UFI President, Beverly Rice was profiled in the March edition of The World Congress of Families Newsletter. Mrs. Rice will address the fifth World Congress of Families in August of 2009 in Amsterdam.
Beverly Beckstead Rice is the President of United Families International, a nondenominational pro-family organization which has defended the family, traditional marriage, parental rights and religious liberty for over 30 years. As an NGO with consultative status at the United Nations, UFI works with countries around the world to strengthen family rights.
Prior to serving as UFI president, Rice was the organization’s California State Director. As such, she was a leader of the coalition that secured the passage of Proposition 8, the defense-of-marriage amendment. Rice was responsible for coordinating the coalition’s speakers’ bureau – more than 300 speakers who did interviews and participated in debates. She personally traveled the length and breadth of California speaking on behalf of the marriage amendment to groups as large as 1,000 and as small as 10.
Beverly represented UFI at U.N. Conferences on HIV-AIDS and the Status of Women (both in 2008). She recently participated in the 2009 U.N. Conference on the Status of Women. On December 10, 2008 (the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), Beverly was one of a number of profamily leaders from around the world who presented a petition — signed by more than 437,000 individuals from 168 countries – calling on the United Nations to return to the original understanding of the Declaration as protecting a right to life and the natural family. The petition was presented at the U.N. headquarters in New York.
Rice has worked in a variety of industries including banking, aerospace, healthcare, computer technology, telecommunications, administration, automotive, universities and local governments. Rice has been a faculty member at the University of Southern California, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, Orange Coast College, Coastline Community College and Utah State University. Rice graduated cum laude with a Bachelors degree in Public Relations and Spanish from Utah State University, and a Masters degree in Organizational Communication and Behavior from the University of Southern California, where she attended on a full fellowship.
Beverly Rice has been married for 26 years and is the mother of two children, ages 20 and 23.