Staff

Paula Green, Ed. D., is the Founder and Director of the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding. She has extensive international experience in peacebuilding and conflict transformation, working as an international consultant, facilitator and lecturer in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East as well as in the US. As a psychologist, educator and leader in the field of peacebuilding, Dr. Green brings to her work a synthesis of personal change, social responsibility and spiritual awareness. See CV.

Dr. Green is also a professor of conflict transformation at the School for International Training (SIT) in Brattleboro, Vermont, where she co-directs the Conflict Transformation Across Cultures program, a summer institute and graduate certificate program designed to strengthen and support the community-building, coexistence and conflict intervention efforts of peacebuilders from the United States and around the world. In addition to authoring numerous articles published internationally, Dr. Green co-edited the textbook, Psychology and Social Responsibility: Facing Global Challenges. She has been an active board member of several international peace organizations, including the International Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Olivia Stokes Dreier, M.P.A., M.S.W., Associate Director, has extensive experience in conflict transformation, reconciliation, and training.  She is also adjunct faculty at the School for International Training (SIT) in Brattleboro VT, USA and the Director of the SIT Graduate Certificate Program in Conflict Transformation Across Cultures. Her international experience includes the development, design, and delivery of programs (many multi-year) in peacebuilding, inter-communal dialogue, and reconciliation in Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, Azerbaijan, Bosnia-Herzogovina, Israel, Macedonia, the Palestinian Territories, the Republic of Georgia, Rwanda, and Senegal. She worked for 2 years with the Gandhian movement in India on rural development and non-formal education and worked for 20 years in community mental health. She conducts trainings in both English and French.

Ms. Dreier received a B.A. in Psychology from Yale University, a Masters in Social Work from Smith College, and a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. See CV.

Sheila Gilroy, MS, Administrator, recently joined the Karuna Center with diverse work experience in financial administration, grant management and program coordination. She spent several years working for the Seva Foundation as the coordinator of a program providing “international accompaniment” for Guatemalan refugee resettlement communities in the 90’s. She also spent several years working for the University of Massachusetts, including her most recent position as research coordinator/grant manager for a study sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. During this time she obtained her M.S. in nutrition; she has a particular interest in and writes about international issues pertaining to hunger, malnutrition and public health, and since her days as an undergrad in economics, has maintained a longstanding interest in the causes, effects and transformation of poverty. She supports the work of international NGO’s developing sustainable local economies and is involved in fair trade activism.