Board of Directors
David Blair, M.A., is Chair of the Board of Directors for the Karuna Center. He directs the English as a Second Language program for the ConVal Regional School District centered in Peterborough, NH, and has taught in the NH public schools since 1974. David spent six years in Asia with his family during the 1980s and 1990s: first working with Southeast Asian refugee children and their Filipino teachers at the Philippine Refugee Processing Center, then as co-director with his wife Linda of the American Friends Service Committee's rural development program in Vietnam. David has also worked as a consultant and group facilitator for Terre des Hommes, a Swiss NGO, in Bosnia, Nepal and Thailand.
Rick Brown, Ph.D., is a managing partner with The Results Group, Santa Rosa, California. Since 1980, Dr. Brown has been an Organizational and Management Consultant providing consultation on issues such as managing change, strategic planning, organizational redesign, conflict resolution, team-building, improving service delivery, labor-management and other forms of interest based negotiations. Both as an external consultant to public sector, non-profit and small business organizations and as an internal consultant with large companies such as Kaiser-Permanente and 3Com Corporation, Rick has specialized in helping individuals, groups and organizations manage the turbulence of changing external environments, with a specific focus on balancing the demand for innovation with the need for stability. More recently he has participated in international peacebuilding work through involvement in CONTACT (Conflict Transformation Across Cultures) and has helped form the CONTACT Africa Network, an association of peacebuilders in 18 countries across Africa. He was past president and a two-term member of the Twin Hills School District Board of Trustees in Sebastopol, CA.
John Eastman is a co-founder and Executive Director of Global Learning Across Borders (Global LAB), a non-profit organization with a mission to advance global understanding through increasing opportunities for high school students and K-12 educators to study in the developing nations of Asia and Africa. John worked for several years in Vietnam as an editor, journalist, teacher, and representative of the US-Indochina Reconciliation Project. Before moving to Asia, John taught in Houston's Writers-in-the-Schools Program, working primarily within alternative learning centers serving at-risk youth. In addition, John's professional experience includes managing a national reading program for PEN American Center, serving communities of new readers at prisons, senior centers, and on Native American reservations. John serves as President of the Lucius and Eva Eastman Fund, a 60 year old private foundation that supports a wide range of domestic and international projects promoting peace, social justice, environmental sustainability, community education, and the arts.
Mirsad Miki Jacevic is a human rights activist and peace program specialist from Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Before the war he headed the UN Youth Chapter and was president of the local committee of AIESEC, the largest student association in the world. During the war, Miki was involved in numerous projects to ease the suffering of youth and the elderly. In 1994, he founded and directed Collegium Bosniacum, an organization of Bosnian students in Europe. Out of that work grew the initiative, Academic Lifeline for Bosnia Hercegovina, which aimed at rebuilding the country's academic institutions. In 1995, Miki headed the Vienna office of the World University Service, dealing with education issues in troubled regions. He holds a Master of Science degree in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University. Since 1998 Miki has held the position of Policy Coordinator for the global initiative Women Waging Peace. He also teaches in the Conflict Transformation Across Cultures Program, (CONTACT) Summer Peacebuilding Institute at the School for International Training, Brattleboro, Vermont.
Mishy Lesser, Ed.D., is an educational consultant and family therapist with extensive community-based experience in Latin America as well as the United States. Currently focused on workplace learning and education, she has worked in Chile, Ecuador and El Salvador as an educator and facilitator of conflict resolution. Mishy has developed a psycho-socio-educational approach to working with people who are psychologically traumatized by war and violence. She was the recipient of Common Boundary's annual dissertation award for contributions to psycho-spirituality in 1997.
George Levinger, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology, Emeritus, at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His research and writing in social psychology focused primarily on interpersonal relationships, group behavior, and conflict. Since his retirement. he has worked on or with the boards of Woolman Hill, a Quaker conference center in Deerfield, Massachusetts, the Institute of Community Economics in Springfield, MA, and the National Priorities Project in Northampton, MA. He has also been a facilitator in the local Alternatives to Violence Project which conducts workshops in a Connecticut prison.
Susan West Kurz has personally overseen the development of Dr.Hauschka Skin Care, Inc. from its days as a tiny import endeavor to its current status as a premier vendor recognized in the beauty industry as the preeminent holistic skin care brand and touted in the press as a celebrity favorite. She is renowned as an expert on holistic beauty, a subject she has been studying passionately since she was first introduced to Dr.Hauschka Skin Care in 1972. Under Susan’s leadership, Dr.Hauschka Skin Care Inc. was the recipient of a 2003 Socially Responsible Business Award, an honor acknowledging the company’s local, national, and global efforts to heal humanity and the earth. In May 2006, Susan published her first book, Awakening Beauty, the Dr.Hauschka Way with Clarkson Potter.
Jenifer McKenna is a family therapist in Amherst Ma., where she works on conflict resolution with families undergoing separation and divorce. She served on the original core group of 20/20 Vision, a national organization supporting citizen involvement in protecting the environment and promoting a nuclear weapons freeze.
Patricia Moore is President of Moore II Resolutions, a small Boston firm providing a range of conflict resolution, conflict prevention, and alternative dispute resolution services to private and public organizations. She is a program designer, trainer and coach for the development of mediation and negotiation skills. Ms. Moore is also the author of numerous papers and presentations on mutual gains negotiation, conflict management, and consensus-building. She edited the 1996 Forum on Crisis, Conflict and Management-Labor Collaboration (National Institute of Dispute Resolution) and is currently developing educational curricula and teacher training programs for high school students in conflict resolution, mediation and negotiation skills.
Jan Passion, M.A., is a a psychotherapist who has specialized in work both with perpetrators and victims of violence. For 10 years Jan has immersed himself in global peace activism and he currently works with the Global Nonviolent Peace Force “mobilizing and training a multicultural, nonviolent, standing peace force.” Jan has worked on the staff of Spring Hill leading intensive psycho-spiritual weekend retreats. Jan received his M.A. from the School for International Training and recently served as the Associate Director of the CONTACT Program at SIT, where continues to teach in the Summer Institute.
Judith Thompson, M.A., is a Ph.D. candidate in peace studies at The Union Institute. For over twenty years, she has been engaged in projects promoting social healing, working primarily with survivors of war and political violence. In 1984, Judith co-founded Children of War, Inc., an organization that supported the vision and leadership of young activists from 22 war-torn countries. Judith has also helped to develop programs in Israel/Palestine and Cambodia and has worked closely with indigenous elders from North, Central, and South America who seek to support worldwide social and ecological healing through traditional ceremonies. She is board member of the Center for Psychology and Social Change affiliated with Cambridge Hospital, co-chairs the Spirit and Human Rights initiative funded by the Fetzer Institute, and is on the Advisory Board of One by One, Inc. In 1993, she was recipient of both the Bunting Peace Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies and the International Peace Prize of the Dolores Kohl Education Foundation. She is currently co-producing a film entitled "From Victims to Visionaries" about those victims of violence who chose not to take revenge and what motivates that choice.
Tom Wolff, Ph.D., is a national consultant on coalition building and community development with over 30 years experience training and consulting to organizations, foundations, grassroots community groups, and governments in Massachusetts and across North America. His services include: training, consultation, facilitation, helping government develop collaborative strategies, working with foundations, and developing specialty resource materials for organizations. From 1985 to 2002 Tom Wolff founded and directed Community Partners, a technical assistance and training program for those involved in coalition building and community development. In that role Tom was on the staff and the faculty at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Under Tom’s leadership, Community Partners started four community coalitions, consulted with dozens of others across the state, and founded Healthy Communities Massachusetts, a unique statewide network linking innovative community building efforts in cities and towns. Tom’s writings on coalition building include From the Ground Up (1997 with Gillian Kaye) a workbook on coalition building and community development, as well as The Spirit of the Coalition (with Bill Berkowitz), published by the American Public Health Association in 2000.
