Laura Lopez

2017 has presented the Northern Illinois Conference with opportunities to realign our work and staffing. Through the Landscape Assessment in 2015 we’ve learned that we need to work on reorganizing the annual conference. This work is underway. Likewise in our staffing, we live out our core values as a healthy organization when we evaluate, assess and experiment.

With retirements and moves in 2015 and 2016, we said goodbye to a number of support staff including; Susan Gieseler, Director of Media Resources and support staff for the program office, Natarsha Gardner, Administrative Assistant for the program office (who shifted to District Administrative Assistant for Aurora/Elgin), Kathy Barker support for technical services, along with Judy Siaba and Caleb Murphree, support staff for the office of Congregational Development and Redevelopment.

The duties of these five positions were compiled, shuffled and realigned into two new full time positions: Administrative Assistant/Event Planner and Administrative Assistant/Communications Specialist.

We are pleased to welcome Laura Lopez as Administrative Assistant/Event Planner and Megan Casey as Administrative Assistant/Communications Specialist.

Laura Lopez (llopez@umcnic.org) recently worked for a Jewish fundraising organization where she ran the office, planned events large and small and carried out communications for them.

Megan Casey

Laura will work primarily with the Office of Congregational Development and Connectional Ministries. She will be the registrar for Annual Conference and care for much of the event details. She will also support events for development and redevelopment and program council. She is from the South Side of Chicago and says most days she feels like a personal chauffeur for her four children.

Megan Casey (mcasey@umcnic.org) is a recent graduate of DePaul University in Political Science with minors in digital photography and Global Asian Studies. She has designed websites, worked with non-profit fundraising and is social media savvy.

She will work primarily with the Directors of Communications and Connectional Ministries on web and media and will oversee the tech work for annual conference, as well as help us with conference branding. She is a native of Southern California. She enjoys live music, photography and taking care of her special needs cat.