Sarah Jefferson Melanie Kawano Romina Laouri Gayle Tzemach Lemmon Nick Martin Will Okumu Priya Parker Roshan Paul Rebecca Sargent Rachel Tobias
Sarah Jefferson works with Ashoka's Global Venture and Communications teams and is now helping to grow Ashoka's recently launched Peace and Social Entrepreneurship Initiative. She completed her Master’s degree at the University of Edinburgh in the areas of international human rights law and international criminal law. To pursue her interest in peacebuilding she has volunteered with Amnesty International’s International Justice Program and has worked as an editor for two international law journals, Eyes on the International Criminal Court and the Interdisciplinary Journal of Human Rights Law. One of her major areas of research is how to more fully incorporate peacebuilding and conflict resolution into the bottom line of corporations. She is also interested in the role that social entrepreneurship plays in societies that have recently experienced mass atrocities and grave human right abuses.
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Melanie Kawano is the Program Manager of the BEFORE Project: Action to Prevention Political Violence. Prior to joining BEFORE in 2008, Melanie taught at a Northern Vietnamese university and worked at the International Career Advancement Program, the Center for China-US Cooperation, IFES, and the American Red Cross national headquarters. Born and raised in Hawai’i, she studied French, Japanese, Vietnamese, Twi, Fanti, the piano, the ukulele and the harp. Melanie attended Scripps College, receiving a BA in Psychology and International and Intercultural Studies, and the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, obtaining a MA in Political Theory and Conflict Resolution. Active in community involvement, Melanie currently serves as the Vice-President on the Board of the International Career Advancement Association.
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Romina joined Ashoka in 2005 and she works for Ashoka’s Youth Venture primarily working to support and create a strong global movement of young changemakers around the world. She completed her undergraduate work at Macalester College (MN) and holds an MA in International Relations from the University of Chicago. She is an active member of the peace movement in Cyprus and is a co-founder of a youth group in Cyprus that recognizes the importance of youth participation in the Cyprus conflict. She is also serves as a Board Member to the Cyprus Neuroscience and Technology Institute (CNTI) and has done extensive work as well as published around the use of Structured Dialogic Design Process (SDDP) approach for a variety of co-laboratories in Cyprus. When not work Romina enjoys reading, writing, swimming, dancing, cooking, travelling and throwing pottery.
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Gayle served as a journalist for nearly ten years covering presidential politics as a producer with the ABC News Political Unit and "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." Since 2005, she has been researching women entrepreneurs starting small and medium-sized businesses in post-conflict economies such as Afghanistan, Bosnia and Rwanda. Her work on entrepreneurs in these countries has been published by The Financial Times, The International Herald Tribune/New York Times Global Edition, and The Christian Science Monitor, as well as The World Bank group, Harvard Business School, National Public Radio, and the Huffington Post. Now based in Southern California, Gayle works in financial services for the investment management firm PIMCO and is currently working on a book scheduled for 2010 publication by HarperCollins about a young Afghan entrepreneur whose business supported her family and her community during the Taliban years. Gayle received her Bachelors of Journalism from the University of Missouri and her Masters in Business Administration from Harvard Business School, where she received the 2006 Dean's Award for her work on women's entrepreneurship.
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Nick Martin is the Executive Director of the US Association for the University for Peace (UPEACE/US) where he has helped to create two innovative conflict transformation programs for elementary and middle school students: DCPEACE and PeaceRooms. Nick was recently selected as an International Youth Foundation Global Fellow and a Washington DC Humanities Council Scholar for his leadership in launching the programs and his track record as a young social entrepreneur. Nick received his B.A. from Swarthmore College and his M.A. in Peace Education from the United Nations mandated University for Peace (UPEACE). He is passionate about ideas and projects that connect the fields of education, peacebuilding, technology, and global citizenship, and is excited to be contributing to this conversation.
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From September 2007 to November 2009, Willis worked as a Research Assistant at the Young Women’s Christian Association of Kenya in Nairobi. During his time at the YWCA of Kenya Willis worked in a number of community development programs such as the Post Election, Gender and Peace Building Program which was designed to create peaceful reconciliation among Kenyan communities in the aftermath of post election violence in Kenya in December 2007. Willis graduated from the University of Nairobi in December 2006 with a Bachelors of Arts degree in Political Science and Sociology. He has previously worked with the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Nairobi as a Student Researcher. After graduation Willis worked briefly with the Legal Resources Foundation Trust as a Research Assistant in Butere-Mumias district in Western Kenya. In December 2009, Willis founded Awasi Multi Youth Group, a community based organization that contributes to community development through the mobilization of youth to participate in development projects in the Nyando district.
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Priya Parker has worked in conflict resolution, civic engagement and public policy in the United States, India, the Middle East and Africa. She has conducted more than 200 workshops around the world to train facilitators of post-conflict dialogue. She was the Program Director for the Sustained Dialogue Campus Network and senior associate at the International Institute for Sustained Dialogue. From 2005 to 2008, she lived in India, where she was a consultant on dialogue to the Dalai Lama’s Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace program and a visiting faculty member at Lady Sri Ram College. From 2006 to 2008, she was a policy analyst at Parliamentary Research Service, founded by an Ashoka fellow, where she worked to advise the Indian Parliament on the substance and implications of legislative bills. Priya spent the summer of 2009 as an intern in the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation. She received her B.A. in Political and Social Thought at the University of Virginia and is currently pursuing an MBA at MIT Sloan and a Master in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, where she is, among other things, exploring the link between social entrepreneurship and peace-building.
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From 2003-2006, Roshan helped launch Ashoka’s Youth Venture program in India. In 2006, he spent 3 months in India’s conflict-stricken northeast region, gathering material for a monthly column in a leading Indian magazine on bridging the conflict divide between the northeast and mainland India. In 2008, he rejoined Ashoka to help manage the global Ashoka Fellow selection process and expansion to new countries and areas of work. He also runs Ashoka's Fellow Security program. Originally from Bangalore,India, Roshan has a BA in International Relations from Davidson College and a Master’s in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School with a focus on peacebuilding and disaster response. He is especially interested in how to enable social entreprneurship in the hardest parts of the world.
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Rebecca has been a student of peace and conflict for most of the past decade across several disciplines and programs with a goal of life-long education. She has created and wrote for her blog A Peace of Conflict on issues of human rights over the past year. Rebecca focuses her research on the connection between the extraction of natural resources and manifestations of conflict, specifically those in the DR Congo. She is also very passionate about sustainable living and encouraging sustainable housing in her local real estate market. Rebecca will be returning to West Africa in May of 2010 to work and continue research.
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Rachel is a junior at the University of Southern California studying International Relations and Entrepreneurship. Focusing on development in the Middle East and Africa, she is spending the Fall semester of 2009 in Cairo. As summer associate for Ashoka’s Global Venture and Fellowship program, she became very familiar with the stories and achievements of Ashoka Fellows. Rachel will report live from Cairo, while trying her best to bring peace to the Middle East!
