The Rev. Alison Cornish serves as a Program Consultant at the BTS Center, a nonprofit organization based in Portland, Maine, committed to preparing spiritual leaders for a climate-changed world. A Unitarian Universalist minister, Alison attended Andover Newton Theological Seminary in response to a felt sense of call directly from Earth to address what is it that we are doing in our daily lives and habits that is destroying the planet that we inhabit. Following her training for ministry and ordination, and while serving congregations on Long Island, Alison also embarked on studies with the Buddhist teacher Joanna Macy and Dominican sister Miriam McGillis of Genesis Farm and became a GreenFaith Fellow.
She served as Senior Director of Programs at Partners for Sacred Places, Executive Director of Pennsylvania Interfaith Power & Light and Director of Seminary and Congregational Initiatives at Interfaith Philadelphia. Alison’s facilitation work includes offerings of the Work That Reconnects, training trainers for Civil Conversations, group practice of Nonviolent Communication and teaching the curriculum “Healthy Congregations.” As a Program Consultant for the BTS Center, her work is focused on ecological and climate grief, religious imagination, and chaplaincy in a climate-changed world.
Alison lives in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, on the unceded lands of the Nipmuc peoples, in the watershed of the Connecticut River.