About Susie Leonard Weller

A resident of the Spokane, Washington suburb of Liberty Lake since 1989, Susie Leonard Weller grew up in El Cerrito, California and graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

After teaching high school religion courses in Minneapolis through a volunteer program with the Dominican Sisters, she joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and spent two years as a campus minister at Seattle University. This led to a master's degree in pastoral ministry at SU and a position as a young adult lay minister serving a nine-parish region in Seattle.

As young parents, she and her husband followed a nontraditional path: he spent a decade as a stay-at-home dad while she worked for the Community Colleges of Spokane. One of her assignments in that period was to create a "Fathers' Initiative" for the Head Start program, and her role as the single breadwinner gave her a valuable perspective on what traditional fathers face.

Today, in addition to teaching through the community college district and North Idaho College in Coeur d'Alene, Weller runs "Tools for Transformations," which provides life and spiritual coaching. She and her husband, now a nurse, are the parents of two.