Leadership
Mary Lim is the Executive Director of Genesis. She graduated cum laude with a B.A. in Political Science from University of Missouri-Saint Louis and Juris Doctorate from Saint Louis University. She was blessed by God and the Universe to mother a 18 year old who is a student at University of California-Davis. Mary is the proud daughter of Chinese immigrants who originated from the Philippines. Her community organizing origin story began with MORE² (Metro Organization for Racial and Economic Equity), the Gamaliel Affiliate in Kansas City, Missouri/Kansas. With a moderate/conservative electorate as her base, Mary was able to facilitate unity by ushering MORE² to monitor a historic community benefits agreement with the Missouri Department of Transportation that required that .5% of the total project budget must be reserved for training and apprenticeship programs to prepare minority workers for jobs on the Christopher S. Bond Bridge.
The current issue work of Genesis feeds Mary’s passion of working with people with disabilities, youth and public transit. As part of the Gamaliel Network Training team, Mary has trained on the basic skills of community organizing, story-telling, and how to engage with elected officials for over 16 years. A third generation Roman Catholic, Mary’s organizing ministry is modeled after Jesus (the agitator) and the Catholic Social Teachings.
Rev. Dr. Hubert Ivery, the Genesis Interim Chair, serves on the At-Large Caucus of Genesis. Born in Clayton, Alabama during Segregation, Dr. Ivery’s family moved to Miami, Florida when he was about 3 years old. Because of intermittent periods of time when he lived with his grandparents, he grew up in both Miami and Alabama. Dr. Ivery experienced the harsh reality of injustice towards African Americans in the post-Reconstruction South, while also experiencing firsthand the riots in Miami stemming from violence and injustice.
Dr. Ivery has a PhD from California Institute of Integral Studies (San Francisco) in East-West Psychology, where he did his dissertation on Howard Thurman. He also has Master degrees from Boston University School of Theology (Boston) and the Interdenominational Theological Center (Atlanta, Georgia) and a Bachelor of Science from Texas Southern University (Houston).
Dr. Ivery has facilitated Intercultural Communication workshops for the California Nevada Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. He has served as the Chair of the Committee of Christian Unity and Interreligious Relations. He is the current convener of Ecumenical Officers Committee of the Bay Area. Genesis’ goal to work towards dismantling structural racism dovetails with Dr. Ivery’s passion for working for the transformation of our society towards a Beloved Community.
Rose Velasquez is our Fall 2024 Genesis Community-Based Intern. She is a second year Politics and Economics major at St. Mary’s College of California. She is from Merced, California which is a rural town in the Central Valley in which many of their institutions are underfunded. Her goal is to further get to know the Bay Area and its community! At St. Mary’s, she is the Vice President of Bridge USA, President and Co-Founder of the Women’s Club Basketball, and she is on scholarship to compete on the Macken Speech and Debate team. She is extremely passionate about social justice, decreasing political polarization, and immigration reform. As a Community Based Intern, she is looking forward to working with elected officials and community members to create informed voters and substantial and positive change.
Maddy Jones is our second Fall 2024 Genesis Community-Based Intern. She is currently taking classes in a variety of subjects ranging from art to labor history at the Peralta Colleges. From Oakland California, she was originally connected with Genesis via St. John’s Oakland, and cares deeply about the daily struggles of people in the Bay Area and broader community. Her goal is to learn about how an organization is run and how she can best serve one as well as to help harness the full potential of community action at our affiliated congregations. Maddy is impassioned by the climate crisis, the unhoused population, and civil rights violations on a global scale, and is inspired by the labor movements of the past and present. As a community based intern she is excited to learn more about Genesis, the needs of The Bay, and the proposed initiatives to meet those needs, so that she might learn the behind-the-scenes of how positive change is created and sustained.
