Board of Directors

The Bylaws of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie require a Board of Directors be formed to man­age the day-to-day busi­ness of the group. The Board elects offi­cers from among its mem­bers.

You can read our Board meet­ing min­utes and view reports about our Treasury.

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Our Current Board of Directors

Douglas Berger — President

Douglas is a co-founder of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie. He is also host of the Glass City Humanist pod­cast and the Secular Left pod­cast. He also serves on the Board of Toledo Integrated Media Education that oper­ates WAKT 106.1 FM Toledo’s com­mu­ni­ty radio sta­tion.

He first got active in the sec­u­lar human­ist move­ment as a mem­ber of the Humanist Community of Central Ohio where he served as newslet­ter edi­tor from 1996 to 2007, President in 2001 and 2002 and many oth­er small­er roles over the past 20 years. HCCO named Douglas their Humanist of the Year in 2013. He also served as co-chair for Secular Coalition for Ohio from 2013–2018.

When not work­ing, Douglas spends his time enjoy­ing movies, music, read­ing books, and argu­ing pol­i­tics on the Internet.

Bev Apel

Bev has been with the group for sev­er­al years now and served on the Board in the past. Now that she is retired she want­ed to get more active with the group. She would like to see us grow and get more involved in char­i­ta­ble and com­mu­ni­ty events.

She has host­ed our Sponsor-A-Family project dur­ing the hol­i­days and plans on host­ing it this year as well.

She is a graph­ics spe­cial­ist and would be glad to do any design work — ads, brochures, busi­ness cards — that are need­ed for the group.

Derek Wilmott

Derek is a recent trans­plant from Clemson, South Carolina to the Toledo area. He moved to Toledo in fall 2021 to work as the Acquisition & Collection Management Librarian at the University of Toledo Libraries. Derek grew up along the south­ern bor­der of New Mexico. He grad­u­at­ed from New Mexico State University in the ear­ly 1990s, dou­ble major­ing in Criminal Justice and Psychology. He then moved to South Carolina, mar­ried, grad­u­at­ed with a Master of Library & Information Science, and then worked for many more years as a pro­fes­sor in libraries at both the University of South Carolina and Clemson University before even­tu­al­ly com­ing north to his present home in Toledo.

He was nur­tured in a fam­i­ly that val­ued intel­lec­tu­al curios­i­ty, free thought, and a healthy dose of skep­ti­cism. His father was raised as Southern Baptist and lat­er became an athe­ist while serv­ing a tour dur­ing the Vietnam War in the late 1960s (there­by dis­prov­ing the myth that there are “no athe­ists in a fox­hole,” and his moth­er, who raised Derek and his broth­ers in the Roman Catholic tra­di­tion. During Derek’s high school years, he began to ques­tion much of the Catholic dog­ma and over time he even­tu­al­ly aban­doned any reli­gious beliefs what­so­ev­er. Through many years of method­i­cal inquiries, he even­tu­al­ly dis­cov­ered the philoso­phies and prin­ci­ples of Atheism and Secular Humanism to best rep­re­sent his world views. He even­tu­al­ly became a mem­ber of the American Humanist Association. Derek joined his local chap­ter of AHA, the Secular Humanist Foothills of South Carolina in the mid-2010s, and then even­tu­al­ly moved to Toledo where he found a vibrant com­mu­ni­ty and home with the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie. He cur­rent­ly serves as a mem­ber of the Board for 2024–2025.

His research inter­ests include how to devel­op library col­lec­tions that empow­er and uplift under­rep­re­sent­ed voic­es in the acqui­si­tion and reten­tion of library resources; and research­ing path­ways to recruit and men­tor a gen­er­a­tion of BIPOC librar­i­ans into the pro­fes­sion to mir­ror the com­mu­ni­ties they serve. In his off time, he likes to play boardgames, lis­ten to Classical and Rock music, vis­it muse­ums and parks, and read his­to­ry, pol­i­tics, and cur­rent events.

Anne Epstein

I joined the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie in an effort to find like-minded indi­vid­u­als who believed in help­ing fel­low human beings with­out the need for reli­gious doc­trine and poli­cies. Having grown up in a house­hold where orga­nized reli­gion was eschewed, I despair at see­ing the grow­ing influ­ence and weaponiza­tion of reli­gion in soci­ety today. Increasingly restric­tive poli­cies based on reli­gion have cre­at­ed a sys­tem where divi­sion becomes fur­ther entrenched rather than every­one being treat­ed with dig­ni­ty and respect. Since I joined, I have had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn about the many dif­fi­cul­ties affect­ing soci­ety includ­ing pol­lu­tion, cur­tail­ing of repro­duc­tive and civ­il rights, harm reduc­tion and pover­ty. I have also been intro­duced to the orga­ni­za­tions which address these issues and the ser­vices they pro­vide. As a SHoWLE mem­ber, I hope to con­tin­ue learn­ing about the strug­gles human­i­ty faces and the reme­dies offered through vol­un­teer work.

Since I was in col­lege, I have been inter­est­ed in the issues fac­ing women includ­ing lack of access to edu­ca­tion, health­care and employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties. A recent online course I took offered by Stanford, exam­ined these issues as well as the com­mon plights of gender-based vio­lence, sex-trafficking and pover­ty in old age. Due to this inter­est, I hope to one day take cours­es in human rights offered by the City University of New York. As an American, I feel I have an oblig­a­tion to learn about those less for­tu­nate across the globe and offer my ser­vices either in the form of vol­un­teer work or char­i­ta­ble dona­tions. I believe SHoWLE, on a local lev­el, will be ben­e­fi­cial to fur­ther­ing this goal.

Aside from the usu­al col­lec­tion of dead-end retail jobs in col­lege, I have twen­ty years’ of expe­ri­ence as a med­ical biller although I will be pur­su­ing oth­er career options in the near future. In addi­tion, I have many hob­bies includ­ing read­ing, bowl­ing, stargaz­ing, jig­saw puz­zles, ush­er­ing and attend­ing plays, trav­el­ing and tak­ing pic­tures, going to the sym­pho­ny and tak­ing art class­es. I have no inter­est in cook­ing and have told every­one I can­not boil water. Nobody seems to believe me.

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Are You Interested In Being On Our Board?

We are able to have up to sev­en peo­ple on our Board of Directors. If you are a vot­ing mem­ber and inter­est­ed in join­ing the Board, send us a note using our con­tact form.