hails from the Midwest, where she spent the first third of her life. Since then, she has lived, studied, and worked on both the West and East Coasts–mainly in California and the Greater Washington Area. That has given her a panoramic view of our country and an appreciation of the ways geography impacts how people think and what they value.
Her church experience and faith life have followed a similar trajectory. Raised in a mainline church (UCC), she spent the last two years of high school in a friend’s conservative church, then went off to the “evangelical Harvard,” Wheaton College. At Wheaton, under scholars like C.S. Lewis expert Clyde Kilby, she learned the importance of critical thinking–and of developing a comprehensive Christian world-and-life view. But seeds of Anglicanism were planted, as well; and years later, she joined The Episcopal Church.
Ann has called St. John’s home since 2016, when she and her family felt the need to leave another EDOW parish they had been part of for many years. St. John’s had appeal on several fronts, including the fine choral music of the 11:15 service. But what finally won them over was the church’s friendliness–and seeing discipleship in action. How amazing to watch parishioners roll up their sleeves and engage directly in ministries of service, justice, and outreach, and not simply write checks!
At St. John’s, Ann has been a Healing Prayer Minister and a LEM. She coordinated English tutoring for the parents of the Congolese family the parish sponsored several years ago. She also led a number of online Morning Prayer services during the pandemic lockdown. She was part of one of the more recent “On Sacred Ground” study circles, and serves regularly as a lector. But, as a serious choral singer for decades, her greatest joy of all has been singing with the St. John’s Choir.
Professionally, Ann brings to St. John’s the sharp eye of an editor (notably, of a national Christian feminist newsletter); the creative outlook of a program producer (of years of her former parish’s Adult Forums); and the analytical skills and moral passion of a longtime teacher of ethics (of health-care professional students at Howard University). Having also served on a number of boards and on the Vestry of her former parish, she feels well equipped to take on a new service role at St. John’s–and would love to do so.
Ann is married to Andrew, a retired newspaper journalist. They reside in Ellicott City and have one daughter, Deb, an artist and film aficionado.
Dan Ryan
Candidate for Vestry
Dan and his wife, Laura, joined St. John’s in 2021, when they moved back to the DC-area after 5 years in Chicago and 8 years in Seattle. Their children, Desmond (10) and Kit (6) were baptized at St. John’s and attend church school on Sunday mornings; before the 10:30am service they attend as a family. Dan was baptized Catholic, but left the church as a young adult. He found his way home to the Episcopalian Church with his wife Laura in Seattle, and his faith serves a foundation to his spiritual, mental and physical health today. As a former touring musician, Dan was immediately struck by the music at St. Johns, and has since fallen in love with its family-friendly culture, gifted clergy, and inspired fellowship. Dan will forever cherish watching his kids run around St. Johns, discussing their thoughts on the day’s sermon around the dinner table on Sunday evenings, and watching them apply these lessons in their daily lives.
Dan is a technology leader at Amazon, where has worked for the last 10 years. Prior to that, he received his JD/MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and graduated with a degree in economics from Princeton University. He also spent 4 years in a tour van performing with his band Le Loup, who were signed to Sub Pop records from 2006-2009. Dan has served on the technical team broadcasting Sunday morning service over livestream, led the transportation team for the Afghan family sponsored by St. Johns, and served on the Ukrainian support group at St. Johns.
Dan would be honored to serve on the Vestry and support St. Johns as it transitions to a post-pandemic institution of faith, particularly in the areas of: 1.) strengthening the financial health of St. John’s during these tough economic times; 2.) continuing to develop the youth service programs; and 3.) expanding the music programs at St. Johns.
Carolyn Schugar
Candidate for Vestry
Carolyn Krahnke Schugar has been a St. John’s parishioner for 50 years as one of three generations of her family who have been active in Norwood Parish life. She was confirmed here and married here; her children were baptized here and her mother is interred in the columbarium here—this is her place. She returns the investment of St. John’s in her own life by contributing to life at St. John’s in many ways, including as a current member of the St. John’s Choir and Flower Guild, a longtime chili server at Shepherd’s Table, a former church school teacher, and a two-time J2A pilgrimage parent. She served previously on the Vestry, the Finance Committee, and as the Chair of Norwood Parish Fund. She currently serves on the newly chartered Governance Committee because she feels strongly that transparency and consistency in how the parish reaches decisions and stewards its gifts is a critical responsibility for lay leadership.
A career public servant, Carolyn is a Senior Executive in the Defense Department where she has served 35 years as an analyst and manager. She is an alumna of the National Cathedral School. She graduated from Kenyon College with a bachelor’s degree in political science and holds two advanced degrees, a Master of Policy Management from Georgetown University and a Master of Strategic Intelligence from the National Intelligence University. Carolyn has also served the Bethesda-Chevy Chase community where she was raised as a member of the Imagination Stage Board of Trustees and as a Boy Scout leader. She is a breast cancer survivor who mentors other women through that experience. Carolyn and her husband Frank have two children: Richard, a recent graduate of Savannah College of Art and Design, and Betsy, who is applying her love of acting with a newly minted BFA in drama from NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
Carolyn would welcome the opportunity to again serve St. John’s as a member of Vestry, for to whom much is given, much will be required.
Geoff Sharpe
Candidate for Vestry
Geoff is a lifelong Anglican. He was born in the UK, was baptized and confirmed in the Church of England and joined the Episcopal Church when he moved to the US as a child. He and his wife Laurel Hatt moved to the DMV in 2000 and joined St. Mark’s Capitol Hill shortly thereafter. They relocated to Bethesda in 2010 have been members of St. John’s since 2011. They have two children, Endel (16) and Eli (13).
Geoff and Laurel share a love of liturgical music. While it was the strength of the music program that initially drew him to St. John’s twelve years ago, Geoff has found spiritual grounding in the ways in which we temper our Anglican traditions, ethics and theology with reason. He highly values our commitment to social justice and Sari’s spiritual leadership. Geoff is also a frequent lector at the 10:30 service, and you may recognize him as the reader who regularly mispronounces Isaiah.
In his professional life, Geoff is a real estate developer with a well-known local REIT. If elected to the Vestry he would bring business acumen and financial expertise to the position, not to mention a solid understanding of how old buildings work. Geoff is active with a number of professional and non-profit organizations, including the Urban Land Institute and the Friendship Heights Alliance. He would be honored to serve if elected.
Rob Hartmann
Candidate for Vestry
Rob is completing the last year of a three-year term vacated by a former vestry member.
He has been an active member of St. John’s since October 2018, acting as the Vestry Member for church communications, member of the Governance Committee, and co-chair of the 150th Anniversary celebration. He is a member of the Social Justice Action Committee (where he created and edits the Do Justice Action Alerts and the Do Justice Newsletter) and a member of the new Racial Justice and Equity Committee. Rob is a lector, a lay eucharistic minister, and joined Penny Winder and Jon Mertens as a Stephen Ministry Leader. He was elected as a Lay Delegate from St. John’s, attending three Diocesan Conventions including this past January and one Special Convention in April 2022. He and Emily Morrison founded and co-chair the St. John’s Drama Troupe.
Rob’s professional career focused on Communications, Marketing, Philanthropy, Strategic Planning, and Advocacy as a lobbyist. Before he retired he was VP for Marketing & Strategic Development at MedStar National Rehabilitation Hospital for 25 years and successfully lobbied for the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). He was introduced to St. John’s when he and Rev. Anne Derse shared classes at Wesley Theological Seminary and he feels thankful and blessed to have found his church home.
Andrea Guy-McFarland
Candidate for Lay Delegate to the Diocesan Convention
Andrea Guy-McFarland grew up in the Episcopal Church and has fond memories of the small church of her youth and the warm welcome in each of the Episcopal churches she joined in the various states that she lived. She and her husband George built a home and moved to Sandy Spring in 2006.
Andrea has a Master of Social Work in administration from the University of Pennsylvania. Her career has spanned many years and roles. She worked in private and public service starting as a therapist but gradually moved into administration including running the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services in Broward County with a work force of over 2,500 and a budget in excess of 180 million dollars.
In 2000 Andrea was appointed the District of Columbia’s Deputy for Planning, Policy and Program Support for the Child and Family Services Agency. In 2015 she joined her husband’s firm as the Senior Associate of McFarland and Associates, Inc. as the Program Development and Quality Assurance Director.
Andrea was an active member of the Board of Trustees of the Sandy Spring Museum, as chair of the Membership Committee, and on the Museum’s Sandy Spring Historically Black Communities Advisory Committee until becoming a member of the St. Johns Vestry. She is the Chair of the Board of the McFarland Institute, an active member of the Montgomery County National Council of Negro Women (NCNW-MD), the Sandy Spring Civic Association and the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority of Montgomery County.
Andrea has been the Vestry’s liaison to the Children, Youth and Families Ministry, on the Justice Outreach Coordinating Committee, just returned from the 2023 Holy Land Pilgrimage, and is on the Racial Justice and Equity Committee.
It is Andrea’s hope that she can offer her experience as she rolls off her three-year term on the St. Johns Vestry and would be honored to represent St. Johns as the Convention delegate or alternate.
Monique Robinson
Candidate for Lay Delegate to the Diocesan Convention
Monique came to St. John’s in 2019 after she and her family moved from McLean, VA to Chevy Chase. Monique felt an immediate connection to the parish. She sensed St. John’s was a congregation that valued diversity and building community. After spending time with Anne Derse, Monique officially became a member in early 2020.
In her daily life, Monique works in marketing for Microsoft. She is also committed to Microsoft’s diversity and inclusion efforts, volunteering as a role model to young ladies, including those of diverse backgrounds and cultures, and encouraging them to break through the corporate barriers to become leaders.
This year Monique completes a three-year term on St. John’s Vestry.
