Tiffany Andes won the 2014 Diotima Prize, and Janice Stashwick was the runner-up. Congratulations to you both!

Tiffany Andes is currently a full-time wife, mother, and student at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, CO. As an eight-year veteran of the United States Air Force, her professional career has spanned network administration, performing presidential support requirements and veteran military funeral honors in Arlington National Cemetery, and executive communications support for the Secretary of Defense, Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Tiffany has an undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Central Florida, an MA in International Relations from St. Mary’s University, and will be graduating with her MDiv from Iliff in June 2016. She has completed one unit of Clinical Pastoral Education with the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD and plans to apply for a residency after completing her degree.

She is currently a third-year student of Circle Sanctuary’s Ministerial Training Program after having served as the Director of Military Affairs for the Sacred Well Congregation for over two years. Her future plans include board certification with the Association of Professional Chaplains and working as a chaplain within the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Her winning essay: Walking the Path (Diotima Essay by Tiffany Andes)

Contact Tiffany: andes.tiffany@yahoo.com

See her blog: http://denora-walkingthepath.blogspot.com/

Janice Stashwick is a Pagan, a Unitarian Universalist seminarian in her second year at Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago, and a Crone. She is co-founder of the Covenant of Earth and Sky (COVES), a pagan community within her home church, Second Unitarian Church of Chicago. COVES provides ritual and educational opportunities for anyone of like mind who wishes to honor our Earth, our ancestors, and the various permutations of Goddess and God energy. COVES also is a chapter of CUUPS, the national Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans.

Janice has been a pupil of pagan priestess Margot Adler and has participated in the Chicagoland Pagan Pride Festival for many years. Janice also is a civil rights advocate for people with disabilities and is co-founder of Chicago’s Disability Pride Parade, which spawned similar parades throughout the world. Currently, Janice is co-facilitator of the UU curriculum, “Rise Up and Call Her Name” at 2U, a 13-session journey exploring the goddesses and wise women throughout time and in different cultures. She is in the midst of her CPE chaplaincy internship at St. Paul’s Rehabilitation and Senior Living Facility and plans to be a hospice chaplain in the future.