#NoWar2022 Speakers
Read more about our #NoWar2022 presenters!
Jul Bystrova
Jul Bystrova has been active in the Transition movement since 2007, working on local, national and international initiatives for personal and interpersonal resilience. She is the cofounder of the Inner Resilience Network and Director of the Era of Care project. She holds groups and events in community wellness building, has a private holistic practice, and is an Ordained Interfaith Minister with a Masters in Interdisciplinary research. She has specialized in energy medicine, personal/collective trauma, and organizes around cultural healing, climate justice and psycho-spiritual issues. She served on the Transition US Collaborative Design Council and is currently working on culture repair and wellness trainings in the face of change and challenge. She is also a performance artist, poet, philosopher, outdoor adventurer and a mom.
Jeff Cohen
Jeff Cohen was founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, where he was an associate professor of journalism. He founded the media watch group FAIR in 1986, and cofounded the online activist group RootsAction.org in 2011. He is the author of "Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media." He has been a TV commentator at CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, and was senior producer of MSNBC's Phil Donahue primetime show until it was terminated three weeks before the Iraq invasion. Cohen has coproduced documentary movies, including "The Corporate Coup D'Etat" and "All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception and the Spirit of I.F. Stone."
Rickey Gard Diamond
Now a Ms. Magazine columnist, Rickey began learning about economic systems as a single mom on welfare. She edited a newspaper on poverty issues while getting an education, and in 1985, became founding editor of Vermont Woman, where she continued as a contributing editor for 34 years. She taught writing and literature at Vermont College for over 20 years, publishing fiction and non-fiction. Her novel Second Sight, and her short story collection, Whole Worlds Could Pass Away, include class, gender, and money troubles. To make economics a friendlier subject for women, she translated masculine obfuscation in a talk, “Economics is Greek to Me,” at the March 2008 Summit for Economic Justice sponsored by the National Organization for Women, The Institute for Women's Policy Research, and the Council of American Negro Women. After 2008’s crash, she designed seminars combining literature, language and economics; her research led to a series of articles that won a 2012 National Newspaper Award for in-depth investigative reporting, citing her “atypical sources”—mostly women, she noted. Accepted for a writing residency at Hedgebrook, she worked on a new story-based feminist economic primer, including cartoons illustrated by Peaco Todd. She wondered why money, race, and sex seemed intertwined, with billionaires mostly white males, and the poorest most often women of color. The resulting book, Screwnomics: How the Economy Works Against Women and Real Ways to Make Lasting Change, was published by SheWritesPress in 2018, and won the Independent Book Publishers Award Silver Medal in 2019 for Women’s Issues. Screwnomics’ workbook, Where Can I Get Some Change? prompts women’s local conversations and is available as a free PDF at www.screwnomics.org. Her Ms. column, Women Unscrewing Screwnomics, focuses on women making change in a field exclusively male until fairly recently. She welcomes your stories, questions, and insights for her column and her blog.
Guy Feugap
Guy Feugap, a national of Cameroon, is a secondary school teacher, writer and peace activist. His overall job is to educate youths for peace and non-violence. His work puts young girls in particular at the heart of crisis resolution, awareness raising on several issues in their communities. He joined WILPF (Women's International League for Peace and Freedom) in 2014 and founded the Cameroon Chapter of World BEYOND War in 2020.
Marybeth Riley Gardam
Marybeth grew up in New Jersey, attended Seton Hall University and the New School for Social Research, and started her career as an advertising executive, before directing development at a nonprofit hospital. In 1984, she moved to Macon, Georgia, with her husband and helped set up a Migrant Farmworker Coalition, serving as Director of the Central Georgia Peace Center, and leading efforts of Central Georgians for Central America. In 2000 her family moved to Iowa. In 2001, post 9/11, she set up Women for Peace Iowa, later joining with Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom US Section, Des Moines branch. Attracted to WILPFus.org because of its long history of connecting economic justice and human rights to the pursuit of peace, she served on WILPF US Board of Directors for three years, where she continues to serve as WILPF’s Development Chair. Since 2008, she has also served as Chair of WILPF’s issue committee, Women, Money & Democracy, currently overseeing its creation of a Feminist Economic Toolkit and updating WILPF’s successful corporate personhood study course. While on the steering committee of MovetoAmend.org, Marybeth began a number of MTA Iowa affiliates, seeking to get money out of elections and reverse the 2010 Supreme Court ruling, Citizens United, which equates campaign money with political speech. MTA is a grassroots effort to reverse this decision with a US Constitutional Amendment. In her free time, Marybeth enjoys reading Louise Penny novels and playing with her 3 year old grandson Ollie. She lives in Iowa with her husband of 40 years.
Thea Valentina Gardellin
Thea Valentina Gardellin is a spokesperson for No Dal Molin, a grassroots movement against American military bases in Vicenza, Italy. In addition to Thea’s anti-bases work, she is a clown therapist which has brought her as far as Palestine and Israel along with 21 other clowns belonging to the Dottor Clown Italia NGO. Thea speaks Italian, English, French, and German and has extensive experience as an interpreter for many causes. She is the founder and CEO at Active Languages in Montecchio Maggiore where she teaches English as a second language.
Phill Gittins
Phill Gittins, PhD, is World BEYOND War’s Education Director. He is from the UK. Phill has 15+ years’ programming, analysis, and leadership experience in the areas of peace, education, and youth. He has particular expertise in context-specific approaches to peace programming; peacebuilding education; and youth inclusion in research and action. To date, he has lived, worked, and travelled in over 50 countries across 6 continents; taught in schools, colleges, and universities in eight countries; and led experiential training and training-of-trainers for hundreds of individuals on peace and conflict processes. Other experience includes work in youth offending prisons; oversight management for youth and community projects; and consultation for public and non-profit organisations on peace, education, and youth issues. Phill has received multiple awards for his contributions to peace and conflict work, including the Rotary Peace Fellowship and the Kathryn Davis Fellow for Peace. He is also a Peace Ambassador for the Institute for Economics and Peace. He earned his PhD in International Conflict Analysis, MA in Education, and a BA in Youth and Community Studies. He also holds postgraduate qualifications in Peace and Conflict Studies, Education and Training, and Teaching in Higher Education, and is a certified Neuro-Linguistic Programming Practitioner, counsellor, and project manager by training.
Petar Glomazić
Petar Glomazić is a graduated aeronautical engineer and aviation consultant, documentary film maker, translator, alpinist and ecological and civic rights activist. He has been working in aviation business for 24 years. In 1996, he also finished RTS School for documentary authors in Belgrade and worked in RTS Educational Program Department. Since 2018 Petar has been working as co-director and associated producer of feature length documentary film “The Last Nomads” which is still in production. The film takes place in Sinjajevina Mountain, the second largest pastureland in Europe and a part of UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. In 2019, the Government of Montenegro has made a stunning decision to inaugurate a military training ground in Sinjajevina. The film follows the shepherd’s community which is struggling to defend the mountain and natural and cultural values of their pastoral common system with the help of activists and various international organizations. The film (project) has been selected for Hot Docs Forum 2021. Petar is a Steering Committee Member of Save Sinjajevina Association. (https://sinjajevina.org & https://www.facebook.com/savesinjajevina).
Cymry Gomery
Cymry Gomery is a community organizer and activist who founded Montréal for a World BEYOND War in November 2021, after attending the inspiring WBW NoWar101 training. This fledgling Canadian chapter came into being just on the cusp of the Russia-Ukraine war, Canadian government decision to purchase bombers and so much more—our members have had no shortage of actions in which to participate! Cymry is passionate about nature and the rights of nature, the environment, anti-speciesism, anti-racism and social justice. She cares deeply about the cause of peace because our ability to live in peace is the barometer by which we can judge the success of all human endeavor, and without peace it is impossible for humans or other species to flourish.
Darienne Hetherman
Darienne Hetherman is a co-coordinator for California for a World BEYOND War. She is a horticultural consultant with an emphasis on restoring biodiversity in California gardens using native plants and permaculture principles. A lifelong resident of Southern California, she found a calling in helping others to fall in love with the land they call home, and thereby with the wider Earth community. Her peace activism is an expression of devoted service to the needs of the Earth community, and to the great dream of humankind's development towards a planetary consciousness. She is also a devoted mother, spouse, daughter, sister, neighbor, and friend.
Samara Jade
A modern folk troubadour, Samara Jade is dedicated to the art of listening deeply and crafting soul-centered songs, inspired greatly by the wild wisdom of nature and the landscape of the human psyche. Her songs, sometimes whimsical and sometimes dark and deep but always truthful and harmonically rich, ride the crest of the unknown and are medicine for personal and collective transformation. Samara’s intricate guitar playing and emotive vocals draw upon influences as diverse as folk, jazz, blues, Celtic and Appalachian styles, woven into a cohesive tapestry that is a sound distinctly her own that has been described as “Cosmic-soul-folk” or “philosopholk.”
Dru Oja Jay
Dru Oja Jay is a writer and organizer based in Val David, Quebec, currently serving as Publisher of The Breach and Executive Director of Community-University Television. He is a co-founder of the Media Co-op, Journal Ensemble, Friends of Public Services and Courage. He is co-author, with Nikolas Barry-Shaw, of Paved with Good Intentions: Canada's development NGOs from idealism to imperialism.
Charles Johnson
Charles Johnson is a co-founding member of Nonviolent Peaceforce's Chicago chapter. With the chapter, Charles works to promote and practice Unarmed Civilian Protection (UCP), a proven unarmed alternative to armed protection. He has received certification in UCP studies through the UN/ Merrimack College, and has trained in UCP with Nonviolent Peaceforce, DC Peace Team, Meta Peace Team, and others. Charles has presented on UCP at DePaul University and other venues. He has also participated in numerous street actions in Chicago as an unarmed protector. His aim is to keep learning about the many forms of UCP which have sprung up worldwide, as people create unarmed safety models to replace armed models.
Kathy Kelly
Kathy Kelly has been President of the Board of World BEYOND War since March 2022, prior to which time she served as a member of the Advisory Board. She is based in the United States, but is often elsewhere. Kathy’s efforts to end wars have led her to living in war zones and prisons over the past 35 years. In 2009 and 2010, Kathy was part of two Voices for Creative Nonviolence delegations which visited Pakistan to learn more about the consequences of U.S. drone attacks. From 2010 – 2019, the group organized dozens of delegations to visit Afghanistan, where they continued learning about casualties of U.S. drone attacks. Voices also helped organize protests at U.S. military bases operating weaponized drone attacks. She is now a co-coordinator of the Ban Killer Drones campaign.
Diana Kubilos
Diana is a passionate ‘Transitioner’, having co-founded a Transition chapter in her former home of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and now working on community resilience-related initiatives in her home county of Ventura (in Southern California), and with the Inner Resilience Network. She is committed to co-creating spaces for community learning, healing, and organizing, toward building a more nonviolent, just, and regenerative world. Diana holds a Master's in Public Health, and worked for many years in social work and health education. She retrained several years ago in mediation and Nonviolent Communication, and is focused in the areas of parenting, conflict transformation, and nonviolence education. Diana is a mother of two young adults, who are her greatest inspiration. She is Latina (Mexican-American) and bilingual. In addition to her current residence and work in California, she has also lived and worked in Mexico, Brazil, and Malaysia.
Rebeca Lane
Eunice Rebeca Vargas (Rebeca Lane) was born in Guatemala City in 1984 amid civil war. Early on, she began researching methods to recover the historical memory of those war years, subsequently becoming an activist for families whose loved ones had been kidnapped or killed by the military government. Through this organization work, she realized that women had less power in leadership and thus she birthed a feminist vision. The theater has always been part of her life; she is currently part of a theater and hip-hop group that created the Eskina (2014) to address violence against youth in marginalized areas of the city, with the use of graffiti, rap, breakdancing, DJing, and parkour. Since 2012, as part of the hip-hop group Last Dose, she began recording songs as an exercise. In 2013, she released her EP “Canto” and she began a tour of Central America and Mexico. Lane has participated in many notable festivals and seminars in Central and South America on human rights, feminism and culture of hip-hop. In 2014, she won the Proyecto L contest, which recognizes music that reinforces the right of expression. In addition, she works as a sociologist with several publications and lectures on urban youth cultures and identities and, more recently, on education and its role in the social reproduction of inequality. She is the founder of Somos Guerreras project that seeks to create opportunities for empowerment and visibility of women in hip-hop culture in Central America. With support from Astraea is, she performed We are Guerreras with Nakury, and Audry Native Funk in 8 cities, from Panamá to Ciudad Juárez to record a documentary about the work of female hip-hop in the region.
Shea Leibow
Shea Leibow is a Chicago-based organizer with CODEPINK's Divest from the War Machine campaign. They received their bachelor's degree in Gender Studies and Environmental Science & Policy from Smith College, and are passionate about anti-war and climate justice movement-building.
José Roviro Lopez
José Roviro Lopez is one of the founding members of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, which is located in the north of Colombia. 25 years ago, on March 23 of 1997, a group of peasants from different villages who wanted no part in the armed conflict that was plaguing their region, signed the declaration that identified them as the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó. Instead of joining the thousands of displaced people in the country, this peasant population created a pioneering initiative in Colombia: a community that declared itself neutral in the face of the armed conflict and rejected the presence of all armed groups in its territory. Despite declaring themselves an outside party to the armed conflict and promoting their vision of non-violence, since its creation the Peace Community has been the target of countless attacks, including forced displacements, hundreds of sexual abuses, assassinations and massacres. The Peace Community wants to be an example of what its founding members call a “humanizing alternative”. The same notion inspires the way the Peace Community understands the importance of community work as an alternative to the dominant capitalist economic model. For the Peace Community, the desire to live in peace is closely linked to the right to life and land. José is part of the Internal Council, which supervises the respect for the principles and rules of the community and coordinates daily tasks. The Internal Council highlights the importance of education, both to strengthen their capacities as farmers and sustainable agricultural producers, and to teach young people about the history of the Peace Community and its resistance.
Sam Mason
Sam Mason is a member of the New Lucas Plan project which arose from the conference celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Lucas Plan in 2016. The project focuses on applying the ideas and methods of the former Lucas Aerospace workers to addressing the multiple crises facing us today such as increased militarisation, climate change and robotisation/automation. Sam is a trade unionist leading on sustainability, climate change and Just Transition. As a peace and anti-war campaigner, she advocates that we need to promote socially and ecologically useful production as part of a just transition to a world of peace.
Robert McKechnie
Robert McKechnie, an educator, took up fundraising after retirement, first in an animal shelter and then a senior center. He retired again at age 80. Again, retirement didn’t work. A Rotarian, Robert heard about the Rotary E-Club of World Peace. He attended their World Peace Conference in 2020 and experienced a profound shift of consciousness. Robert then joined Dari to co-found the California for a World BEYOND War chapter. That led to learning about the International Cities of Peace and a desire to do something for his beautiful hometown, Cathedral City, California.
Rosemary Morrow
Rosemary (Rowe) Morrow is an Australian Quaker and co-founder of Blue Mountains Permaculture Institute, and Permaculture for Refugees. After years of working in countries recovering from war and civil war such as Viet Nam, Cambodia, East Timor and others and initiating permaculture projects to meet the most urgent needs of people whose lives are diminished and impoverished by war, she saw that refugees - those enormously impacted by the violence of war and continue to live in the violence of dispossession - would also benefit from permaculture. As a Quaker she has been actively engaged in anti-war movements from the time of the American- Australian war on Viet Nam and up to the present. Her activism continues on streets and demonstrations and now takes the form of assisting refugees and Internally Displaced People (IDPs) access resources and knowledge to rebuild their lives either in camps or settlements or where-ever they may find themselves. Rowe is passionate and vehement about the need to build a world beyond war, and non-violently. Permaculture meets that need.
Eunice Neves
Eunice Neves is a Landscape Architect and Permaculture Designer. Trained in Landscape Architecture at the University of Oporto, she worked in Portugal and Holland on private gardens, public spaces and urban planning. She left Holland in 2009 to volunteer in an ecological village in Nepal, an experience that changed her perception of the world and her profession, introducing her to Permaculture. Since then, she has been fully committed to gaining knowledge and experience in Permaculture Design. From 2015-2021, Eunice embarked on a crowdfunded independent research tour around the world to better understand Permaculture Design at its best by visiting and living in mature Permaculture projects. In her research she has been working closely with Sara Wuerstle with whom she created a regenerative enterprise, GUILDA Permaculture. Currently, Eunice is living in Mértola, Portugal, coordinating a resettlement project for Afghan Refugees - Terra de Abrigo - that uses Permaculture and Agroecology as its basis, offering a multidimensional approach to resettlement. The project has come to life through a partnership between Permaculture for Refugees (Australia), Associação Terra Sintrópica (Portugal), Mértola's Council (Portugal) and an International team of peace workers from around the world.
Jesús Tecú Osorio
Jesús Tecú Osorio is a Mayan-Achi survivor of the Rio Negro massacres committed by the Guatemalan Army and paramilitaries. Since 1993, he has worked tirelessly towards justice for human rights crimes and towards healing and rebuilding of communities in Guatemala. He is the co-founder of ADIVIMA, the Rabinal Legal Clinic, the Rabinal Community Museum, and founder of the New Hope Foundation. He lives in Rabinal, Baja Verapaz, Guatemala with his wife and children.
Myrna Pagán
Myrna (Taíno name: Inaru Kuni- Woman of the Sacred Waters) lives on the shores of the Caribbean Sea on the tiny island of Vieques. This paradise served as a training ground for the US Navy and for more than six decades suffered from the devastation of the health of its residents and the environment. This assault converted Myrna and many of others of Vieques to become peace-loving warriors in opposition to the US Navy’s desecration of their island. She is the Founder of Vidas Viequenses Valen, an environmental movement working for peace and justice, and a Founding member of Radio Vieques, Educational Community Radio. She is a steering committee member of the Ceasefire Campaign and a Community representative for the Restoration Advisory Board of the US Navy and for the EPA, U. Mass project to study the effects of military toxins on Viequenses and their environment. Myrna was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1935, raised in New York City, and has lived in Vieques for half a century. She has a Master of Fine Arts from Catholic University, Washington, DC, 1959. She is the widow of Charles R. Connelly, mother of five, Grandmother of nine, and soon to be great grandmother! She has traveled to represent the people of Vieques and advocate for their rights to Peace conferences in Okinawa, Germany, and India, and at Universities in the US including U. Connecticut, U. Michigan, and UC Davis. She has spoken five times at The United Nations Decolonization Committee. She has appeared in many documentaries and has testified before US Congress to present the Vieques story and advocate for the rights of her people.
Miriam Pemberton
Miriam Pemberton is the founder of the Peace Economy Transitions Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC. Her new book, Six Stops on the National Security Tour: Rethinking Warfare Economies, will be published in July of this year. With William Hartung she edited Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War (Paradigm, 2008). She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.
Saadia Qureshi
After graduating as an Environmental Engineer, Saadia worked for the government to ensure compliance of landfills and power generation facilities. She took a pause to raise her family and volunteer for several non-profits, ultimately discovering herself by being an active, responsible citizen in her hometown of Oviedo, Florida. Saadia believes meaningful friendships can be found in unexpected places. Her work to show neighbors how similar we are regardless of differences led her to peacemaking. Currently she works as a Gathering Coordinator at Preemptive Love where Saadia hopes to spread this message to communities nationwide. If she's not participating at an event around town, you may find Saadia picking up after her two girls, reminding her husband where he left his wallet, or saving the last three bananas for her famous banana bread.
Eamon Rafter
Eamon Rafter is based in Dublin, Ireland and has worked for twenty plus years as a peace educator/facilitator in diverse education for reconciliation projects with communities affected by the Irish conflict and in cross border dialogues with young activists for peace. His work has focused on the legacy of the conflict, creating a shared reading of the past and developing relationships for understanding and common action. Eamon has also worked on many projects in Europe, Palestine, Afghanistan and South Africa and hosted international groups in Ireland. His current role is with the Irish Forum for Global Education advocating for and supporting the right to education in development and emergency contexts. Eamon has been active for the past few years with the Irish chapter of World BEYOND War and Swords to Ploughshares (StoP), working to create awareness & resist the militarisation of Europe, defend active neutrality & support non-violent approaches to transforming conflict. As a peace & justice educator, Eamon has been involved in long term work to develop an integrated approach to peace education and create action responses in these areas.
Nick Rea
Nick Rea is a native of Orange City, Florida, driven by the deep desire to heal all that is tearing us apart. Armed with a heart to serve others and a desire to be a lifelong learner, Nick earned a degree in English Education from Bethune-Cookman University, taught high school English, and now holds a master's degree in Conflict Analysis & Dispute Resolution with a focus in restorative justice from Salisbury University. Nick's most cherished parts of his journey are the relationships he's formed along the way. He allows his love for things like music, coffee, basketball, nature, food, movies, reading, and writing to connect him with a wide variety of stories, experiences, and relationships.
Liz Remmerswaal
Liz Remmerswaal is the Vice President of the World BEYOND War Global Board of Directors and national coordinator of WBW Aotearoa New Zealand. Liz is a former Vice President of the NZ Womens International League for Peace and Freedom and won the Sonya Davies peace award in 2017, enabling her to study peace literacy with the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in California. The daughter and granddaughter of soldiers, she has a background in journalism, community organising, environmental activism, and local body politics. Liz runs a radio show called 'Peace Witness', works with the CODEPINK 'China is not our enemy' campaign and is keen on networking and creating government departments promoting peace making. Liz is also keen on peace films and creative peace building activities such as installing peace poles in partnership with the community. She is a Quaker and on the NZ Peace Foundation's international affairs and disarmament committee. She lives at the beach in Haumoana, Hawkes Bay, on the east coast of the north island, with her husband Ton and their empty nest now that their children are grown and spread around three countries.
John Reuwer
John Reuwer is a Member of the Board of Directors of World BEYOND War. He is based in Vermont in the United States. He is a retired emergency physician whose practice convinced him of a crying need for alternatives to violence for resolving tough conflicts. This led him to the informal study and teaching of nonviolence for the last 35 years, with peace team field experience in Haiti, Colombia, Central America, Palestine/Israel, and several US inner cities. He worked with the Nonviolent Peaceforce, one of very few organizations practicing professional unarmed civilian peacekeeping, in South Sudan, a nation whose suffering showcases the true nature of war that is so easily hidden from those who still believe war is a necessary part of politics. He currently participates with the DC Peace Team. As adjunct professor of peace and justice studies at St. Michael’s College in Vermont, Dr. Reuwer taught courses on conflict resolution, both nonviolent action and nonviolent communication. He also works with Physicians for Social Responsibility educating the public and politicians about the threat from nuclear weapons, which he sees as the ultimate expression of the insanity of modern war. John has been a facilitator for World BEYOND War’s online courses “War Abolition 201” and “Leaving World War II Behind.”
Britt Runeckles
Britt Runeckles is a climate activist and writer, living in so-called Vancouver on unceded Musqueam, Squamish, and Selilwitulh land. They are one of the coordinators for @climatejusticeubc, a group of students who organize to tackle climate change and its root causes. Britt is passionate about blending their writing life and climate advocacy together to educate people on the importance of protecting the environment for future generations.
Stuart Schussler
Stuart Schussler worked with the Autonomous University of Social Movements between 2009 and 2015, coordinating their study abroad program in Mexico on Zapatismo and social movements. Through this work, he spent four months a year in the Zapatista Good Government Centre of Oventic, teaching undergraduate students while they also learned from Zapatista educators about their autonomous projects and history of struggle. He is currently completing his PhD in Environmental Studies at York University in Toronto.
Milan Sekulović
Milan Sekulović is a Montenegrin journalist and civic-environmental activist, the founder of the Save Sinjajevina movement, which has existed since 2018 and which began to develop from an informal group of citizens into an organization that is intensively fighting to protect the second largest pasture in Europe. Milan is the founder of the Civic Initiative Save Sinjajevina and its current President. Follow Save Sinjajevina on Facebook.
Yurii Sheliazhenko
Yurii Sheliazhenko, PhD, is a Member of the Board of Directors of World BEYOND War. He is based in Ukraine. Yurii is executive secretary of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement and a board member of the European Bureau for Conscientious Objection. He obtained a Master of Mediation and Conflict Management degree in 2021 and a Master of Laws degree in 2016 at KROK University, where he also earned his PhD in Law. In addition to his participation in the peace movement, he is a journalist, blogger, human rights defender, and legal scholar, an author of academic publications and a lecturer on legal theory and history.
Lucas Sichardt
Lucas Sichardt is a chapter coordinator for WBW's Wanfried chapter in Germany. Lucas was born in Erfurt in eastern Germany. After German Reunification, his family moved to Bad Hersfeld in the western part of Germany. There he grew up there and as a child learned about prejudices and the consequences of being from the east. This, combined with a very value oriented education by his parents, was a big influence on his principles and belief in values. Not surprisingly, Lucas then became active - at first in the movement against nuclear power and than more and more in the peace movement. Now, Lucas works as a children's doctor in the local hospital and in his spare time follows his passion of bicycling in nature.
Rachel Small
Rachel Small is Canada Organizer for World BEYOND War. She is based in Toronto, Canada, on Dish with One Spoon and Treaty 13 Indigenous territory. Rachel is a community organizer. She has organized within local and international social/environmental justice movements for over a decade, with a special focus on working in solidarity with communities harmed by Canadian extractive industry projects in Latin America. She has also worked on campaigns and mobilizations around climate justice, decolonization, anti-racism, disability justice, and food sovereignty. She has organized in Toronto with the Mining Injustice Solidarity Network and has a Masters in Environmental Studies from York University. She has a background in art-based activism and has facilitated projects in community mural-making, independent publishing and media, spoken word, guerilla theatre, and communal cooking with people of all ages across Canada. She lives downtown with her partner and kid, and can often be found at a protest or direct action, gardening, spray painting, and playing softball.
David Swanson
David Swanson is Co-Founder, Executive Director, and a Board Member of World BEYOND War. He is based in Virginia in the United States. David is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson’s books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk World Radio. He is a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and was awarded the 2018 Peace Prize by the U.S. Peace Memorial Foundation. Longer bio and photos and videos here. Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and FaceBook. Sample videos.
Juan Pablo Lazo Ureta
"A narrative of co-creation emerges that decolonizes us and opens us to the dawn of a new society. We inhabit what the ancients prophesied. The essence is to raise the vibration and for this it is essential that we learn to build a culture of peace, until we focus on accepting the dignity of being human." Trained at the University as a lawyer, Juan Pablo studied Development in Belgium and also Permaculture and the movement of Transition and good living. He is an active agent of change and manager of cultural caravans in India, South America and Patagonia. He is currently a member of the Caravan for Peace and the Restoration of Mother Earth and inhabitant of Rukayün, an intentional community in Laguna Verde. He is a chapter coordinator for World BEYOND War in the Aconcagua bioregion.
Harsha Walia
Harsha Walia is a South Asian activist and writer based in Vancouver, unceded Coast Salish Territories. She has been involved in community-based grassroots migrant justice, feminist, anti-racist, Indigenous solidarity, anti-capitalist, Palestinian liberation, and anti-imperialist movements, including No One is Illegal and Women's Memorial March Committee. She is formally trained in law and works with women in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. She is the author of Undoing Border Imperialism (2013) and Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism (2021).
Carmen Wilson
Carmen Wilson, M.A., is an expert in community development and is now the Community Manager at Demilitarise Education, a world renowned organisation that envisions a world where universities champion peace. She has a B.S. in Media Management and an M.A. in Globalization & International Development Studies. She completed her Masters dissertation on the importance of freedom of press and information for democratic accountability. Since finishing her M.A. in 2019, she has continued her education gaining professional certifications in maximizing community impact and non-profit management. She is a passionate advocate for peace, youth work, and education, and has volunteered and worked for non-profits and charities in America and internationally, such as Operation Smile, Project FIAT International, Refugee Project Maastricht and Lutheran Family Services. An ex-teacher, she is passionate about using communications technologies (ICT's) to promote access to quality education and information! Other experience includes work carrying out English language instruction and cultural assimilation programs for refugees, and community development projects in places like Manila, Philippines and San Salvador, El Salvador.
Steven Youngblood
Steven Youngblood is the founding director of the Center for Global Peace Journalism at Park University in Parkville, Missouri USA, where he is a communications and peace studies professor. He has organized and taught peace journalism seminars and workshops in 33 countries/territories (27 in person; 12 via Zoom). Youngblood is a two-time J. William Fulbright Scholar (Moldova 2001, Azerbaijan 2007). He also served as a U.S. State Department Senior Subject Specialist in Ethiopia in 2018. Youngblood is the author of "Peace Journalism Principles and Practices" and "Professor Komagum." He edits "The Peace Journalist" magazine, and writes and produces the "Peace Journalism Insights" blog. He has been recognized for his contributions to world peace by the U.S. State Department, Rotary International, and the World Forum for Peace, which named him a Luxembourg Peace Prize laureate for 2020-21.
Greta Zarro
Greta Zarro is Organizing Director of World BEYOND War. She is based in New York State in the United States. Greta has a background in issue-based community organizing. Her experience includes volunteer recruitment and engagement, event organizing, coalition building, legislative and media outreach, and public speaking. Greta graduated as valedictorian from St. Michael’s College with a bachelor’s degree in Sociology/Anthropology. She previously worked as New York Organizer for leading non-profit Food & Water Watch. There, she campaigned on issues related to fracking, genetically engineered foods, climate change, and the corporate control of our common resources. Greta and her partner run Unadilla Community Farm, a non-profit organic farm and permaculture education center in Upstate New York.
