Rev.
Linda Siddall is the assistant minister and pastoral care director at the
Emerson Center for Spiritual Awakening in Redwood City, CA. She is also a
chaplain and the bereavement services coordinator at Mission Hospice, Inc., of
San Mateo County, where she supports the terminally ill and their families as
they face spiritual issues arising for them at the end of life. She was
formerly affiliated with the Celebration of Life Church of Religious Science
in San Carlos, CA, where she was a licensed practitioner and director of
pastoral care.
In
the past, Linda was the founder and president of Simply Statedsm
Business Communications, working with companies in California’s
Silicon Valley, the Midwest, and the South, to produce clear, concise,
“reader-friendly” publications. Articles about Linda appeared in Working
Woman, PROFIT, and Home Office Computing magazines.
Before
that, as a former Crocker Bank vice president, she managed the bank’s
Policies and Procedures, Forms Management, Records Management, Mail Services,
and Graphic Services Departments in San Francisco and Los Angeles, serving
16,000 employees throughout California. When leaving Crocker Bank after its
1986 takeover by Wells Fargo Bank, she was a vice president of commercial
lending.
A
strong believer in community service, she has been a Big Sister in Illinois
and California, as well as a mentor at the Florence Crittendon Home for
Pregnant and Parenting Teens in San Francisco. In addition, she has been a
member of the Better Business Bureau of San Mateo County; president of the San
Mateo Host Lions Club, a director of the Professional & Business Women’s
Conference, and an officer of the National Association of Women’s Business
Owners. As a child in Illinois, she and her family were greatly active in the
civil rights movement during the 1950s and 1960s.
Being
a minister allows Linda to continue a long tradition of clergy on the paternal
side of her family, which has produced several Methodist and Baptists
ministers since 1784. She is the first New Thought and Religious Science
minister and only the second woman minister in her family. She is also the
second Rev. Siddall, following in the footsteps of her late paternal
grandfather, Rev. Kelcy J. Siddall, who was the senior pastor at St. John’s
AME Church in Springfield, IL, for many years. An avid reader of spiritual,
biographical, and cookbooks, Linda is the proud owner of an extensive library
of nearly 500 books.
A
native of Central Illinois, Linda attended Southern Illinois University in
Carbondale, where she studied English and art. In April 2001, she graduated
with distinction, receiving a
bachelor’s degree in religious studies and a ministerial credential from the
Emerson Theological Institute, under the powerful and loving tutelage of Dr.
Susanne Freeborn. These studies signified the end of her search for a formal
educational program that fueled her enthusiasm for the deeply spiritual. Linda
has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1968.
Emerson
Center for
