A Memoir of Women's Global Leadership
Seeds of Power
Global Sister in Action
Heading 2
Meet the Authors
Laura Nagel and Karen LaFrance have collaborated for decades
in building international networks among Unitarian Universalist women.
LAURA OBERBECK NAGEL grew up with her brother and sister in Monterey, California, where her father was a mathematics professor at the United States Naval Postgraduate School and where he started the Department of Operations Research. (This department has trained the highest number of flag officers in the Navy.) Her mother, involved in the League of Women Voters and Democratic politics at the state level, was also a writer published on the Peninsula, and an actress in little theatre. Now Laura and her husband, Harry, who were married in Monterey in 1974, have retired on the beach in Monterey, and live in her mother’s house, which they rebuilt.
Laura graduated from Monterey High School and then attended the University of California at Davis, CA, and graduated two years later from Barnard in New York. She then went to the New School for Social Research, where she received her master’s in urban affairs and policy analysis in 1976. She spent 25 years working in and around urban planning, housing, and community development in New York, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Evanston (IL), and Fort Worth; and then 25 years working in international development through the nonprofit organization she created, the International Convocation of Unitarian Universalist Women. This organization is now recognized as being in consultative state with the United Nations Economic and Social Council.
She and Harry love to walk and hike, which they have done on vacations around the world, and they stay active locally in social justice work, focused on affordable housing. They both sing in Camerata Singers of Monterey County and the Monterey Peninsula Community Gospel Choir. They enjoy visiting with their two daughters, friends, and family, and especially cherish time with their grandchildren.
KAREN LAFRANCE is a Mount Holyoke College graduate and a private, nonprofit community development manager and leader. She consults with nonprofits and business groups. As ICUUW Business Manager, Karen oversaw the 2009 (First) International Convocation’s Exhibit Hall. She has financed business deals from micro loans to larger, complex business expansions. She has also taught marketing to Lending Circle participants taking micro-finance classes.
She set up ICUUW’s program in Uganda and managed the program as ICUUW lender. In the “train-the-trainer” role, she mentored UG staff on a weekly basis. These resourceful and committed staff then mentored the Lending Circles’ leaders. They taught participants how to do business planning and develop loan guidelines. The Lending Circle leaders then implemented the borrowing process from opening bank accounts to loan closings, repayments and program completion and the startup of their own lending group in 2017.
In 2022, she and Laura Nagel engaged the program’s staff again; they interviewed former participants about what happened to their businesses post program and post COVID lockdowns.
