Dr. Alma Abdelhadi-Jadallah is an internationally recognized scholar practitioner in conflict prevention and mitigation. As an educator, she teaches graduate level courses in conflict analysis and resolution. She also brings extensive organizational development experience to her work coaching parties and groups to identify shared interests and enhance their abilities and skills towards collaborative attitudes and behaviors. Her research writings and practice focus on political and organized violence, the role of third-party roles, gender, and culture. She has worked extensively in the Arab world and on regional Middle East issues. In the US her work focuses on race, ethnicity and group dynamics in the workplace and communities. In 2019, joined the Eminent and Expert Persons advising the ASEAN Regional forum advising on preventive diplomacy and on women peace and security (WPS). Currently she manages Kommon Denominator Inc. (www.kommondenominator.com) an organizational dedicated to the well-being of organizations and communities through the facilitation of constructive conversations. Past positions included serving with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) as the Quaker International Affairs Representative to the Middle East. In 2014 – 2015 she served as the Regional Expert and Coordinator, Panel of Experts on Yemen established pursuant to Security Council resolution 2140 (2014), Department of Political Affairs, United Nations. Prior to this role, she served with the Special Advisor to the Secretary General Jamal Ben Omar (SASG) in Yemen during the Yemeni National Dialogue. On Syria, she was involved in Track II diplomatic efforts led by the UN. She is the recipient of several business awards and honors including the 2017 Distinguished Alumni Award for the School of Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University.

Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery - PTI 687

Sarah Augustine is the Executive Director of the Dispute Resolution
Center of Yakima and Kittitas Counties.  She is also adjunct professor
of sociology at Heritage University, where she served on the full time
faculty from 2011-2017. 
Sarah is the co-founder of Suriname Indigenous Health Fund (SIHF), where she has advocated for Indigenous Peoples whose health and communities are threatened by resource extraction since 2004. She co-wrote the statement repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery on behalf of the World Council of Churches (WCC), and further organized indigenous leaders globally to found the WCC Indigenous Peoples Program. Sarah is a founding member of the Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery Coalition, where she serves as a member of the Steering Committee. She has represented the interests of Indigenous community partners to their own governments, the Inter-American development bank, the United Nations, the Organization of American States Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the World Health Organization, and a host of other international actors including corporate interests. She employs shuttle diplomacy and group decision-making strategies to de-escalate conflict and establish common ground between communities and external interests. In addition to her work with SIHF, Sarah has worked as an organizational consultant in strategic planning, facilitation, and mediation.

Dr. Catherine Barnes has worked for conflict transformation and social justice for more than thirty years. She is an affiliate faculty member of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University and a freelance practitioner (www.catherinebarnes.space). Catherine has extensive experience facilitating conversations on challenging topics, in locations ranging from the UN General Assembly Hall to village gathering places. She is increasingly focused on designing whole-of-system deliberative dialogue processes and training other practitioners in these skills.

Examples of recent processes she has helped to design and facilitate range from workshops for the
Afghan High Peace Council; a multi-stakeholder process to develop a vision for the Shenandoah River
Watershed; a consensus-building process to provide guidance on the status of LGBTQ persons in a
religious denomination; community dialogues for racial justice and healing in her home town; and the
Mennonite Church USA’s Future Church Summit convening more than 700 people in a process of church
renewal. She finds that underlying process design principles can span these widely divergent contexts.

As a facilitator, trainer, researcher, policy advocate and consultant, she has worked with civil society
activists, diplomats and politicians, and armed groups in more than 30 countries to support their capacities for preventing violence and using conflict as an opportunity for addressing the underlying
systems giving rise to grievance.

She has written widely on peace processes, civil society roles in peacebuilding, and on issues related to
statebuilding, conflict prevention, genocide and minority rights. She is currently writing a book entitled:
Ending Our Addiction to Coercion: Understanding Conflict Habituated Systems and How to Transform
Them.

Catherine holds a doctorate in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University. She has worked with numerous peacebuilding and human rights organizations, including Conciliation Resourcesand Minority Rights Group International.

She now lives in Staunton Virginia with her husband and son, extended family and friends, with whom
she loves to garden, to cook, to make music, and to retreat into the wilds of the surrounding mountains.

Circle Processes - PTI 682       

Dr. Martha A. Brown, president of RJAE Consulting, Intl., is author of Creating Restorative Schools: Setting Schools Up to Succeed available at Living Justice Press. Dr. Brown received her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from Florida Atlantic University and has more than five years’ experience designing and teaching online courses. Dr. Brown was Lead Instructor for Simon Fraser Universiy's Continuing Studies online Restorative Justice Certificate Program and was an adjunct professor at Florida Atlantic University where she taught a course in Educational Assessment. She has published several peer-reviewed book chapters and articles on restorative justice and correctional education and has presented internationally at conferences sponsored by the National Association for Community & Restorative Justice (NACRJ), Restorative Practices International (RPI), American Evaluation Association (AEA), the Canadian Evaluation Society (CES), Visitor Studies Association (VSA), and the International Conference on Conflict Resolution in Education (CRE).
As a consultant, Martha assists non-profit, cultural, community-based, educational, and
correctional organizations with program design, readiness assessments, strategic planning,
student assessments, monitoring implementation, and defining and measuring program
outcomes.

Introduction to Restorative Justice - PTI 571t

Dana Coles began her time with Key Bridge as a volunteer facilitator in 2014.  She has been a director of the Community Conferencing Program (CCP) since the summer of 2015.  Her skills in management, organization, and marketing, as well as her training as a lawyer and mediator all culminate in her drive to provide high-quality facilitations to community conferencing participants.  Dana uses her creative nature to develop fun and interactive trainings to enhance the facilitation skills of CCP’s volunteers. She is committed to expanding the web of restorative processes in Maryland and building a network of restorative practitioners throughout the state and beyond. Dana has an undergraduate degree in Sociology from Bowie State University, a law degree from Roger Williams University School of Law, and is a member of the Maryland Bar. 

Faith Communities and Racial Justice - PTI 685 

Faith Communities and Racial Justice - PTI 685

Dr. Tobin Miller Shearer is a History Professor and director of African-American Studies at the University of Montana. He is the author of several books including Set Free: A Journey Toward Solidarity Against Racism (with Iris DeLeon-Hartshorn and Regina Shants Stoltzfus) (2001), Daily Demonstrators: The Civil Rights Movement in Mennonite Homes & Sanctuaries (2010), and his newest work, Two Weeks Every Summer: Fresh Air Children and the Problem of Race in America (2017). In 1995, he and Regina Shands Stoltzfus founded the Damascus Road anti-racism process - now Roots of Justice - which worked with dozens of faith-based groups across the country. He also serves as the executive director of Widerstand Consulting, an anti-racism training, consulting, and auditing group that re-invests at least fifty percent of its net income in BIPOC-led racial justice groups. Widerstand is currently working with more than fifty libraries, congregations, and nonprofits in the U.S. and Canada.

 

Sidney Morgan was born and raised in Southern California and moved to Portland, Or. April of 2000. Sidney began her work with youth, as a Youth Pastor in Southern California and has been working with youth for over 20 years. Sidney has been working in Restorative Justice work for 15 years. She first began her Restorative Justice journey in Juvenile Justice with Multnomah County Juvenile Justice department in Portland Oregon. In her time with Multnomah County she worked in several positions that involved Restorative justice work. At the same time, she became certified in Conflict Mediation and has facilitated on-going mediations with families, neighborhood and corporation mediations.

Sidney always found ways to incorporate relationship building with the youth she worked with, and through that developed a garden program that is still “growing strong,” in the Multnomah County Juvenile department. The Hands of Wonder garden program, gives youth basic job-skills that teach them how to grow, care for and sell organic produce.

Sidney continued her work in Restorative Justice and Race Equity for Portland Public Schools as the District Restorative Justice Coordinator. Sidney trained coached and supported school staff throughout the district in building in Restorative Justice Practices, as part of their school climate work. Sidney embarked on a new space in 2018, as she currently works for the Center for Equity and Inclusion.

CEI’s mission of transforming the places where we work and live, tied to her purpose of seeing racial healing through restorative justice practices. Sidney is working with organizations in public and private sector, and from all systems (Education, Philanthropy, Education, Health, Government, Non-Profit, Corporate). As a facilitator and executive coach, Sidney works with organizations to “examine the quality of our consciousness” while supporting an internal look into the organizations to address Diversity, Equity and Inclusion work. Sidney believes this work is not a sprint but a marathon, and this work takes time and needs healing.

Sidney also owns a consulting firm called Red Sea Road Consulting, where she works on special projects using Restorative work from around the country. Sidney is an adjunct professor at Lewis and Clark University, in their graduate school of education, teaching 2 courses on Restorative Justice for educators. Sidney is a current student with CJP, earning her MA in Restorative Justice, and is set to graduate in Spring of 2021. Sidney resides in Vancouver Washington, with her husband and three children.

Introduction to Restorative Justice - PTI 571t

Kajungu Mturi is a graduate of EMU’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. Originally from Tanzania, East Africa, he worked in Zambia with Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) under the Brethren In Christ (BIC) Church as a Peace Education Coordinator from 2013-2016. He coordinated Peace Clubs in 12 BIC schools and trained church leaders to address issues of gender-based violence and conflict transformation in more than 100 BIC churches in Zambia. He also worked with Prison Fellowship in Zambia on education and coordinating peace clubs for inmates and prison officers. Currently, he is working with Harrisonburg City Public School as a families outreach especially for the refugees’ families. In addition, he facilitates workshops on domestic violence and trauma healing with the Congolese community who live in Harrisonburg.

Designing Powerful Solutions With(In) Community - PTI 686 

Bridget Mullins is a process designer, facilitator, artist, and independent consultant serving justice and equity-focused nonprofit organizations, community groups, and higher ed institutions. She specializes in helping teams unleash their creative, collaborative, and innovative capacity and is known for her engaging and (seriously) playful facilitation style. Her practice is infused with embodied and creative techniques from over a decade of experience with applied theatre, improvisation, and vocal performance. She enjoys experimenting with simple interaction structures to design engaging and effective processes for dialogue, strategic planning, person-centered organizational change, and collaborative learning, both in person and online. Before founding her own consulting practice, Bridget worked for 8+ years facilitating experiential learning programs for youth and young adults in partnership with U.S. and internationally-based NGOs. She has worked in more than 10 countries, particularly in Central and South America. These powerful and complex experiences fueled her passion for distributive and participatory approaches to dialogue and change-making and led her to complexity science and Liberating Structures, essential elements of her practice. 

Bridget doubles as an actor with Pittsburgh Playback Theatre, Engagement Instigator with CreativeMornings/Pittsburgh, and occasional designer of zines. She loves zipping around on her bike, staying curious, and developing authentic relationships.

B.A. in Peace Studies and Music from the University of Notre Dame and M.A. from the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University.

 Dr. Lisa Schirch is North American Research Director for the Toda Peace Institute where she directs a research program on “Social Media, Technology, and Peacebuilding.” She is a formal collaborator with the Stanford Peace Innovation Lab and the Alliance for Peacebuilding and holds official advisory role with the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund in Geneva. A former Fulbright Fellow in East and West Africa, Schirch works alongside local colleagues in over 20 countries and on racial justice, Indigenous rights and the media in North America. Dr. Schirch has written ten books including an edited volume on The Ecology of Violent Extremism.

Carolyn Stauffer teaches in the Organizational Leadership Studies program at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU). Dr. Stauffer lived and worked in southern Africa for 16 years and the Middle East for 17 years.  She holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, where she was a development specialist focusing on capacity building, leadership enhancement and gender-sensitive humanitarian interventions. During her time in South Africa, Stauffer worked with community-based NGOs as well as blue-chip companies facilitating regional

workshops in Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Uganda. Over the past decade Stauffer has taught in three EMU graduate programs and has won grants and contracts to conduct training in Fiji, Japan, Kenya, New Zealand, and Ireland. Stauffer chaired the university’s Humanitarian Action task force and was a member of the local chapter of UNESCO’s Education for Sustainable Development initiative.

Stauffer earned an M.A. in Public Administration from Virginia Commonwealth University, where she started developing her research interests in intimate partner violence and trauma resilience through strengths-based approaches. As a veteran in cross-cultural settings, Stauffer is an agile educator who uses holistic pedagogies to facilitate personal and structural transformation.