Pasadena’s First United Methodist Church will host Los Angeles organizer Katy Hickman for a discussion on empowering and protecting voters of color, according to an announcement from the church. The church’s Church and Society group has scheduled the talk for Sunday, July 26, 2026, at 11:30 a.m. in the Church Lounge.

Hickman is described in the announcement as a Los Angeles–based organizer and volunteer working in electoral empowerment, immigrant rights, and climate legislation. The church says she serves as a regional organizer for the Reclaim Our Vote campaign of the Center for Common Ground, which the announcement characterizes as a Black-woman-led voting rights organization. In that role, according to the church, she helps mobilize voters of color in states the campaign identifies as having prevalent voter-suppression tactics.

The Center for Common Ground, founded in 2018, describes itself as a nonpartisan, Black- and women-led voting rights organization. According to the organization, it runs Reclaim Our Vote — a grassroots, largely volunteer campaign to increase turnout among voters of color — through postcarding, texting, and phone banking, and concentrates its work in states it identifies as having histories of voter suppression, including Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia. The organization says it also operates year-round community “Democracy Centers” and a paid college internship program focused on voting rights.

The announcement notes that Hickman has worked as a playwright, actor, and public school teacher. Her stage work includes the play “Bright Boy: The Passion of Robert McNamara,” which premiered in Los Angeles in 2006, and “Meteor Girl,” which was recognized with Dramalogue and Bay Area Critics Circle honors.

For more information visit fumcpasadena.org.

A Sunday session at All Saints will trace the rehabilitation ministry born from one physical therapist’s calling to Eldoret

More than three decades ago, a physical therapist from Los Angeles answered a call from an Anglican bishop in western Kenya. What grew from that encounter — a community-based rehabilitation program serving people with disabilities across the North Rift Valley — is still going. On Sunday, Pasadena parishioners will hear where it stands.

All Saints Church will host “Faith & Formation: A Story Still Being Written: All Saints, Kenya, and the Power of Partnership” on July 12, from 9:00 to 9:45 a.m. in the Guild Room. Grace Dyrness and members of the Hutcherson Rehabilitation Center Committee will lead a conversation about the ministry connecting the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles to the people of Eldoret, Kenya, according to the church’s event listing.

The partnership traces its origins to 1990, when the late Canon Percia Hutcherson, a physical therapist who had provided more than 45,000 treatments to children and adults with disabilities over her career, traveled to the Diocese of Eldoret at the invitation of the late Anglican Bishop Alexander Muge. Hutcherson, born in rural Mississippi, developed and implemented the North Rift Rehabilitation Centre’s community-based rehabilitation project in rural areas of the region, according to accounts from the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles and the NORIREC website.

Hutcherson continued that work for nearly two decades. She also founded Changing Lives International, a nonprofit dedicated to helping people with disabilities in East Africa through community-based rehabilitation, according to the organization’s website. Bishop Frederick Borsch named her a lay canon of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles in 1997, according to the diocese.

Hutcherson died on January 9, 2018, at age 95 at her home in Los Angeles. The diocese’s Program Group on Global Partnerships took up her ministry to the disabled in Eldoret after her death, according to the Episcopal News.

The Sunday session will include stories from the field and reflections on recent travels, and will explore how lives have been transformed on both sides of the partnership, according to the event description posted by All Saints. Presenters will also consider what the next chapter might hold for those seeking to put faith into action. The church describes the effort as one built on “relationships of trust, solidarity, and hope.”

Dyrness, an Altadena resident with a background in community development research, will lead the session alongside members of the committee that carries Hutcherson’s name.

The event falls at a notable moment for All Saints and the broader diocese. The day before, on Saturday, July 11, the church will host the consecration and ordination of the Rev. Dr. Antonio José Gallardo Lucena as the eighth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, according to the diocese and the church’s calendar. That ceremony, officiated by Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe, will draw attendees from across the region to the Pasadena church, one of the largest Episcopal parishes in the country.

“Faith & Formation: A Story Still Being Written: All Saints, Kenya, and the Power of Partnership” takes place Sunday, July 12, from 9:00 to 9:45 a.m. in the Guild Room at All Saints Church, 132 North Euclid Avenue. Admission is free and open to all. Validated parking is available at Plaza Las Fuentes, with the underground garage entrance on Union Street between Los Robles and Euclid avenues; Sunday validation is good until 1:00 p.m. Free parking is also available at the Kaiser Parking Structure at Euclid Avenue and Walnut Street, open until 4:00 p.m. on Sundays. For more information, call (626) 796-1172 or visit allsaints-pas.org.

The community-based rehabilitation center Hutcherson built in Eldoret still operates today, now serving multiple counties across Kenya’s Rift Valley and western regions.

Terry Madigan [photo credit: Tournament of Roses]

A displaced Jewish congregation will mark its second Pride Shabbat at First United Methodist Church on the 11th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage ruling

The Pasadena Jewish Temple & Center will hold its second annual Pride Shabbat on Friday, June 26, in the borrowed sanctuary of First United Methodist Church — the same evening that marks the 11th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.

The guest speaker at the post-service reception, called the oneg, will be Terry Madigan, the first openly gay president of the Pasadena Tournament of Roses in the organization’s 136-year history. Madigan also serves as treasurer of the San Gabriel Valley LGBTQ Center, according to JEDI Committee Chair Diane Burr.

The service, organized by PJTC’s JEDI (Jewish Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) Committee, begins at 7:30 p.m., preceded by Shirah with Cantor Ruth Berman Harris at 7:20 p.m. First United Methodist Church is at 500 E. Colorado Blvd. The event is open to the public.

PJTC has been without its own building since January 7, 2025, when the Eaton Fire destroyed its 1941 Mission Revival campus at 1434 N. Altadena Drive. The synagogue’s entire two-acre site was lost; the congregation has held Shabbat services and gatherings at First UMC since the fire. First UMC voted to become a Reconciling Congregation in 2011, committing to the full inclusion of LGBTQ persons in church life, and voted in 2015 to permit same-gender weddings in its sanctuary.

“We’re really honored to be in a space of interfaith harmony,” Burr said in an interview. “We grieved that community, and there are challenges when you’re using someone else’s sacred space, but FUMC has been so very kind and accommodating and helpful to us. It’s been very nourishing.”

Last year was PJTC’s first Pride Shabbat, Burr said, and the congregation plans to hold it annually.

“Pride Shabbat is a reaffirmation that PJTC is a community that supports everyone and celebrates each of our unique identities,” she said.

Senior Rabbi Joshua Ratner, who joined PJTC in 2025, wrote in responses provided to Pasadena Now that Conservative Judaism reads its commitment to inclusion out of Genesis and Leviticus.

“Conservative Judaism believes that these, and other foundational biblical texts, create an imperative to preserve the human dignity of all people,” he wrote. “Pride Shabbat serves as a way to live out this value by ensuring that LGBTQ+ individuals are not only welcomed but also celebrated.”

The Conservative movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards formally permitted the ordination of openly LGBTQ+ clergy and the blessing of same-sex unions in December 2006. PJTC drew national attention in 2014 when it hired Rabbi Becky Silverstein as Director of Education — reported in the Jewish press at the time as the first U.S. Conservative synagogue to employ an openly transgender rabbi.

The oneg will include rainbow challah prepared by JEDI Committee members, alongside the customary refreshments. “When you braid it, it’s the idea of different concepts coming together, different ideas coming together within this bread,” Burr said.

Ratner said the experience of displacement has sharpened the congregation’s focus. “Since the fire, we have seen first-hand how crucial it is for our members to have the opportunity to come together, to support one another, and to feel a sense of solidarity through community,” he wrote. “This applies to all facets of our programming, from services to social events.”

The service will draw on the Kabbalat Shabbat liturgy — the welcoming of the Sabbath — with what Burr described as “an increased emphasis on diversity and inclusion.” Saturday morning services the following day will read the double portion Chukat-Balak.

The event’s tagline, drawn from PJTC’s standing inclusion statement, is “All Are Welcome! Come As You Are!”

The PJTC office can be reached at (626) 798-1161; the JEDI Committee is at jedi@pjtc.net.

“Our guiding thought is come as you are,” Burr said. “And so I think that’s important if people want to come to just know — come as you are.”

The Rosemead Boulevard nonprofit will host a free Vedic ceremony on May 17 combining group chanting, sacred fire offerings, and a communal dinner

Thirty-two devotees will sit together inside the Pasadena Hindu Temple on Sunday afternoon and chant sacred mantras 108 times — the opening act of a multi-part Vedic ceremony the temple says it has never held before.

The ceremony combines four elements: group Shanti Path chanting, a Maha Yagya fire ritual involving Vedic mantras and offerings, Navagraha blessings invoking the nine planetary deities of Hindu tradition, and a concluding Aarti followed by Maharprasad — a communal dinner of food considered blessed.

The event, known as a Shanti Path and Navgrah Maha Yagya, begins at 4:00 p.m. on May 17 at the temple’s home on Rosemead Boulevard. It is free and open to all, according to the event’s organizers.

The Pasadena Hindu Temple, operated by the Hindu Temple and Heritage Foundation, is a nonprofit that traces its origins to a living room gathering in 1986, according to a May 2025 Pasadena Now report. The foundation was incorporated in 1998 and the temple was established at its current Rosemead Boulevard location by a group of 10 Southern California devotees, according to the temple’s website. For more than two decades, it has served as both a house of worship and a cultural center, hosting weekly classes in Hindi, North Indian classical music, and traditional Indian dance, along with annual health fairs and yoga workshops.

In a Navagraha ceremony, mantras are chanted for each of the nine celestial bodies recognized in Hindu astrology — the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, and the lunar nodes Rahu and Ketu — followed by offerings into a sacred fire. The number 108 holds particular significance in Hindu devotional practice and is a standard count for mantra repetition.

Head priest Pandit Jagdish Rajgor has described the temple’s reach as extending well beyond Pasadena. “Every Sunday we have people drive from over forty miles to come here,” Rajgor told Pasadena Now in May 2025. He has also emphasized the institution’s open-door philosophy: “Anybody can come and everybody is welcome,” he said at that time.

The temple’s programming extends into secular community engagement. Its youth association conducts volunteer projects including sandwich drives for the Downtown Women’s Center in Los Angeles. Rima Madan, the temple’s events coordinator, said in 2025 that the institution works with the Pasadena Boys and Girls Club and is “very well assimilated with the local community, not just the Indian American community.”

The event will be held at the Pasadena Hindu Temple, 676 South Rosemead Boulevard. For more information, call Dr. Manju Kumar at (626) 533-9709 or Pandit Jagdish Rajgor at (626) 679-8777, or visit PasadenaHinduTemple.org.

[Photo Courtesy: Pasadena Convention Center Facebook Page]

Miguel A. Santana, head of the foundation that distributed $30 million in wildfire relief in its first month after the Eaton Fire, headlines the 53rd Annual Pasadena Mayor’s Interfaith Prayer Breakfast

When clergy, civic leaders and hundreds of residents gather at the Pasadena Convention Center early Thursday for the 53rd Annual Pasadena Mayor’s Interfaith Prayer Breakfast, the room will be carrying nearly a year and a half of grief, resilience and unfinished rebuilding. The theme — “Rising Together” — chose itself.

The breakfast runs Thursday, May 7 from 7:30 a.m. to 9 a.m., with doors opening at 6:45 a.m., at the Pasadena Convention Center, 300 E. Green St. The keynote speaker is Miguel A. Santana, president and CEO of the California Community Foundation. Santana’s foundation activated its wildfire recovery fund immediately after the Eaton Fire and distributed $30 million in its first month to nonprofits assisting fire survivors in Altadena and across the region. His career across public service, philanthropy and the nonprofit sector has focused on housing, homelessness and disaster response.

The breakfast is hosted by Friends In Deed, the Pasadena interfaith nonprofit that has served the city’s homeless and at-risk residents since 1894. Proceeds will support its programs — The Women’s Room, Food Pantry, Bad Weather Shelter, Street Outreach and Housing, and Eviction Prevention and Rental Assistance — many of which have absorbed direct demand from displaced Eaton Fire survivors over the past 16 months.

Last year’s 52nd breakfast filled the convention center ballroom in the immediate aftermath of the fires. Rabbi Joshua Grater, Friends In Deed’s executive director, opened that gathering with a story of unhoused women at the Women’s Room arranging donated flowers and finding their voices. This year’s gathering picks up where that one left off — still rebuilding, still rising, still walking with people.

The 53rd Annual Pasadena Mayor’s Interfaith Prayer Breakfast will run on Thursday, May 7 from 7:30 a.m. to 9 a.m. Pasadena Convention Center, 300 E. Green St., Pasadena. Doors open at 6:45 a.m. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit friendsindeedpas.org.

[photo credit: All Saints Church]

Rep. Judy Chu to address how congregations can advocate on justice issues, with re-election off the table

Rep. Judy Chu will step away from Capitol Hill and into a church learning center on Saturday  May 2 to talk about something that doesn’t usually make the congressional calendar: how faith becomes civic action.

Chu, who represents Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley in Congress, will speak at All Saints Church on May 2 as part of The Women’s Community’s Brunch & Learn series, according to the church. The talk will focus on how communities of faith can use their collective voice to advocate on issues of love, justice, and compassion — and Chu has been invited to share her own path into politics, from growing up in Los Angeles to her election as the first Chinese American woman in Congress.

All Saints Church sits just east of Pasadena City Hall at 132 North Euclid Avenue — a location that has served as more than geography for the Episcopal congregation, which has a decades-long tradition of civic engagement.

The event runs from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. Registration and a light breakfast begin at 8:30 a.m., with Chu’s talk starting at 9:00 a.m. A question-and-answer session will follow. The organizers have stipulated that the Q&A will not focus on Chu’s re-election. Chu, a Democrat, faces a primary on June 2.

Chu has served in Congress since 2009, representing what is now California’s 28th Congressional District. She sits on the House Ways and Means Committee and the House Budget Committee, and is Chair Emerita of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. Before Congress, she served on the Monterey Park City Council, where she was mayor three times, in the California State Assembly, and on the State Board of Equalization.

The Women’s Community is a ministry of All Saints Church that facilitates spiritual growth, education, community building, and service opportunities for women in the congregation, according to the church. Ministry leaders Maddie Gavel-Briggs and Rhonda Dillon coordinate the group’s activities.

Earliedr this month, Chu hosted her annual Congressional Women of the Year Awards Ceremony honoring local women across the San Gabriel Valley for community service and leadership.

Registration for the May 2 event is available through the church’s event page at allsaints-pas.org. An optional donation at the door covers the continental breakfast and supports the Women’s Community’s ministry programs, according to the organizers. All Saints Church can be reached at (626) 796-1172 or info@allsaints-pas.org.

Five weeks before a primary and five days before a Saturday morning talk, the congresswoman’s assignment is clear: leave the campaign at the door and bring the conviction.

John M. Williams Jr.

Center for Restorative Justice director brings nearly 30 years of Pasadena-rooted reconciliation work to First United Methodist this week

For nearly 30 years, John M. Williams Jr. has made his living in the space where most people don’t want to sit — the uncomfortable, unresolved middle of conversations about race.

His Pasadena-based organization, the Center for Restorative Justice, calls it creating “soft places for hard conversations.” The phrase sounds gentle. The work is not.

Williams has consulted with churches, universities, and nonprofits on becoming more equitable organizations, according to a church press release. He teaches at Azusa Pacific University and Life Pacific College. According to a church press release, he also serves on the board of Greenline Housing Foundation, the Pasadena-based nonprofit that has been working to keep families of color from losing land and homes in the wake of the Eaton Fire. And in recent months, he has been part of the coalition pushing Pasadena to formally reckon with the families displaced decades ago to make way for a freeway that was never built.

On Sunday morning, he brings that work — and the conversation he has been having in this city — to First United Methodist Church of Pasadena, where the congregation’s Church and Society Committee will host him at 11:30 a.m. in the Church Lounge. His presentation is titled “Navigating Tough Conversations About Racial Justice: Making an Impact in Times of Social Discord.”

Williams, a UC Berkeley and USC Law School graduate who has also practiced law for more than 20 years, leads an organization that became an independent Pasadena nonprofit in November 2023 after its roots at Fellowship Monrovia Church. The Center for Restorative Justice conducts educational “pilgrimages” through Pasadena’s own racial history — walking participants through sites that connect the city’s past to its present. The organization’s flagship program, “Reconcile Pasadena,” runs as a five-month cohort focused on housing and homelessness, schools and children, and faith community engagement.

“We’re living in a country that doesn’t share a common language in terms of defining racism, defining race, defining injustice,” Williams said at a Pasadena community event in February 2025. “They don’t share a common memory.”

That absence of a common language, he has said, is precisely what makes structured facilitation necessary. His workshops rely on critical questions, dialogue, and interactive exercises — not lectures.

“History rhymes, which makes it predictable and allows for us to not be shocked every time some sort of pattern of racism or racial prejudice repeats,” Williams has said. “It allows us to focus not just on the actual act, but to focus our attention on disrupting those types of patterns.”

Williams was mentored by the late Rev. Dr. John M. Perkins — the pioneering civil rights activist and co-founder of the Christian Community Development Association, who died on March 13 at the age of 95. Perkins spent his life calling the church toward racial reconciliation and community development.

First United Methodist Church of Pasadena, founded in 1874 and now in its 152nd year, is one of the oldest congregations in the city. The neo-gothic building at 500 E. Colorado Blvd. — in the heart of the Playhouse District — was dedicated in December 1924. The congregation describes itself as welcoming all persons regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, race, ethnicity, age, or physical and mental capacity.

Need to Know: John M. Williams Jr. speaks on “Navigating Tough Conversations About Racial Justice: Making an Impact in Times of Social Discord” on Sunday, April 26, 2026, at 11:30 a.m. in the Church Lounge at First United Methodist Church of Pasadena, 500 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101. For information, contact Communications Director Ashley Slade at (626) 796-0157 or Ashleys@fumcpasadena.org.

“For us, when we think about restorative justice,” Williams has said, “it means restoring history. For us, it means restoring relationships. For us, it means restoring cultures and communities that have been negatively impacted by systemic racism and systemic oppression.” In Pasadena, the community those words describe is not abstract. The work is here, and it is Sunday morning.

Altadena Congregations Together Serving, the multifaith coalition known as A.C.T.S., is holding its Earth Week Potluck Spring Gathering today, Sunday, April 19, at 2 p.m. at Christ the Shepherd Lutheran Church, 185 W. Altadena Dr. The event is free, open to the public and does not require church affiliation to attend.

The gathering takes place during Earth Week 2026 — three days before Earth Day on Wednesday, April 22 — and at a church that remained standing when the Eaton Fire swept through Altadena in January 2025, destroying more than 9,000 structures and multiple houses of worship in the surrounding area.

According to the event announcement, attendees are asked to bring a vegetarian dish or simply come and share food contributed by others. The gathering will be held in the church’s social hall, located in the building to the left in the parking lot through the chain fence, per the announcement.

RSVPs are requested but not required and can be sent to info@ctsaltadena.org, according to the event flyer.

A.C.T.S. is a long-running interfaith fellowship of clergy and lay leaders from congregations across Altadena that has been meeting monthly for decades. According to its member organizations’ websites, the coalition works on community issues including homelessness, food insecurity and mutual understanding among different faith traditions.

The coalition’s member congregations span a wide range of religious traditions. The event announcement lists Baptist, Baha’i, Catholic, Christian Science, Episcopal, Islamic, Jewish, Lutheran, Apostolic, Presbyterian and United Church of Christ congregations among its participants.

Several of those congregations suffered devastating losses in the Eaton Fire. Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church and Altadena Community Church, both on East Altadena Drive, burned to the ground. The Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center and Masjid Al-Taqwa, an Altadena mosque at 2183 Lake Avenue, were also destroyed.

Christ the Shepherd Lutheran Church, where today’s potluck is being held, survived the fire but was not untouched. According to a report by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) published in March 2025, at least seven church members lost their homes. In the months since, the church has served as a drop-off center for Altadena Meals on Wheels and offered its kitchen as a temporary headquarters for the meal delivery program, according to reporting by Pasadena Now and Living Lutheran magazine.

One of A.C.T.S.’s most visible ongoing efforts is the Altadena Food Pantry, which distributes food to community members on Saturday mornings. According to the Altadena Community Church website, the pantry was started by that church and three other Altadena congregations after they discovered that many local food programs were closed on weekends. A 2025 Altadena Rotary Club grant document described the food pantry as having served the community for more than 25 years.

The Earth Week potluck is not new for A.C.T.S. The coalition held a similar Spring Gathering potluck on May 4, 2025, also at Christ the Shepherd Lutheran Church, as reported by Pasadena Now.

Rabbi Joshua Ratner [PJTC photo]

Rabbi Joshua Ratner of Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center is among the featured speakers at the museum’s annual remembrance ceremony

Rabbi Joshua Ratner of Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center is among the featured speakers at Holocaust Museum Los Angeles’s annual Yom HaShoah commemoration being held today, Sunday, April 12, at 11 a.m. at the museum’s location at 100 The Grove Drive in Los Angeles.

The ceremony, titled “Yom HaShoah Commemoration: Remembrance and Responsibility,” focuses on preserving Holocaust memory and the obligation of future generations to carry forward the stories and lessons of the Holocaust, according to the museum’s event listing.

Ratner serves as senior rabbi of Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center, a congregation that has been holding services at First United Methodist Church in Pasadena since its own building was destroyed in the Eaton Fire earlt last year.

Other featured speakers at the ceremony include U.S. Rep. Laura Friedman, D-Glendale, and Beverly Hills Mayor Sharona Nazarian. Holocaust survivor Henry Slucki will appear in conversation with CNN anchor Elex Michaelson and Slucki’s granddaughter, Jenna Perlmutter. Violinist Ilana Kleiman is also scheduled to perform.

According to Holocaust Museum Los Angeles’s event description, this year’s theme — “Remembrance and Responsibility” — reflects on “the preservation of memory and the responsibility of future generations to carry the important stories and lessons from the Holocaust forward.”

Yom HaShoah, Hebrew for Holocaust Remembrance Day, is observed annually to commemorate the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust. It falls on the 27th day of the Hebrew month of Nissan, marking the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. This year’s ceremony also marks the 81st anniversary of liberation.

Holocaust Museum Los Angeles, 100 The Grove Drive, Los Angeles. For more visit https://www.holocaustmuseumla.org. Tickets: Free.

Miguel A. Santana, president and CEO of the California Community Foundation

The 53rd annual interfaith gathering, hosted by Friends In Deed, raises funds for homeless services in a city still rebuilding

The head of the California Community Foundation, which distributed $100 million in wildfire relief after the January 2025 fires, will deliver the keynote address at Pasadena’s 53rd Annual Mayor’s Interfaith Prayer Breakfast on May 7.

Miguel A. Santana, president and CEO of the California Community Foundation, will speak at the event, which is themed “Rising Together” and takes place at the Pasadena Convention Center.

Santana’s foundation activated its wildfire recovery fund immediately after the Eaton Fire, distributing $30 million in its first month to nonprofits helping survivors in Altadena and across the region, according to an Associated Press report.

Proceeds from the breakfast benefit Friends In Deed, the 132-year-old Pasadena interfaith nonprofit that operates a food pantry, shelters, street outreach, and housing assistance programs for the city’s homeless and vulnerable residents.

The breakfast traditionally draws hundreds of Pasadena residents, local leaders, business owners, and members of the faith community each year.

The event is one of the longest-running interfaith gatherings in Southern California, having persisted through virtual formats during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 before returning to in-person gatherings.

Last year’s 52nd breakfast, held months after the Eaton Fire, featured Pasadena Fire Chief Chad Augustin and focused on resilience and rebuilding.

“The annual Mayor’s Interfaith Prayer Breakfast continues to be one of Pasadena’s most meaningful traditions,” Mayor Victor M. Gordo said in a statement released by Friends In Deed. “It is a powerful reminder of what we can accomplish when we come together across faiths, backgrounds, and perspectives.”

Santana, a native Angeleno, previously served as City Administrative Officer for Los Angeles, where he oversaw the city’s $9 billion budget, according to the California Community Foundation. He was appointed CCF’s president and CEO in 2023 after leading the Weingart Foundation. He holds a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University.

“We are honored to continue hosting the Pasadena Mayor’s Interfaith Prayer Breakfast,” said Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater, chief executive officer of Friends In Deed. “For more than a century, faith communities in Pasadena have come together to respond to the needs of our neighbors.”

Grater has previously described the breakfast as a way to bring together people of different faiths, community organizations, and civic leaders, adding that it highlights the nonprofit’s motto of “doing together what we cannot do alone.”

Friends In Deed was founded in 1894 as a coalition of Pasadena congregations and has grown into a social service agency with five core programs. Its food pantry serves more than 600 households weekly, according to the organization. The nonprofit also operates The Women’s Room, a daytime shelter for homeless and at-risk women; a Bad Weather Shelter; Street Outreach and Housing; and Eviction Prevention and Rental Assistance.

The breakfast runs from 7:30 to 9:00 a.m. at the Pasadena Convention Center, 300 E. Green St., Hall C. Doors open at 6:45 a.m. Individual tickets are $45, and a table of 10 is $450. Sponsorship tables range from $600 to $1,750. For tickets or sponsorship information, visit friendsindeedpas.org/mipb or call 626-797-2402 x202.

“Miguel Santana’s leadership and commitment to community-driven change embody this year’s theme, ‘Rising Together,'” Grater said.