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Following extensive consultation with Religious of the Sacred Heart across the United States, Kathleen Conan , RSCJ, has selected three RSCJ to serve with her as full-time members of the U.S. Provincial Team: Anne Byrne , Marina Hernandez and Paula Toner . Sister Conan and her new team will begin a renewable three-year term of leadership in August of 2005.
Sister
Conan has also announced plans to form a group of six to eight RSCJ
consults/advisors who will meet with the provincial team several times
a year to reflect on specific issues. Later this year, she will request
that members of the province nominate RSCJ to serve as members of the
advisory group.
Anne Byrne
A native of Long Beach, California, Sister Byrne grew up in Washington
D.C. and New York. She entered the Society of the Sacred Heart in 1960
following graduation from Manhattanville College, where she majored in
math. She holds a master’s degree in history from Manhattanville and a
master’s degree in science of administration from the University of
Notre Dame.
From 1964 to 1988, Sister Byrne worked as a teacher and
administrator in Sacred Heart schools in New York, Connecticut and
Detroit. From 1982 to 1988, she served as head of the upper school in
at Academy of the Sacred Heart, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and from
1990 to 1993 she served as head of the high school at Academy of the
Sacred Heart, Grand Coteau, Louisiana, from 1990 to 1993.
Sister
Byrne has been a member of the province’s Philippine Duchesne Fund
committee, and has served as area director in Grand Coteau/Baton Rouge.
She is also a member of the board of the Academy of the Sacred Heart,
Grand Coteau.
Most recently, Sister Byrne has served as director of the New Life
Center, Opelousas, Louisiana, which provides emergency shelter and
transitional housing for homeless women, alone or with children.
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Marina Hernandez
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Sister
Hernandez is a native of Chicago. She entered the Society of the Sacred
Heart in 1965, after graduating from Barat College in Lake Forest,
Ill., with a degree in psychology. Her previous ministries include
service to the Society in regional and national entities and services
to marginalized people in California and Florida. She was a member of
the U.S. provincial team in St. Louis from 1993 to 1999 and a member of
the provincial team for the Chicago Province for five years in the
1970s, before five U.S. provinces were combined into a single province
in 1982. She served from 1974 to 1982 as treasurer for the Chicago
Province and as business manager for Woodlands Academy from 1968 to
1972.
Most recently, Sister Hernandez has worked with immigrants in
San Diego as a housing counselor and in churches in San Diego doing
HIV/AIDS prevention work. During the 1980s, she lived in the pueblo of
Copala, Mexico working with RSCJ in Comunidades de Base,
oversaw a social service center for migrants in Indiantown, Florida,
and organized church-based communities for African-American, Hispanic
and Vietnamese people in San Diego. In the early 1990s, she worked as a
substance abuse prevention specialist in Chicago.
In addition to
her degree from Barat, Sister Hernandez holds certificates in business
management from the University of Nebraska and the University of Notre
Dame. She was trained in community organizing at the Pacific
Institution for Community Organizations in Oakland, California, and in
substance abuse prevention at the Prevention Resource Center in
Springfield, Illinois.
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Paula Toner, RSCJ
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Sister Toner, born in Tallahassee Florida and raised outside of Boston,
Massachusetts, entered the Society of the Sacred Heart in 1965, after
earning a bachelor’s degree in studio art from Manhattanville College.
She also holds a master’s degree in educational administration from the
University of Massachusetts and has served as a teacher and
administrator in Sacred Heart schools from 1968 until 1996, when she
was appointed executive director of the Network of Sacred Heart
Schools. She has taught in schools in Rochester, New York, Greenwich,
Connecticut and New York City, and at Our Lady of Guadalupe School and
Duchesne Academy in Houston. She served as headmistress at Duchesne
Academy in Houston from 1985 to 1996, following two years as head of
the middle school there.
Sister Toner has served the province on numerous committees and, most
recently, as a member of the provincial team from 1999 to 2005. In that
capacity, she has represented the province at international meetings of
heads of Sacred Heart schools and served as provincial team liaison to
the Sacred Heart Commission on
Goals.
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