5 minute read
9 Featured podcast guests
In 2016, Rotary District (#5330)Governor Rudy Westervelt launched a Peace Conference with 100 world speakers. Barbara Gaughen-Muller was invited to help with the conference and decided to interview the speakers, asking each of them two primary questions: How do you define peace?
What are you doing to create peace?
Barbara spent weeks interviewing the peace builders. Those conversations sparked an explosion of solutions, insights and actions. She fell in love with meeting leaders and understanding more about them and their actions and began to think about how to continue the process.
Her background of coauthoring Revolutionary Conversations, led to the idea of spreading ideas about world peace through an ongoing series of conversations with world peace builders and building a growing treasure trove of insights and wisdom from peace leaders.
Dr. Dorothy “Dot” Maver, educator, peacebuilder, and keynote speaker
Dr. Todd C. “Bowtie” Jenkins, Jr., Honored Rotarian, Corporate DEI Leader and Speaker
Dot's work revolves around cooperation on behalf of the common good, focusing on applied peace building utilizing a shared responsibility and shared leadership model. Her extensive background as a peace builder includes the National Peace Academy USA, Global Alliance for Ministries and Infrastructures of Peace, The Peace Alliance, campaigning for a US Department of Peace, and managing the presidential campaign for Dennis Kucinich in 2004.
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Bowtie is the Founder and CEO of Bowtie Leadership and Development, Inc., a global leadership management training and coaching firm with a focus on bringing diverse people together to increase individual or organizational productivity and performance. His enthusiasm is contageous as he explains the intersection of peace and his Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) work.
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Kerri Murray, President, Shelter Box USA 2022 Peace Prize winner
Stanley Harsha, Diplomat, Peacebuilder Conflicts can be Resolved
Tezikiah Gabriel, Director Pathways to Peace Personal Peace Creates Peace for Our World
Kerri Murray serves as President of the global disaster relief charity, ShelterBox USA, which has responded to world emergencies for 21 years, serving in 300 emergencies, in 107 countries, providing shelter relief to over 2.2 million people.Shelter Box USA won the UNA Santa Barbara Peace Prize for 2022. She is also a member of the Montecito Rotary Club and served for six years as Board President for GIRLS ROCK Santa Barbara.
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Stanley, former US diplomat for over 30 Years and served as a State Department advisor to Secretary Clinton. He is the author of the critically acclaimed book, Like the Moon and the Sun which compares Indonesian and American societies. He now focuses on the causes of societal conflict and explains how individuals can play a role in ending conflicts.
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Tezikiah is the Executive Director of Pathways To Peace, a UN Peace Messenger Organization, in consultation with ECOSOC. Tez works with mission-based organizations to create relevant, viable, and sustainable organizations and communities that affect real and positive change in our world. She is also an ordained minister who conducts inter-faith and intercultural ceremonies.
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Dr. Ann Frisch, Rotarian, 2017 Rotary UN People of Action Peace Champion Award
Ann is a retired professor and life-time peace builder, currently focused on eliminating nuclear weapons through her role as the Chair of the Rotary Action Group for Peace Subcommittee on Nuclear Weapons Education. In 2017, she received the Rotary UN People of Action Peace Champion Award, for articulating the work of Nonviolent Peaceforce and the practice of unarmed civilian protection.
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Richard Denton, MD, Environmentalist, Rotary Peace Chair, Physicians for Global Survival
Richard is a retired medical doctor and professor advocating for personal health and the health of our environment. He has served as president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, Physicians for Global Survival. and as the North American co-chair for International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. A long-time Rotarian, Richard has served many roles including medical volunteering and study groups in several countries.
Eric was an UN-sponsored election observer at President Mandela’s election and coordinated the International Monitoring Project of the South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
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Eric Sirotkin, internationally recognized speaker, author, activist, mediator and lawyer
Since then, he developed Non-violent Advocacy to model a different approach to conflict based upon the recognition that we are all bound together in what Dr. King called our “inescapable network
of mutuality.”
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Thomas Carlisi, Empowering Peace Builders, Non Violent Communications and 20 years in Rotary
Tom focuses on teaching Non-Violent Communication to Rotarians and youth groups. He created an online learning series titled, "Empowering Peacebuilders” in collaboration with the Rotary Action Group for Peace. The program incorporates Rotary's 4-Way Test. He also developed a program for middle schoolers titled, "Young Peacebuilders."
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Dave Rice, President Orange County United Nations Association & Local 2030
Paula Garb, Professor, Peacebuider in conflict zones
Dave introduced California to the United Nations 2030 Agenda for the Sustainable Development Goals. He fosters the program of 17 goals, called Local 2030, in Orange County where he promotes collaboration with businesses, NGO’s and elected officials in order to better understand how our world’s future depends on working together. He is also a member of the Special Task Force on Nuclear Waste at the San Onofre Nuclear Plant.
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“This year, we need an avalanche of action …”
Paula is the co-founder of the Center for Citizen Peacebuilding and for 20 years was a co-director. Since 1994, she has facilitated citizen dialogues and taught peaceful problem-solving skills in conflict zones in South Caucasus and the Middle East.
She focuses on the role of women to prevent war before it starts and has a personal connection to the war in Ukraine as her family and grandchildren live in Russia.
