Empower Peace launched the Women2Women International Leadership Conference in 2006. On August 27, 2006 the conference kicked-off with 68 young women from 10 different countries. The Conference featured workshops on leadership development, conflict resolution, negotiation, community building, understanding the media, social networking and global human rights.

 

The 2006 W2W Conference featured varied speakers from all over the world. Workshops included the Status of Women Around the World, the Art of Negotiation and a workshop on media.

 

To see the complete schedule please click here.

 

To access the speaker bios, please click on each of the conference days. The bios will appear under each tab.

 

To download a complete copy of the bios, please click here.

Margaret K. McKenna

President, Lesley University

 

Margaret A. McKenna is the President of Lesley University, a position she has held since 1985.  President McKenna oversees a budget of $100 million dollars and a student body of 13,000.  The institution prepares women and men for professional careers in education, human services, management, and the arts.  It has a national presence and reputation in education, particularly teacher education, and the growing field of technology in education.  It is the largest provider of graduate education to classroom teachers in the U.S., and is the ninth-leading provider of master’s degrees in the U.S.

 

Prior to her appointment at Lesley, Margaret McKenna served as Director of the Bunting Institute and Vice President at Radcliffe College, as White House Deputy Counsel to President Jimmy Carter, and as a Deputy Under Secretary in the U.S. Department of Education.  Prior to her government service, Dr. McKenna served as Executive Director of the International Association of Human Rights Organizations and as a trial attorney with the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

 

President McKenna is serving a second term on the Board of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, is Board Chair of the Cisco Learning Institute, and has recently become a board member of the Teacher Education Accreditation Council.   She also serves on Dominion Resources, Inc.’s Board of Directors.  Additionally, she is a director on numerous non-profit boards, the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, the Datatel Scholars Foundation, and The Princeton Review.  Until January 2004, she was Board Chair for the Council of Independent Colleges and this January her term as an Executive Committee Member of the Board of American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education came to an end.   She also served on The American Council on Education’s President’s Task Force on Teacher Education.  She is the recipient of six honorary degrees and of numerous awards, including the Lelia J. Robinson Award from the Women’s Bar Association of Massachusetts and the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, Pinnacle Award for Lifetime Achievement

 

The Art of Negotiation

 

Susan Hackley

Managing Director, Harvard Law School Programon Negotiation

 

Susan Hackley is managing director of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School (PON), a world-renowned university consortium dedicated to developing rigorous scholarship and a deep understanding of negotiation practice.  She oversees all operations, including PON’s interdisciplinary activities, research projects, education programs, and public events.  She also manages the publication of a variety of teaching materials, including the quarterly Negotiation Journal and the monthly Negotiation Newsletter, which is co-produced with Harvard Business School Publishing.  In addition to her management responsibilities, Hackley has taught negotiation seminars in Hong Kong, Bratislava, Barcelona, and Rome.  Before joining PON, she worked in communications, public service, and politics.  She also co-founded an Internet company, an e-philanthropy site dedicated to raising money for nonprofit enterprises and helping people connect to causes they care about.  Hackley has a Master’s in Public Administration from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and she serves on the board of directors of the Alliance for Peace Building.

 

Building A Career

 

Christine B. Sullivan

Executive Director, Salem Enterprise Center at Salem State College 

 

Christine Sullivan is Executive Director of the Enterprise Center at Salem State College—a small business incubator and growth center serving business at all stages of development on the North Shore.  Ms Sullivan is also the founder and Chairman of Hawthorne Associates, an 18-year-old marketing, advertising and public relations firm serving clients in the US and internationally.

 

Prior to founding Hawthorne Associates,  Ms Sullivan served as Massachusetts Secretary of Consumer Affairs and Chief of Staff in a Congressional office in Washington, DC.  She also Chaired the Communications Department at Endicott College.

 

Currently she serves on the Salem Redevelopment Authority, the Salem Planning Board, and Board of the Salem Chamber of Commerce and is a Director of Beverly Cooperative Bank.

 

Dorothy Orszulak, Executive Coach

 

Dorothy Orszulak is an executive, as well as a career coach who partners with individuals seeking to make changes in their personal and professional lives. She works with a diverse set of clients to discover and explore their professional calling and to experience the powerful results of choosing balance and fulfillment. A Magna Cum Laude graduate of Hofstra University and a graduate of The Coaching Training Institute, she is an international leader in the coaching profession, in addition to having an established background in business development.

 

Ms. Orszulak spent 12 years in the strategic management consulting profession at Deloitte Consulting and The Futures Group where she developed and implemented strategic management and competitive intelligence capabilities for CEOs and senior executive clients. She led the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) chapter in Hartford, CT, and currently speaks about connectoring, or the art of building genuine connections and on-going relationships for mutual benefits, to groups around the country. She is an honorary member in Stellar Connections, a premier Denver-based women’s “connectoring” organization. Today she is the Associate Director of the International Business Program at The Fletcher School/Tufts University, where she is able to build relationships with Fortune 500 executives, as well as “high potential” graduate students.

 

Sister Lena Deevy, Executive Director, Boston Irish Immigrant Center

Sister Lena Deevy is the Executive Director of the Boston Irish Immigration Center and has been a member of an international order of Catholic women, the Little Sisters of the Assumption, for over thirty years. Her unique ability to organize public works programs became her trademark early on. She specialized in creating job centers, drug abuse programs, playgroups for children, and home care service centers. Although she has formal degrees in nursing and education, she proclaims that she is self-taught and that many of her projects were created because she saw a need that she felt had to be met. Her twenty plus years of experience in community organizing of poor neighborhoods in Ireland as well as fighting for basic human rights for victims of discrimination led her to pursue a Master's degree from the Harvard School of Education in Boston. Upon completion of her degree, she was offered the opportunity to take part in a research project into undocumented Irish immigrants. There she learned firsthand of the racial injustice and difficulties facing all immigrants.

 

Many international solidarity efforts have benefited from Sr. Deevy's involvement including efforts supporting justice and peace in Nicaragua, El Salvador, South Africa and the Philippines. Since coming to Boston, she has been involved with the Haitian Solidarity Movement and PeaceWatch Ireland. She served as the Chairperson of the National Coalition of Irish Immigrant Organizations from 1998 - 1999 and is currently serving as the Chair of the Governor's Advisory Council on Refugees and Immigrants. In addition, she serves as a member of the newly created Massachusetts Diversity Team and on the Department of Public Health's Refugee and Immigrant Health Advisory Council.  Among her several awards, Sr. Deevy was presented with the Isaac Hecker Award for Social Justice from the Paulist Center in 1996 and the Governor's New American Appreciation Award in 1999.

 

Melissa Ludtke

 

Melissa Ludtke grew up with sports. From her youth she was comfortable talking sports and could play   many of them as well. Born in 1951, the year her father began his teaching career at the University of     Massachusetts, Melissa was the first of five children. The family settled in Amherst where Melissa, her three sisters, and one brother attended public schools and participated in a variety of extracurricular sports. In junior high school, Melissa became a cheerleader but also played basketball. In high school,

she played the sport of the season: volleyball in the fall, basketball in the winter, and tennis in the Spring. The family summered on Cape Cod, in Hyannis Port, where Melissa sailed and played tennis. From their very early years, Melissa's father loaded the children in the family station wagon and took them to college games. Melissa recalled that he never made the assumption that any of his four girls would not want to watch a football game.

 

Continuing the tradition of her mother and grandmother, Melissa attended Wellesley College. She also spent a year at Mills College, and noted that her college credits were a "mishmash" from the University of Massachusetts summer school, Berkeley night school, Mills College, and Wellesley.  In September of 1974, Sports Illustrated hired Melissa as a researcher, a position she held for the next five years. Her first assignment was on the TV/radio column. Although she did not cover a specific sport, the assignment gave her the opportunity to research and report on many athletic events for a column that ran frequently.  Melissa started manually recording scores for the writers at Sports Illustrated and progressed to doing stories for a weekly column on baseball. She spent work and free time attending baseball games and getting to know those associated with the sport. Intrigued with baseball, she wanted to find some new and innovative ways to cover the game. Her work on the relationship between the catcher and home-plate umpire required considerable research and interviews, and was chosen as a feature story for the year's baseball issue.

 

As a woman, however, her work was hampered by her lack of access to players in the locker room. During the World's Series in 1977, when the New York Yankees played the Los Angeles Dodgers, she was initially granted permission to interview players in the locker room—when a majority of the Dodgers voted to admit her. But Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn quickly reversed the decision. Melissa and Time, Inc., publishers of Sports Illustrated, first tried to negotiate, and then filed a lawsuit against the commissioner, the president of the American League, and the mayor of New York. The lawsuit drew great media attention, and just before the World's Series the following September a federal judge—Constance Baker Motley, an African-American woman—ordered the Yankees to open the locker room to Melissa Ludtke and other women sportswriters. Meanwhile, professional basketball and hockey had already opened their locker rooms to women reporters voluntarily.  After a period as a freelance writer, she became a research reporter for Time magazine, as a general writer in the New York bureau. In 1985 Joseph P. Kennedy II, whom Melissa had known for years, asked her to return to Boston and handle issues for his forthcoming race for Congress. After his winning election, she joined Time's Boston bureau, where she covered children, family, women, and social policy. Her article, "Through the Eyes of Children," was a Time cover story in August 1988.

 

In 1991 Melissa Ludtke received a prestigious Nieman Fellowship to Harvard University and chose to leave Time. During this sabbatical, she continued to focus on children and families. Her year at Harvard ended just as Vice President Dan Quayle made his famous speech attacking the television character "Murphy Brown." This inspired her to seek a book contract for a proposal on unmarried motherhood. She continues to work on the book and is a visiting scholar at Radcliffe. She also works as an educational consultant for a coalition of twelve urban school districts around Boston.

Jeanne Shaheen

Director, Harvard Institute of Politics

 

Jeanne Shaheen  currently serves as the Director of Harvard's Institute of Politics (IOP) at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.  Her academic background has yielded a bachelor's degree in English from Shippingsburg University of Pennsylvania, as well as a master's degree from the University of Mississippi. There she taught high school until moving to New Hampshire in 1973, where she taught school and owned a small business.  In 1996, Shaheen was elected Governor of New Hampshire, becoming the state's first woman governor and the first Democrat elected governor in sixteen years.   As chief executive, she focused on education, health care, and the expansion of high-tech business in New Hampshire. From 2000-2001 Governor Shaheen chaired the Education Commission of the States, making early childhood education the priority of her chair's initiative.  She served three terms as governor, winning re-election in 1998 and 2000.  In 2002 she was narrowly defeated in her bid for the United States Senate.  After leaving office, Jeanne Shaheen served as a Senior Fellow at the IOP at the Kennedy School and at the Tufts University College of Citizenship and Public Service.  She also chaired the 2004 Presidential campaign for John Kerry.

 

Shannon O’Brien, CEO, Girl Scouts, Patriots’ Trail Council

 

After graduating from Yale University and Boston University School of Law, Shannon began her political career at age 26 as a state representative. Six years later, she was elected to the state senate. As State Treasurer and Receiver General of Massachusetts, the first woman to hold this statewide constitutional office, Shannon created the Money Conference for Women, which provided financial education seminars to over 8, 000 women; improved efficiency at the State Lottery and returned an additional hundred million dollars to the cities and towns of Massachusetts. As a legislator, she advocated for more accessible and affordable health care and greater economic opportunity, and she was nationally recognized for her strong record to protect children from abuse.

 

Shannon was appointed Chief Executive Officer of the Girl Scouts, Patriots' Trail Council in January 2005, where she is able to blend tradition with innovation and meet the needs of contemporary girls. At Girl Scouts, Patriots' Trail Council, Shannon is leading an organization that serves 23,000 girls in greater Boston, and she brings to Girl Scouts her entrepreneurial spirit and desire to make organizations she touches stronger and better.

 

Women in the Legislature

 

Sen. Joan Menard

Massachusetts State Senator

 

Massachusetts Senator Joan M Menard was elected to the senate in 1999, making her the state’s 25th woman to hold that office. She serves on the Senate Committee for Rules and Ethics, as well as the Committee for Public Safety and Homeland Security. Menard was first elected to public office as the House Representative from the 5th Bristol District in 1979- a position she held for 21 years. Senator Menard has a history of many firsts throughout the course of her career. In 1984, during her tenure as representative, she became the first woman to be appointed as the Majority Whip in the body’s 364-year history. She later became the first female chair of the State Democratic Party, in 1993, a position she held for seven years.  In 1998, Menard was elected president of the National Association of State Democratic Chairs. That same year saw her appointment as the vice-chairperson of the Democratic National Committee. She was also the first woman to chair the Senate Committee on Ethics and Rules, a position that was once held exclusively by the Senate President. Senator Menard was a featured speaker at the 2000 Democratic National Convention.

 

Senator Menard is an active member of the League of Women Voters; she also serves on the board of directors on the Katie Brown Fund. Prior to her political career, Senator Menard was an elementary school teacher. She served as the Director of Special Education in the Somerset School System from 1967 to 1978. Menard received a Bachelor of Science degree in Education, from Bridgewater State College and a Masters of Education from Boston University.

 

Representative Patricia Haddad

Massachusetts House of Representatives

 

Patricia Haddad graduated from Bridgewater State College where she received a Bachelor of Science degree in Physical Education. After graduating from Bridgewater State College, Rep. Haddad worked as a physical education instructor and girls' gymnastics coach at Somerset Middle School. Haddad coached and taught for 13 years, a time during which she got married and had 2 children. Haddad left the teaching world to spend more time on family but found it hard to stay removed from the world of education.

 

State Representative Haddad became involved with the senate by working in the House of Representatives to help get Representative Joan Menard elected to the house and then the senate. With a strong interest in education, Haddad began to work on her own campaign and became a State Representative and a Chairperson for the Committee on Education. Some of Rep. Haddad's Special Appointments include:  Special Committee on Local Aid, Legislative Commission on Public Housing, Special Task Force on the Economy and Workforce Development, Special Task Force on Medicaid, Council of State Governments/Eastern Region-Conference Committee on Energy and the Environment, House Chair, and the Commission on Early Education & Care.

 

Patricia Haddad represents the Fifth Bristol Section of Massachusetts and also holds many public offices in the town of Somerset; she is the Vice-Chair of both the Somerset Democratic Town Committee and the Somerset School Committee. Rep. Haddad also finds time to work with many local organizations, including the South Coast Business & Professional Women's Association and the Drug-Free Schools Advisory Council.

 

Senator Diane Wilkerson

Massachusetts State Senate

 

Senator Diane Wilkerson (D) holds a B.S. in Public Administration from American International College and a J.D. from Boston College Law School. In 1991, she became the first African American female to obtain a partnership in a major Boston law firm.  In 1993, she was sworn in as the first African American female to serve in the Massachusetts Senate and is currently the highest ranking Black elected official in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  A lifelong Democrat, Wilkerson was recently elected without opposition to her seventh term in the Massachusetts Senate.

 

She has received numerous honors and awards including 2004 Legislator of the Year by the Massachusetts Building Trades, 2004 Policymaker of the Year by the Associated Subcontractors of Massachusetts, 2004 Legislative Innovator Award by the Congressional Black Caucus, 2004 Legislator of the Year by the Massachusetts Municipal Association, 2004 Outstanding Legislator of the Year by the Massachusetts Silver hair Legislature, Environmental Health Leadership Award for 2004 by the Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow, 2004 Trailblazer of Color Award, 2004 ACORN Friend of The People Award and the 2004 Community Health Champion Award from Whittier Street Health Center. In addition to her duties as an elected official, Senator Wilkerson is the convener of the Annual 21st Century Black Massachusetts Conference. She is also co-chair of the Hynes Convention Center and Boston Common Parking Garage Legislative Commission.  Senator Wilkerson sits on the Steering Committee for the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under the Law, is a board member for Action for Boston Community Development (“ABCD”), and is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. and Morning Star Baptist Church.

 

In addition to her many speaking engagements, she has presented at national meetings, appeared on local news affiliates of CBS, NBC and ABC News, Urban Update, New England  Cable News, Crossfire, The Group and BET.

 

Michael Goldfarb

Senior Correspondent NPR

 

Michael Goldfarb is a senior correspondent on National Public Radio’s (NPR) Boston affiliate, WBUR’s documentary series Inside Out. As an extension of is work on Inside Out, Goldfarb recently published Ahmad’s War, Ahmad’s Peace, one of the New York Time’s Notable Books of 2005. Since joining WBUR in 1999, Goldfarb has reported in-depth features on the Iraq war, Revolutionary Islam, and the future of Jerusalem in the midst of a solution to conflicts in the Middle East. Goldfarb has overseen the production of award winning programs, such as “British Jihad” (2004 Overseas Press Club of America Lowell Thomas Award) and “Surviving Torture” (2001-2002 DuPont Columbia University Award). Goldfarb joined the NPR family in 1991 as a political correspondent covering the British Isles and diplomatic relations in Bosnia and Iraq, In 1993, he took time to travel throughout the American Midwest, resulting in the five-part Homeward Bound series for BBC World Service, which won the 1994 Sony Radio Award for Best Original Writing for Radio.  Goldfarb returned to the England to become NPR’s London Bureau Chief in 1996. Three years later Goldfarb became at Shorenstien Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Outside of the radio booth, Goldfarb has guest lectured at Cornell University and University of California. He can be seen on BBC News 24’s Dateline as a regular panelist on international affairs debate. Goldfarb holds a Bachelor of Arts from Antioch College.

 

 

Journalism – Media Coverage in the Middle East

 

Jane Christo

Broadcast Journalist

 

Jane Christo is affiliated with the Fletcher School’s Edward R. Murrow Center at Tufts University where she develops programs for journalist reporting in fledgling democracies and area of crisis.  Before joining the Fletcher School, Christo served as General Manager of WBUR from 1979 to 2004, elevating Public Radio from alternative broadcasting to a nationally recognized, respected and influential source of news and information. Under her leadership, WBUR has become a major influence in Boston broadcast news; introducing original, innovative and award winning programming such as Car Talk (1992 Peabody Award), The Connection, and Inside Out (2003 RFK Journalism Award). During Christo’s stewardship, WBUR’s fundraising capability rose from less than $1 million/year in 1979 to $19.2 million in 2003. In May 2000, Christo was honored with Public Radio’s highest honor: the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award.

 

Drawing from her extensive experience in journalism, Christo has taken various measures to develop journalists from areas of political development and conflict. From 1992 to 2004, she directed the International Training Project, a program aimed at addressing the day-to-day challenges that confront journalists from Eastern Europe. The program covered topics such as reporting on human trafficking and reporting in areas of conflict. Expanding upon previous programs, Christo established the Covering Conflict program in 2003. Covering Conflict provides intensive training for journalists who cover persistent conflict and ethnic tensions in their home territories. Christo received her Bachelors Degree in English Literature from Boston University. She currently resides in Brookline, MA with her husband.

 

Andrew Steele

BBC Correspondent

 

Andrew Steele embodies the true definition and spirit of modern day journalism. Throughout his career Andrew has traversed the globe while working for stalwart news companies covering the most breaking news stories, and often some of the most controversial and dangerous.

 

He started out on the local scene in Scotland working for the BBC in Edinburgh as a television news reporter before joining Reuters in 1984. Steele received his MA (honors) from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland studying modern languages.  Post academic study, Andrew spent many years in a variety of correspondent postings including Europe, Africa, Asia, and the United States covering stories anywhere from the Olympic Games to conflict in the Middle East. In 1997 he rejoined the BBC taking on editor positions for European News in Brussels and Middle Eastern News in Jerusalem. Steele is currently the editor for BBC America in Washington, tasked with overseeing the BBC’s largest operations outside of the United Kingdom.

 

Sarah Chayes

International Correspondent

 

Sarah Chayes graduated from Harvard University in 1984 where she earned the Radcliffe College History Prize for best senior thesis written by a woman. After graduation, Sarahj oined the Peace Corps and taught English voluntarily for two years in Morocco at a village high school. Upon her return she completed a Masters program in History and Middle Eastern studies at Harvard before going on to work as a reporter and researcher for the next few years at Boston area companies.

 

After covering political, social, and cultural developments in Paris as a free-lance journalist, she moved on to serve as the full time Paris Correspondent for National Public Radio. She earned the 1999 Foreign Press Club and Sigma Delta Chi awards along with other members of the NPR team for their coverage of the Kosovo crisis.

 

At the turn of the century she devoted her full time as a contract reporter for NPR covering the war on terrorism, focusing on the events in Afghanistan and the Kandahar region. She has been working there full time recently helping to rebuild the country from the ground up striving for non-violent democratic reform.

 

Experiential Conflict Resolution

 

Vivien Marcow-Speiser

Director, Internaitonal and Collaborative Programs, Lesley University

 

Vivien Marcow-Speiser is a Core Professor in Dance Therapy at Lesley University and the Director of International and Collaborative Programs. She received her Ph.D. from Union Institute, her Master's in Education from Lesley University, and her B.A. from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Vivien is a dance therapist and expressive arts educator. She has developed and implemented numerous arts based training programs throughout the U.S and Israel. As former founder and director of the Arts Institute Project in Israel, she has been influential in the development of Expressive Arts Therapy there. She has taught and lectured extensively throughout Scandinavia, Israel, South Africa and the United States. She has used the arts as a way of communicating across borders and across cultures and believes in the power of the arts to create the conditions for personal and social change and transformation.

 

Aziza Braithwaite Bey, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Lesley University

 

Aziza Braithwaite Bey is an international designer, curator, and educator who began her career as a designer and recording/performing artist in Europe.   After graduating with a certificate in Haute Couture from Le Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne in Paris, France, her costumes appeared in Carnival, filmed in Manchester, England, and were acclaimed by theater, casino and television viewers throughout Europe.

 

Aziza completed her Ph.D. at the Union Institute & University in Multicultural Education - Visual Culture.   She received her MA in Museum Studies from the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC where she was an Adjunct Assistant Professor 1990 - 1998 and a BFA in Merchandise Management from Pratt Institute.   She is currently Core Faculty in the Creative Arts & Learning Graduate Studies Dept. at Lesley University, and she conducts Multicultural Educational Workshops for grade school students, in public and private schools.

 

 

Dr. Julia Byers

Division Director, Expressive Therapies, Lesley University

 

Dr. Julia Byers  is the Division Director of Expressive Therapies at Lesley University and current Program Director of the PhD studies in Expressive Therapy. She has been teaching at Lesley for several years, and prior to that was the Coordinator of Art Therapy Graduate Studies at Concordia University.

 

Gene Diaz

Professor of Research Methods, Lesley University

 

Gene Diaz teaches research methods for interculturalists and teachers in the Graduate School of Arts   and Social Sciences at Lesley.  As a visual artist she incorporates the arts into research, and research into the arts. A former Fulbright scholar in Colombia, South America, Gene has written about, and presented on, the integration of the arts into teaching and learning, most recently at the UNESCO World Conference on Arts Education in Lisbon, Portugal. She co-edited Teaching for Aesthetic Experience: The Art of Learning, with Martha McKenna, in 2004.

 

Lisa Donovan Ph.D.

Director, Creative Arts in Learning Division, Lesley University

 

Lisa Donovan PhD, Assistant Professor, is currently the Director of the Creative Arts in Learning Division at Lesley University.  She is a theater artist, educator, and arts-based researcher. She has a broad range of experience working as an arts educator and arts administrator in a variety of arts organizations. She teaches Drama and Critical Literacy, and a variety of courses in arts integration in Lesley University's Integrated Teaching through the Arts program.  Her research focuses on how theater education can develop a sense of voice and identity in adolescents. She has used theater as a tool for social change creating original scripts based on issues of interest to various communities.

 

 

Prilly Sanville

Associate Professor, Lesley University

 

Prilly Sanville, PhD, Associate Professor, received her PhD from the Union Institute in Multicultural Education with a focus on the inter-face of culture and learning style theory. Prilly’s BA was in Speech and Theatre with a minor in Education from the University of Denver, CO. She loves teaching all ages. She was an elementary school teacher for fifteen years (1st, 2nd, 3rd grade) and a supervisor of a drama/theatre program for another 15 years in the public schools (K-12). Her expertise lies in drama, dance and group facilitation, particularly in dealing with diverse perspectives and backgrounds. Her passion is directed toward social justice through the arts, curriculum integration and the dialogue that can occur in groups cross-culturally and multi-culturally. She has taught in Russia, Israel, British Columbia and Quebec. Present courses she is teaching are: Drama and Critical Literacy, Arts Approach to Multicultural Education, Arts Approach to Diversity and Reflective Practice, Creative Movement: Kinesthetic learning Across the Curriculum, Educator Inquiry: Thesis Project and Cultures of Collaboration Symposium. She is also a faculty mentor and student advisor in the Individually Designed Program in Creative Arts at Lesley University.

 

Danielle Georges

MFA Assistant professor

 

Danielle Georges is a writer, with teaching interest in creative writing, literature, history, and education. Her research areas and interests include contemporary American poetry, post-colonial literature, Caribbean literature, poetics, translation, history, historiography, and popular culture. She has an MFA from New York University, and a first book of poems, Maroon, was published in 2001. She has had essays, translations, and other work appear in anthologies, literary journals, and newspapers. She currently teaches the following courses: The Language of Poetry, Writing Poetry with Children, Arts and Education: History and Philosophy, and Issues in Contemporary Education.

 

 

Motherblood

 

Saphira Linden

 

Saphira Linden, MA, RDT/BCT is the Artistic Director of award-winning, Omega Theater in Boston, and Director of the Omega Transpersonal Drama Therapy Certificate Program. She is also a senior Sufi Meditation Teacher and clergy in the Sufi Order International.

 

Susan Nisenbaum

 

Susan Nisenbaum Becker, MA, RDT, an actor, playwright, poet, teacher and consultant, is the co- director of the New England region's Herring Run ArtsFest and a psychotherapist in private practice with special interest in the interface of psychology and spirituality.