Virginia Morrison

Ms. Morrison is the Director of Programs at Karuna Center since 2015. She has more than 20 years of experience in conflict transformation domestically and internationally. Ms. Morrison has conducted assessments and designed and co-led multi-year projects involving community reconciliation, dialogue, trauma resilience and leadership throughout West Africa and East Africa, as well as the Middle East.

She has consulted with Amnesty International; Public Conversations Project; and a range of universities, prison systems and US health care systems. As a founding member of Mediators Beyond Borders, she has co-led efforts to incorporate trauma-informed practice into all of MBB’s programming. Her fieldwork has included building refugee youth’s resilience to the pull to fight in South Sudan’s civil war, integrating former child soldiers and sex slaves into post-conflict Liberian communities, and providing technical assistance to Kenyan pastoralist communities severely impacted by lethal inter-tribal violence. She has mentored local NGOs developing interfaith coexistence and trauma resilience in Northern Nigerian communities devastated by Boko Haram, helped strengthen networks of women throughout Iraq, and oversaw major reform of mental health care and parole revocation practices in California’s prisons. Prior to her move to peacebuilding, Ms. Morrison’s law practice sought to improve prison conditions and to protect employees from discrimination and women from family violence.

Ms. Morrison holds a BA in Anthropology from San Francisco State University, a JD from University of California at Berkeley Boalt Hall, and a certificate in Conflict Transformation earned at Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.

This profile was last updated February 15, 2018