Rev. Dr. Sandra Coppola (Minister) received her ordination as an interfaith and inter-spiritual minister from One Spirit Interfaith Seminary in 2024. Her career has included mental health counseling, college teaching, and supporting individuals and families through life’s many seasons of change and growth. Sandra has also worked alongside and advocated for vulnerable and underserved populations, including individuals with disabilities, residents of long-term care settings, and returning citizens rebuilding their lives after incarceration. Throughout her work, she has sought to promote dignity, inclusion, and full participation in community life.
The journey from counselor to minister was a natural evolution of Sandra’s calling. While counseling helped people navigate life’s transitions, she became increasingly aware of the deeper questions many carry. Questions of meaning, purpose, loss, hope, and what it means to live a fully human life. Ministry expanded her understanding of healing and invited her to accompany others as they explore these questions and seek lives of greater meaning and purpose.
Sandra is also honored to support individuals and families facing end-of-life transitions, offering compassionate presence, comfort, and spiritual companionship during times of profound change.
Prior to serving as a minister with UUCP, Sandra was a guest minister within the congregation. Through shared worship, meaningful conversations, and the stories of its members, she came to know and appreciate the community. These experiences deepened her connection to the congregation and strengthened her commitment to this ministry.
At the heart of Sandra’s ministry is the belief that growth and transformation often emerge when people are met with love, compassion, curiosity, and genuine presence. Drawing from psychology, diverse spiritual traditions, and lived experience, she creates space for reflection, connection, and exploration. She believes that some of life’s most important transformations begin not with answers, but with the experience of being accompanied, understood, and welcomed exactly as we are.
As an interfaith minister, Sandra is inspired by the common threads that connect people across traditions and life experiences. She values creating spaces where people can explore life’s questions together with openness, curiosity, and respect for diverse perspectives.
Outside of ministry, Sandra enjoys learning from people’s stories and engaging in the conversations that foster understanding, connection, and community. She finds renewal in nature and especially values time by the ocean, where the rhythms of the natural world offer perspective, inspiration, and a sense of wonder.
Sandra’s ministry is grounded in the belief that every person carries inherent worth and wisdom, and that meaningful growth often begins when we feel truly welcomed, seen, and understood.
Rev. Philippa “Pippa” Jones (Associate Minister) is currently living and working in Cape Town, South Africa, where she is an active member of the Cape Town Interfaith Initiative and leads their Interfaith and Intercultural Youth Program.
As a longtime resident of New York City, Pippa pursued her lifelong interest in global spirituality and practices, graduating from One Spirit Interfaith Seminary (Class of 2012) as an ordained Interfaith minister. Since then, her passion for learning has taken her to Australia for a Bachelor’s degree in Theology, then to the Netherlands and South Africa to prepare for a Master’s in Interfaith Studies. As part of her Master’s research, she recorded several oral histories of key figures involved in Interfaith during the Liberation Struggle in South Africa; she is also now involved in an ongoing research project on global Indigenous Knowledge Systems and activism.
Pippa is a teacher by profession. She specializes in adult education, Academic English, and the Cambridge English Exam Preparation Courses for international students.
As an active member of the ministerial team for ‘Interfaith Sydney’ in Australia, she regularly contributed to their monthly services at Pitt Street Uniting Church (2013-2016) and co-founded the Sydney Sacred Center in 2017. Pippa also served as a Board Member for One Spirit Seminary, New York (2017-2021).
An avid world traveler, Pippa is profoundly interested in old and new cultures, and a lover of the written word, especially sacred poetry and the wisdom traditions. Pippa seeks to use her knowledge and skills to help build cross-cultural awareness and tolerance, and to become an ambassador of healing, reconciliation and greater understanding between communities, locally, nationally and internationally.
She has been an associate minister of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Palisades since May 2022 and holds twice monthly services online.
Rev. Sonia Ketchian (Former Minister) is an Interfaith/Inter-Spiritual Minister, Love Activist, Spiritual Counselor, and Meditation Facilitator. She received her ordination from One Spirit Interfaith Seminary in 2013.
Soon thereafter, Rev. Sonia co-founded One Spirit in Action (OSIA), the sacred service and activism arm of One Spirit Learning Alliance. During her years as co-director, OSIA facilitated initiatives in response to homelessness, poverty, racism, religion and violence, xenophobia, domestic violence, LGBTQ issues, climate crisis, gun violence, and mass incarceration. As a native New Yorker, she’s drawn to street ministry and opportunities which serve NYC’s underserved communities.
Rev. Sonia joined us at UUCP in the midst of the pandemic in 2020, bringing along years of experience in activism, extensive knowledge of interfaith traditions, and a profoundly compassionate heart. As a Love Activist, she works to help dissolve the illusion of separation she feels is at the core of humanity’s experience of suffering.
When asked what’s her religious affiliation? She shares “Love is my Religion and is at the core of it all.”
