About Officer Elections & Write-in Candidates

Board Officers serve staggered, two-year terms. The Vice-President and Treasurer positions will be filled by election in 2026, and the President and Secretary positions are scheduled to be filled by election in 2027.

The deadline for write-in nominations was June 22 to the BDC.

The Board Development Committee (BDC) has assembled the slate of candidates for the open seats of Vice-President and Treasurer of the American Ethical Union Board of Directors. These officer positions will be filled by election at the Business Meeting of the 2026 AEU Assembly on July 25, 2026 at the New York Society of Ethical Society Culture. Nominations for Officers shall not be accepted from the floor during the Assembly.

The BDC’s slate presents Khandra Sears of the Baltimore Ethical Society for the position of Vice-President and Tom Castelnuovo of the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture for the position of Treasurer.

Per the AEU Bylaws, all write-in nominations must be submitted to the BDC within seven (7) days after the publication of the candidate slate. The candidate slate was published on June 15th and the BDC did not receive any write-in nominations by the deadline of June 22.

If you have any questions, please contact the BDC at contact-bdc@aeu.org.

Vice President Nominee: Khandra Sears

Khandra Sears

Baltimore Ethical Society

Biography Statement

I was born on the island of New Providence in The Bahamas and spent most of my childhood there. I moved to Baltimore for graduate studies and have called it home for almost 20 years. For most of my professional career I worked as part of an academic research team that was engaged in surveillance studies, diagnostics, pre-clinical, and clinical trial efforts to reduce the burden of enteric infections around the world. As a senior scientist I was actively engaged in mentoring and teaching graduate students. I now teach Microbiology full-time at the undergraduate level.

While living in Baltimore I have served on neighborhood and regional organization boards. I represented my neighborhood on the board of the Southwest Partnership (SWP), a community-led coalition of seven neighborhoods and seven anchor institutions working to improve educational, employment, and housing outcomes for residents in southwest Baltimore. I served as Vice-President when we hired the SWP’s first Executive Director and later as President. During my tenure the SWP brought the Community Schools framework to our neighborhood schools, and deployed a program to support small, local developers in acquiring and renovating vacant houses and commercial properties.

I have served on the Board of the American Ethical Union since 2022. First serving as an at-large member and then as a representative to my home society – The Baltimore Ethical Society. I also served as President of the AEU Board from 2023-2025.

Interest Statement

The AEU Board has experienced intense transition and transformation in the last few years. The recently implemented Roadmap has reinvigorated the Board and provided a framework for the progress the AEU has been making over the last few years. It has been exciting to see this work roll out and for it to have continued success it needs continued support. Having officers that support this work and support each other is important and I see the Vice President as being a strong support for the team of officers.

Treasurer Nominee: Tom Castelnuovo

Tom Castelnuovo

Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture

Biography Statement

Currently:

• Treasurer Brooklyn Ethical
• Chair AEU Ethical Action Committee
• Co-Chair AEU Fund Raising Committee
• Member AEU Apportionment Task Force and Finance Committees
• Chair of a NYC non-profit group working on statewide integration of NY Child Welfare computer systems.

History:

• Developed $1 B. budget for Dept of Correction during NYC fiscal crisis that implemented jail minimum standards.
• Designed much of NYCs Child Welfare, Special Ed and Parking Violations Systems.
• Raised $ 2.5 M. in foundation funding to establish NFP majority owned child welfare software company.
• Brooklyn Community Housing and Services Board Chair and Treasurer.
• Brooklyn Ethical: Member since 2005. Board Chair and Treasurer. Led sale of historic BSEC building for $13.5 Million. Restructured investments, staffing and budget.
• AEU Treasurer 2018-22. Started and chaired Societies with Buildings group which met monthly during COVID. Secured COVID funding for the AEU and redistributed it to Societies.

Education

• BS/ Master City Planning. MIT
• MBA Yale

Interest Statement

As Treasurer and Fund Raising co-chair, I want to:

• Raise significant funds with professional development support to reestablish the AEU Endowment. Utilize new endowment funds to reduce apportionment burden while investing in potential AEU Services like YES/FES, Lay Leadership, the Ethical Culture Institute, Society Development and Society financial relief. Let’s go for it.
• Collaboratively develop a Web App for societies to identify and cost needed AEU services, calculate society apportionments and record voluntary apportionment commitments. This will help us improve the credibility of the apportionment process while prioritizing AEU Services.
• Maximize communication with societies in the budget process to right size the AEU. and
• Recruit key Development, Public Policy and Technical Resources to support an AEU renaissance.