equipment management, and property management and transfer as an independently assigned Petty officer for three different units.  After returning to Reserve Status in 2003, Hannah was kept on Active Reserve Status to cover gaps in staffing in Active Duty units in West Michigan, working 20- 40 hours a week as needed by the service.  During this time in service, Hannah returned to full-time college and studied developmental psychology and religion.  She was honorably discharged from service in 2008 as a Petty Officer Second Class.

 

Driven by the need for the knowledge to raise her own special needs son, Hannah applied her military-gleaned skills in administration and educational understanding and training in developmental psychology to create a unique program for her son's holistic learning to be administered at home with the help of aids.  This program sought to balance the needs of play, physical therapy, spiritual health, and language development in a daily practice and routine.  The success of her method's impact on her son's development was recognized by support staff and other specialists and led the MOKA Corporation to hire her as an independent consultant in 2010-11 to create a tool that could help other program managers identify and develop similar programs for support.  This tool, called the SHEARSS tool, is still in use today.  Hannah also became a special education advocate and served on the board for the Oversight of the Implementation of Special Education for the Ravenna School District, in Muskegon County, Michigan. 

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In 2006, Hannah declared Cadidacy in the United Methodist Church in order to become an Ordained Elder.  During this time, she served as a youth minister, missions coordinator, and lay leader for her local congregation.  In 2011, she was accepted and entered seminary at Boston University School of Theology.  During her time in seminary, she help to create a guide for churches that helped them to provide support and access to special needs and disabled individuals.  She served on the Special Needs Committee of the New England Conference of the United Methodist Church, and helped to provide resources for communities hoping to serve the needs of those with special needs and disabilities in more Christ-like ways.  She was assigned as a student pastor for the United Church of Chelsea in Chelsea, Vermont in 2013 and loved serving the people of the area she grew up in. 

 

After graduating seminary, Hannah was assigned as the Pastor in charge of the Rutland United Methodist Church.  During her time in Rutland, she helped to create and run a variety of programs and initiatives.  Under her leadership, the congregation of the United Methodist Church entered into a period of discernment regarding the use and potential use of their historic building for ministry.  This process led to the congregation deciding to sell the building and move into a storefront which more closely aligned with the call to ministry that the community so desperately needed.  Also during her time there, Hannah helped create a community re-entry program for individuals reintegrating into society post incarceration, and served as the Rutland City Police Chaplain from 2015-2019.  She helped to lead an initiative which supported refugees entering the community as well as a street ministry that served the spiritual and material needs of the homeless, shut-ins, and other marginalized members of the community.    She led a reformation of the leadership methodology within the congregation and helped the leadership to discern a new vision and mission to guide them in ministry within the community.  She helped create a new position with the church which was focused on helping to create a hub for people to access other community services.  She participated and helped lead as part of Project VISION, a multi-agency task force seeking to remove responsibilities from Law Enforcement and instead participate as a community team to support people facing addiction, food insecurity, housing insecurity, and more.  The thing Hannah was most proud of, however, in her time serving in Rutland was seeing her parishioners, church members or not and Christians or not, practice and receive love, hope, and justice.

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In 2019, after receiving a diagnosis of kidney disease, Hannah took a leave of absence from parish ministry to discern how God was calling her to live with this new reality in her health while also answering the ever-present call to be a minister of Jesus in the world.  In 2021, Hannah returned to school to seek a Masters of Science in Limnology, the study of freshwater environments.  A previous student of Marine Biology in her first college experience, Hannah felt called back to the watery world for both a renewal of her spirit and her mind.  She wanted both the scientific knowledge and skills to understand the freshwater world, but she also sought the deeper theological wisdom a relationship girded with scientific understanding could bring.  The more she learned about freshwater ecosystems and the dynamic relationship between freshwater environments and hydrology, geology, chemistry, and biology, the richer and more excited she became about the theological implications.  Ever the theologian, Hannah's breakthrough moment came after a freshwater dive when she suddenly felt for the first time that she had lived her baptism as more than metaphor and it was within the view of the cloud of witnesses that exist in Creation that she found community.  It was in that experience that Re-Wilding the Spirit was born.

 

In 2022, Hannah opened a scientific consulting firm that specializes in the restoration and care of human-made water bodies in an effort to serve in ministry to Creation as well as to others through consultation work.

 

She hold a BS in Psychology and Religion from Liberty University, a Masters of Divinity from Boston University School of Theology, a Masters Certificate in Ecumenism from the Boston Theological Institute, and a Master's Certificate in Aquatic Invasive Species Management from the University of Florida School of Agronomy.  She is a passionate advocate for the marginalized, an avid writer, preacher, and loves to teach about the joys of Creation and science to anyone who will listen.  Hannah is a Certified Advanced Open Water Diver, Working Science Diver, and passionate underwater and land photographer.  She is the author of two books, is currently writing a third, and married to the love of her life, forever dive buddy, and best friend, Christopher. 

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