Mrs. Mary Kessler has more than thirty-five years of human resource experience in a church environment. For fifteen years she served in the Catholic Diocese of Rochester, New York, first as the Director of Parish Personnel Services and then as the Diocesan Director of Human Resources.  Mary served on the NACPA Board and as Board President. For ten years she worked as the Director of Program Services for the National Association of Church Personnel Administrators (NACPA) and for the last ten years she has served parishes and religious institutions as an independent contractor. In all of these roles, she has assisted parish and diocesan staffs, Catholic agencies, religious congregations of both men and women and priests in creating personnel systems grounded in social teaching on workplace justice.

In workshops all over the country, Mary has provided management training in the areas of church personnel/human resource administration. Topics include: creating and maintaining healthy workplaces, preventing sexual harassment, appreciating the richness of diversity in the workplace, writing and administering policies, compensation systems and procedures, conducting a successful hiring process, ministry transitions, establishing a performance planning and review process in a Church setting, and conflict management. She has presented seminars for groups of priests, congregations of women and men religious and lay diocesan and parish managers. She co-presented a two-year management training and diversity program for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

In her work as an organizational consultant, Mary has conducted human resource audits to assess effective administrative practices and organizational operations. She worked on-site as a human resource director for parishes, Catholic Charities agencies, dioceses and religious congregations. In addition, she has conducted several executive searches and retirement studies for both men’s and women’s religious congregations.

Mary Kessler holds an education degree from Madonna University in Livonia, Michigan and a Certificate in Business Management from St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York. Her office is in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

In the 1970s and ’80s Jim owned and operated an Independent Insurance in Waco, Texas and did pro-bono fundraising for the parishes and schools of the northern part of the Diocese of Austin. In 1985 accepting a position with the Archdiocese of San Antonio Jim became their first Director of Stewardship and Development and an Insurance Advisor. While, with the Archdiocese, he began a self-insured employee benefits program for health, dental, and life insurance. In the absence of a formal HR department, he worked with the Finance Office to develop job descriptions for newly hired employees.

Additionally, Jim served as the Mass site Coordinator and Chairman for the visit of then Pope John Paul II to San Antonio in September 1987. Overseeing all activities of site selection, site construction, coordinating security with the US Secret Service and Local and State law enforcement. The Mass was attended by over 250,000 faithful from throughout the State of Texas.

In 1993 Jim became the Finance Officer and Business Manager with the recently established Diocese of Tyler in East Texas. In this position, he was responsible, as typical in small dioceses for all operations including what HR activities as were necessary for the Chancery and the parishes of the diocese. While with the Diocese of Tyler he established a multi-diocese self-insured benefit program for employee health, dental, and life insurance. In addition to the Diocese of Tyler the other diocesan participants were the Dioceses of Amarillo, Corpus Christi, and Lubbock. The Catholic Employee Benefit Group was established as a separate Non-Profit Corporation in the State of Texas. Jim served on the Board of Directors as President until his retirement from the Diocese of Tyler in July 2015.

In September 2016 Jim began serving as a NACPA Consultant working under the direction of Bill Daly. While working with and learning from Bill, Jim was able to assist with several dioceses both large to small and with multiple Religious Congregations. Jim looks forward to continuing to serve the Members and clients of NACPA with his experience in finance and accounting as well as in the areas of employee benefits if needed.

Following Jim’s retirement, he and his wife Karen moved from East Texas to Raton, New Mexico.

Shannon Drohman, CCP, SPHR, SHRM-SCP  

Ricardo Serrano

Ricardo served as the Director of Human Resources for the Diocese of Tucson for 14 years. Prior to this, Ricardo Served the IBM Corporation for 26 years in Human Resources and Administrative Management, including 8 years as the Internal Audit Manager responsible for Latin America. Ricardo also served on the Board of Directors for NACPA.

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