UUMS Congratulates, Rev. Claudia Olmos!

“Even though I am getting ordained through the Field Ministerial Program, my heart is grateful to UUMS. I have always felt part of the UUMS family for opening me to the possibilities and giving me the confidence to walk into the ministerial program.”

Rev. Claudia Olmos of the Class of 2023, has been doing the design and layout of our UUMS newsletter for the past year. She began her ministerial journey with UUMS in 2019, where she completed SEE and several advanced courses. Because she created and was leading the Spanish Ministry at Unity of Houston, the Field Ministry Program (FMP) was a better fit for her to accomplish her goals. Claudia credits the training received from UUMS for preparing her for admission to the ordination path. She says the special place UUMS occupies in her heart is the reason she did not hesitate to take over design and layout of the UUMS newsletter when the opportunity presented itself. 

Claudia was born in Mexico City. She earned Associate degrees in Advertising and Graphics Design from the University of the Atemajac Valley (UNIVA) in Guadalajara, Jal. Mexico, and migrated to the U.S. at age 26. She learned English and held various jobs, including cashier, purchasing manager, loan processor, art teacher, translator, marketing manager, and freelance graphic designer with various industries. She is founder and CEO of Olmos Design. 

After experiencing a “dark night of the soul,” Claudia discovered a closer relationship with God. That relationship provided her with the tools necessary to live a fulfilling, spiritual life beyond the limited cultural beliefs to which she had been exposed. Those tools enabled her to advocate for a service in Spanish at Unity of Houston. Claudia took on the task without any resources and within five months she and a small group of collaborators created Unity of Houston’s Spanish language service. During the pandemic, the services were live streamed and since that time they are back to being in person. 

A year after opening the Spanish Ministry, Claudia felt a calling to make a deeper commitment by taking the ministerial path. Not knowing how she would do it with a full-time job, part-time volunteering as a Spiritual Leader, and as a single mother of two daughters in high school, Claudia stepped out on faith. Her partner introduced her to UUMS. Claudia says the asynchronous structure of the UUMS curriculum made it doable for her as she was developing a ministry from scratch, and continued to perform her other duties as a mother, in the church, and in her career as owner of a very busy graphics design studio.