About Joan

Joan’s life has been about helping others navigate change. After teaching and raising a family, Joan established a private practice in career counseling and organizational training and consulting for thirteen years in Burlington, Vermont.

In the 1990’s, she became an administrator for organizations in transition, including the University of Vermont’s Service Learning program and Farm & Wilderness Foundation in Plymouth, Vt. Simultaneously, Joan served as a spiritual director and retreat leader, which in 1999 led her into interim ministry and ordination in the UCC, an inclusive Protestant denomination in the Congregational tradition. Between 1999-2006, Joan served two small churches in Pittsford and Saxtons River, Vermont, which included a year as a part-time Hospice Chaplain. In 2006, she became a counselor-administrator-cook for Greenfire Retreat in Tenants’s Harbor, Maine. Upon it’s closing, she followed a dream of many years, and opened Healing Soup for a ministry of hospitality and spiritual counsel. Joan recently completed three years as part-time Interim Minister for an island community church in partnership with the Maine Seacoast Mission.

Joan’s training includes the following:

• B.A, Political Science and American Literature, Middlebury College, Vt.
• M.Ed., Organizational and Human Resource Development, University of Vermont
• Advanced Human Development study including:
  • The National Multicultural Institute in Washington DC
  • Clinical Developmental Institute in Boston, Mass.
  • Power Equity training with Equity Associates in Laconia, NH.
• Spiritual Development study included:
  • Coolidge Colloquium Fellowship, Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Mass.
  • Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation, 2-year ecumenical program, Md.
  • Preparation for Ordination in UCC, United Church of Christ, liberal Protestant denomination in the Congregational tradition.
  • Independent courses with Harvard, Bangor and Andover Newton Seminary
  • Clinical Pastoral Education, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Hanover, NH, Palliative Care Team