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Rev. Alicia Forde

Biography

The Reverend Alicia Forde is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister based in Boulder, Colorado in the United States. She currently serves with the Texas Methodist Foundation as the Director of Formation and the Unitarian Universalist Association as the New UU Communities Fund Director. She identifies as an African descent queer, cis-gender woman with deep roots in Tobago. She considers herself bi-cultural and is grateful that her formative years enabled her to cultivate a global perspective. 

Forde was born in Trinidad and Tobago, on the island of Tobago in 1971. Surrounded by fearless women in her family, she grew up in a matriarchal family and in an intergenerational household in her childhood. Playing in and learning from nature around her, she also lived in a culture where the neighbours lived communally, always sharing and stepping up for one another alongside church life and community. Her maternal grandmother, whom she also went to church with, was a primary school principal and her family prioritized her education at a young age. Due to the history, and legacy, of British colonization, all her education in Tobago was in parochial Anglican schools. Initially, she attended the school her grandmother worked at, but by primary school she was attending a school closer to her mother’s place of employment. She had a mentor who took her under their wing from an early age all the way through high school (which is from ages 11 to 18 in Tobago), whom she attributes for setting the tone for her in striving in school. Forde also continued being mentored by other teachers as years passed and experienced school as a safe space surrounded by people willing to look out for her and shape her experiences. 

She had her first inklings regarding her sexual orientation when she resonated with the reality of other options in the world from her biology textbook around the middle of her time at high school. However, exploration was not much of an option at the time she was growing up on the island and she eventually felt that she might need to move to understand more of herself. She lived in Tobago until her early twenties and moved to New York in the United States in the summer of 1992. With intention to pursue a college education, she ended up joining the United States Air Force and was stationed in Cheyenne, Wyoming by the winter of 1992. 

With her love of nature affirming her time in Cheyenne, she found her first few years in the Air Force to be deeply formative in learning about American culture and meeting others who were in the same boat as her in exploring their sexual identities. During her time in the military, she attended Laramie County Community College for her Associate of Arts degree in Psychology. Due to her upbringing with church and community surrounding faith, she soon joined a congregation. She grappled with her exploration of queer identity alongside faith and found herself questioning narratives of queer desires as sinful and reasonings of a God who would instill “sinful” desires within someone and more. With a need to begin understanding nuances on her faith and identity, she discovered that the Unitarian Universalist community, which was queer friendly and theologically diverse, fulfilled that goal. 

In the mid-90’s, Forde joined a church with the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) where there was a community dedicated to prioritizing hospitality and inclusivity in theology which aligned with her beliefs. She also graduated from the University of Northern Colorado in 1999 with her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology with a Philosophy minor. In her time in seminary at the Iliff School of Theology, she became more oriented in the universalist cornerstone that humans are not born broken and in need of redemption. In line with her upbringing with respect and depth in nature, she understood how in the way humans are nature, we are also divine and recognized her responsibility to respond to what is divine within herself, and to invite the people around her to do the same. She graduated from Iliff School of Theology with her Master of Divinity degree in 2003. 

After being ordained in 2005, she began her ministry by serving a start-up UU congregation from 2005 to 2008 in Loveland, Colorado and from there continued her path in denominational leadership. She joined the UUA staff in a full-time capacity in 2008 and as a minister, she expanded her work of designing and facilitating spaces of spiritual care for people from all walks of lives. She eventually became the Multicultural Congregations Program Coordinator and by 2012, stepped into the role of Professional Development Director at UUA. In 2019, she began serving as their Director of the International Office, in which she led their engagement with global Unitarian, Universalist and interfaith partners, including supervising the UU United Nations Office and the Holdeen India Program. Forde considers the practice of coming alongside others as an orientation to how she lives. As a student of bell hooks and of Carter Heyward, she considers the practice of being present in love (as an action) as a responsibility for human beings to pick up to move towards a collaborative, interdependent, and beloved world. She grounds herself in the truth that the choice to become fully human is to be present in love which cannot be devoid of justice. 

She transitioned into her current part-time role at the UUA as the Director of the Fund for New Unitarian Universalist Communities which supports UUA’s spiritual innovation work and was established in September 2023. She found herself also gravitating towards the work of intentional formation and prioritizing on how justice informs love as the only response to a spiritual crisis in this time. In 2024, when the Texas Methodist Foundation (TMF) invited her to join as their Director of Formation part-time, she joined them as she found herself aligned with the purposeful, spirit-led work of supporting congregations that TMF supports. Her work around formation with TMF details working with congregations around how they respond to the decline of congregational life at a moment of spiritual hunger and crisis. She saw a need for congregations to turn outward and ask their neighborhood how they could partner with and serve their greater good to do God’s work rather than primarily internal reflection. She supports spiritual innovators who are working beyond congregations to bring healing, love, and justice to their communities in a variety of creative and spirit-filled ways.

She finds building her meaningful connections on the foundations of intimacy and vulnerability to be a sustainable practice. As a life-long learner in various capacities, she also has certifications in Positive Psychology, spiritual direction, as a Health and Wellness Coach and as a Yoga Instructor. As a spiritual director, her practice is oriented to accompanying primarily LGBTQ folx and women of color. She also serves in a volunteer capacity with the Sacred Design Lab as their chair of the advisory board at the moment. SDL’s working mission “is to provide a home for spiritual innovators to deepen into inner transformation, relational wholeness, and lives of service, resourcing them to lead from love toward flourishing for all.” Her time with them allows her to further live her commitment to supporting those seeking to live into Spirit-led ministries grounded in Love and Justice. A commitment to gratitude also informs her work of formation especially for communities of faith and across generations. She attends an Episcopal church and takes part in communion as part of her practice to be present in gratitude as well. As a spiritual leader in community, she puts emphasis on recentering by dwelling on the question of cultivating spaces that are robust enough to do the work that we are called to do, but tender enough to hold the places where we need healing. It's a part of her commitment to love and justice, and it's part of her commitment to accompaniment.

(This biographical statement was written by Tarchithaa Sekharan and was edited by Alicia Forde.)

Biography Date: December 2024

Tags

Unitarian Universalist | Clergy Activist | Carribean | Black | Colorado | Boulder

Citation

“Rev. Alicia Forde | Profile”, LGBTQ Religious Archives Network, accessed February 10, 2025, https://lgbtqreligiousarchives.org/profiles/alicia-forde.

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