Core Faculty and Board of Advisors

Chandra Banks, Ed.M.

Chandra is currently serving as the District Wide Conflict Mediator for Cambridge Public Schools in Cambridge, Massachusetts and teaching courses in Early Childhood Education at Springfield College's School of Human Services - Boston Campus. She holds a Master's degree in Education with a focus on Risk Prevention and Counseling form the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Chandra holds a BA in English with a minor in Education from Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. As a native of Cambridge, Chandra has spent the past twenty years working to serve youth through employment with the Public School Systems in Cambridge, Topeka, KS, and Atlanta, GA. Here in Massachusetts, Ms. Banks has held positions with several child serving agencies such as the Department of Social Services, the Department of Human Service Programs (Camb.), MIT, Roxbury Community College, and most recently the Benjamin Banneker Charter Public School.

	Linda Brion Meisels, Ph.D. Linda teaches courses in special education, psychologyand social justice at Lesley University. Originally a mid-Westerner, she came to Boston for graduate study and stayed to direct The Walker School, a residential school for troubled youth. Linda helped to begin Lesley's initiative in community service. She has a special interest in campus-community collaboration and enjoys the interpersonal and experiential aspects of service learning. Linda is co-chair of the University's Diversity Council and one of the founding members of the Peaceable Schools and Communities Board. She has enjoyed being a part of the Peaceable Schools and Communities Summer Institute since it began.
	Steven Brion Meisels, Ph.D. Steven Brion-Meisels is Director of the Peace Games Institute, a Founding Board member of Peaceable Schools and Communities at Lesley University and a Field Supervisor at The Harvard Graduate School of Education. Peace Games is a national non-profit organization, based in Boston that supports young people as peacemakers. For the past 30 years, he has worked in and around schools, where his focus has been to help schools become places where students, staff, and families can create and sustain peaceable communities. He has been a classroom teacher, administrator, consultant, curriculum writer and university lecturer. He is married with two daughters, and his family is an important source of inspiration, learning and growth that fuels his commitment to social justice.
	Ora Grodsky, Ed.M. Ora Grodsky, is an independent consultant providing training and organizational development services to schools, local government, and non-profit organizations with a focus on issues of social justice, including conflict transformation, strategic planning, visioning, and coaching. She is often called in to work with organizations in transition, those looking to work and learn together across difference, and those looking to improve how they do their work. She holds a Master's degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, is a former academic dean and faculty member at the New England School of Acupuncture, and has over 20 years of experience working in the non-profit sector. She is a member of the Leadership Team with Peaceable Schools and Communities at Lesley University and serves on the Board of Directors at The City School.
	Kristen Handricken, Ed.M. Kristen Handricken has worked in the education, mental health, and human service fields for the past 18 years in a variety of roles that span direct service provision, program coordination, administration, training and consultation. She holds a Specialized Masters in the development of socio-educational partnerships for equity and inclusion and has founded and developed youth and family serving programs and initiatives Quincy, Weymouth, Brockton and Cambridge and Lowell. Kristen has served as Director of Open Circle and as Co-Director of the Middle Grades Prevention Program for the Cambridge Public Schools, Kristen coordinated the system-wide integration and evaluation of social and emotional learning services for middle school students in Cambridge. Currently, as a consultant, trainer, and facilitator she dedicates herself to enhancing the power of organizations to better meet the needs of adults and children of all racial heritages, gender identities and economic backgrounds. In her personal life, she co-parents five children ages 4 -12 and spends every available moment working to end racism, sexism, classism, ableism, ageism, and every other "ism" of oppression.
	Catherine B. Hoffman Peaceable Schools educator, intergenerational leadership developer, Cambridge-Bethlehem People-to-People project founder, Catherine supports social and community movements, which embody in the present the kind of changes they are trying to make for the future. As director for the Cambridge Peace Commission for 20 years she worked to make connections between local concerns of social justice with global peace-making efforts through city resolutions, community organizing, sister city relationships, anti-violence work and peace education. She is a neighborhood activist, nonviolence trainer advocate, social change worker and restorative justice circle keeper who continues to believe in the work on humanity and human possibility in the face of oppression.
	Ulric Johnson, Ph.D. Ulric Johnson is the founder and director of Teens Advocating a Global Vision (Dorchester, MA) which supports multi-racial, predominantly low-income youth in becoming leaders and organizers for non-violent social justice through community activism and social change leadership education. Johnson is also the founder and director of Cross-Cultural Consultation, faculty at Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a member of Peaceable Schools and Communities Advisory Board. Johnson is also co-founder/Director of Transformative Leadership Consultations/Counseling (TLC), and Campus Director of the Boston campus of Springfield College School of Human Services.
	Joyce Johnson-Shabazz Ms. Shabazz is a certified family and community mediator with 28 years of experience. She is an independent consultant who designs, develops and delivers workshops on diversity and conflict resolution. As a lead trainer for an international diversity firm, Ms. Shabazz facilitates international five-day institutes twice a year in the nation's capitol. She is a counselor of Life Skills Dynamics and Cross Race Adoption in private practice. She directs a non-profit subsidiary of the International Diversity Forum, which specializes in leadership development for Black and African Heritage People. Ms. Shabazz consults to numerous school systems and organizations in the private and public sectors. As an educator, she has worked in support of the Peaceable Schools and Communities for the past seven years and has taught in Lesley University's Conflict Resolution and Peaceable Schools Master's Program.
	J. Curtis Jones, M.A. Curtis is co-founder of the Cooperative Artists Institute and Tribal Rhythms Program, and Director of The Center for the Transformation Of School Culture®. He is the co-creator of the Tribal Rhythms Program® and a developer and director of The Partnership to Achieve Whole-School Change: a partnership of four schools and five agencies providing transformational services. Curtis is also a writer, storyteller, actor, musician, educator, and former classroom teacher. He has an M.A. in Psychology and a B.S. in Social Science/Education.
	Sharon Lozada Sharon has 15 years of teaching experience and currently devotes her time to teaching English at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School in Cambridge, MA. In the classroom, she seeks to apply the essential principles of Peaceable Schools and Communities in order to create positive classroom communities in which all students feel engaged and welcome to share their true selves. Sharon also dedicates her time to mentoring new teachers and leading a SEED (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity) Group for her colleagues. When she isn't teaching, she dedicates her time to peace and justice work through restorative justice, peer mediation, and cultural diversity initiatives.
	Tania M. Mireles Tania grew up in a warm Mexican family in Arizona, and has been living in the Boston are since 1995. Since living an working in El Salvador for 5 1/2 years during the civil war and peace negotiation process, Tania has been focusing her work on the links between issues of social injustice and interpersonal violence. Tania is a graduate of Lesley University's Conflict Resolution and Peaceable Schools Master's Program. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Brandeis University's Heller School of Social Policy, focusing on the impact of trauma among young people exposed to community and structural violence. Tania also served as consultant to the Hague Appeal for Peace Education Initiative in Peru.
	Jeremy Phillips, M. Ed. Jeremy Phillips, of Jeremy Phillips Consulting, is an independent consultant who works with not-for-profit organizations and schools to bring their strengths and capacities into action. Jeremy works in partnership with clients through an affirmative and constructive lens to design and implement processes that result in their organization better articulating and living their mission and vision. Jeremy Phillips has been a community-based and national trainer and facilitator for almost 20 years. He brings a deeply held conviction that programs and schools have the capacity to bring about change work for the betterment of young people and communities.
	Gina Wang Gina Wang is a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia.   Her research examines the Canadian refugee determination system and its ability to effectively protect unaccompanied minor asylum seekers.   She was the coordinator of Amnesty International's Refugee Network in Vancouver for 2 years and continues as an active volunteer with refugee and immigrant advocacy agencies in Vancouver.  Previously, she worked as a Program Director of the Young Sisters for Justice Program at the Boston Women's Fund.  She has also been involved in international development and adult education with the Mennonite Central Committee in El Salvador.

Center Associates

Moacir Barbosa

Mo is the Assistant Director for Training and Capacity Building at the Medical Foundation and has been the program coordinator for BEST Initiative since the program’s inception in 1999. As a practitioner, his work focused on expanding opportunities for youth and building equitable relationships between youth and institutions.  Mo has long been involved in efforts to bring about peaceful and just-full resolutions to the issues that we face locally, nationally and globally. His current work in the Area 4/Port neighborhood of Cambridge focuses on violence and other community issues. Mo is a member of numerous Advisory Boards and Task Forces in the community and has worked on various political campaigns at the local and national level. 

Daniel Cantor Yalowitz, Ed.D.

Daniel is currently Associate Dean for Special Projects and Senior Professor of Social Sciences at Southern Vermont College in Bennington, Vermont. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in psychology, sociology, human development, and early childhood/elementary/special education. Daniel is also founder, executive director, and principal consultant for Project Play! Inc, through which he has facilitated nearly 900 trainings and programs on play, community building, interpersonal communication, and team building in 20 countries abroad and most of the United States. In addition, Daniel has recently started working as a Couples (Re)Medication therapist. He also leads programs and workshops on Multiple Intelligence Theory, the M.B.T.I ©, and Conflict Response. Daniel has been an advisor with Peaceable Schools and Communities since 1994. When not playing, teaching, or administrating, Daniel can be found kayaking, canoing, gardening, playing his clarinet, traveling to out-of-the-way places, working on his photography, or doing something energetic outdoors.

Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Ed.D. (Research Associate)

Nancy is a professor of education at Lesley University and a co-founder of Lesley's masters degree program in conflict resolution and peaceable schools. For more than twenty years, Nancy has been studying both the effects of violence on children's social development and how children learn caring, pro-social ways of being. Nancy has co-authored four books and many articles on topics such as violence in children's lives, media violence and its effects on children, how children learn the skills of conflict resolution, and the creation of peaceable school communities. She is also the author of Best Day of the Week, a children's book about conflict resolution. Nancy is an advisor for public television on programs having to do with violence and children. She is currently a Research Associate at the Center for Peaceable Schools which she helped to co-found at Lesley University, and an advocate for healthier, more nonviolent schools and communities for children.

Diane E. Levin, Ph.D. (Research Associate)

Diane is a Professor of Education at Wheelock College in Boston, Massachusetts, where she teachers courses on children's play, media, and violence and a summer institute on media education in a violent society. She is an internationally recognized expert on how educators and parents can counteract the harmful effects of violence and media culture on children. She is the author of six books including Remote Control Childhood? Combating the Hazards of Media Culture and Teaching Young Children in Violent Times: Building a Peaceable Classroom. Diane is co-founder of TRUCE (Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children's Entertainment), an advocacy group which works to promote positive play and media. She is a Research Associate at the Lesley University Center for Peaceable Schools and has consulted with the American Psychological Association and many public television children's television projects.