The Peacebuilding Podcast : From Conflict To Common Ground

Such a delight to re-connect to my colleague from many moons ago – Peter Coleman – who, just for the record, is not my relative. Our paths crossed beginning sometime around 1995, at the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution, the “ICCCR” at Teacher's College, Columbia University, where we worked together on many cool initiatives until I left around 2003. My partner Ellen Raider, with whom I had been delivering intercultural negotiation programs around the world, brought me into the Center after connecting with Mort Deutsch – who is often referred to as a grandfather of conflict resolution, and perhaps the grandfather of conflict resolution in the west. At the Center, Ellen and I created the first certificate program in conflict resolution at Teacher's College – which included collaborative negotiation, mediation and then a growing list of related and interesting skill sets like using large group processes to resolve conflict and create systemic culture change. At the time of my arrival, Peter was a graduate student, Mort Deutsche's protégé – and I watched him rise to where he is today as head of the center and now a well respected social psychologist and researcher in the field of conflict resolution and sustainable peace -- probably best known for his work on intractable conflict. Prompted by the publication of his new book, The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization, I asked Peter to join me on the podcast for a conversation -- and draw from his book, his work, his life (anything that he felt was most relevant) to address the role of gender, gender equality, gender transformation, and its connection to building a more peaceful, democratic and sustainable world.  He agreed and we had a great conversation which we bring to you now. As those of you who have followed me on this podcast know I -- along with many --believe that getting gender “right”, the role of gender, moving beyond outdated patriarchal structures, is THE foundational challenge to building a much more peaceful, sustainable and pleasurable planet for humanity and other living creatures By way of example, allow me to repeat the poignant and on target words of Shabana Basij-Rasikh, who is the co-founder and president of a School of Leadership for women in Afghanistan who said recently in the Washington Post: "Educated girls grow to become educated women, and educated women will not allow their children to become terrorists. The secret to a peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan is no secret at all: It is educated girls." That statement makes me want to cry. What a tragic but accurate comment after the countless lives lost, the total pain for so many Afghans now, and the trillions my country just wasted in our two decades of war in Afghanistan the costs of which were so intelligently tracked by The Costs of War project who we had on this podcast a while back. Using military or policing force is not generally the best solution to conflict – genuinely meeting people's needs is. It's not that complicated. But moving beyond the money that drives the choice of using force is complicated, and we need to figure this out like, yesterday. So, here are some of what I call my “favorite frames” from Peter's and my conversation: Reminiscing about our early years at the ICCCR – and a moment when we had a room filled with teachers, guidance counselors, principals from all the approximately 188 New York City schools – the largest school system in the country and perhaps the world, convened to learn critical negotiation and conflict resolution skills. It was awesome; The seeds that were planted in Peter to do a life's work in the field of peace and conflict – his reflections on himself as a 7-year-old, the influence of being raised by women, turbulent times in Chicago, the presence of Martin Luther King, the “macro-worry” that began to build in his young awareness of social justice issues and the related conflict about them; A conference he convened to change the conversation from ‘negative' peace – like addressing violence prevention and atrocity mitigation to ‘positive peace' – like creating communities that will foster harmonious relations in which destructive conflict is far less likely to erupt. Similar to why I moved from doing more traditional mediation to more “upstream” organizational mediation, using organization development methodologies, or getting conflicting parties to focus on the positive thing they are trying to create v. the negative thing they are trying to avoid or, like in the health field, focusing on what creates health and allows humans to flourish rather than having a disease orientation. An energy follows where we place our attention kind of idea — which is super important. Anyway, Peter's conclusion was that the conference was a huge failure because no one wanted to talk about positive peace with the exception of Doug P. Fry, who we also recently interviewed on this podcast. And, another frame, how at that same conference he had invited Abby Disney – the creator of the amazing film series Women War and Peace, who kept raising her hand and saying, I don't want to be the gadfly but – how can we talk about the mitigation of violence without talking about gender and men and their role in this? Peter and I shared our appreciation of Sebastian Junger's 2016 book, Tribe, where he reported a profound observation of how early American settlers that had been captured by native tribes, when given the opportunity to return to the European colonies did not want to go back, without exception, because they preferred their lives among native communities; And the frame that most stands out to me, and unfortunately is a discouraging one. Peter tells the tale of working with the amazing Leymah Gbowee, who I have mentioned many times on this podcast, to create a Women Peace and Security program at Columbia, that would provide technical and financial resources to some amazing younger women I think mostly from Africa who have been doing peacebuilding work. Like the badass Riya Yuyada who I interviewed a while back on this podcast. In spite of the huge need for the program and the thousands of applications to it, the program sadly is closing this year. And that's in spite of the fact that Leymah is Leymah, an amazing woman, a Nobel Laureate, and if you don't know who I'm talking about, watch Pray the Devil Back to Hell a documentary created by Abbie Disney about how Leymah and other women, a way that only women could pull off, brought an end to the Liberian civil war. The program was not able to raise the $25,000,000 needed to keep the program open in perpetuity, a paltry sum given the amount of money that is flying around on this planet. And this was in spite of the fact that you couldn't have a more compelling person spearheading the program – the poster child of the Melinda Gates foundation of Oprah. And that's not because of any shortcomings on Leymah's part but much more about where our level of consciousness about what's going to create a world that we all want to live in for the next number of centuries. It's a fact that reinforces my belief that we women really need to get our ovaries together when it comes to money and how it's spent. As I mentioned in my episode about women money and power with Barbara Stanny Huson, women, at least in the US and maybe even globally are coming into huge financial resources, some say will have the majority of the financial resources in the 21st century. This is undoubtedly mostly white women in the US, sitting on so much dough that if we chose to actually use it in powerful ways we could really make a big diff to the world our kids are inheriting. As Barbara said, and I say now, Women's issues with using and taking charge of the resources we have little to do with our capacity and a lot to do with our ambivalence about power. So many of us still want men to take care of money for us and we have to stop doing this. Anyway, there are many more great frames from this conversation with Peter including insights about women and negotiation, social constructs about “the masculine”, “the feminine” and war, whether or not getting rid of binary gender pronouns is a peace movement, and --what it's been like for him -- as a white, tall, good looking dude working in a cauldron of conversation around conflict, peace, social justice and identity. So thank you Peter, and hope you all enjoy this rich episode.

Dear Podcast Friends, Happy 2021! We came so close in the United States of America. We came right up to the edge, looking into a very deep and bleak abyss.  But we didn't fall in, we pulled ourselves back, and democracy – at least to the extent we have realized it --  has prevailed. I, along with so many of my fellow citizens, am thrilled. I have not generally been a person to wave the flag of the U.S. and tout our exceptionalism, though I love my country like I love my family. I was one of those kids that resisted saying the Pledge of Allegiance as early as 14 because I was already very aware of what my country was doing in Southeast Asia. Fast forward to this podcast, I am all too aware that the U.S. spends more on our military than the next 10 countries combined, and uses our military might to dominate the world in very much the same way the wealthy have used our police to dominate poor black neighborhoods to keep assets pouring into the hands of a small, mostly white, male few of Wall Streeter types  – some of them my family members. But today I feel more patriotic and proud of my country than ever before. It feels like we have just gone through a hazing, a reckoning and perhaps Donald Trump has done us a favor to wake us up. Like the saying goes – it takes a lot of pounding to create a good bar of steel. I read a book a long while back called the People of the Lie by M. Scott Peck, the same guy who wrote The Road Less Traveled if you remember it. The premise of the book is that lies are the core of human evil.  Seeing ourselves clearly -- as a person, as a country, as a world -- is the beginning of healing and real positive change. As we say in the gestalt world -- awareness works: It's a paradox that change happens most quickly when we can by see the fullness of 'what is' in the present moment. A few weeks back, when the run-off elections in the State of Georgia tipped the balance in the U.S. Senate to a Democratic majority I tweeted: I am so deeply moved by what has just happened in Georgia. Thank you Stacy Abrams. Change Georgia, change the country, change the world.  And “bing” -- I immediately got a like from a young woman in Asia who is an activist for democracy in her own country.  I love how connected we are, and how movements for justice and democracy inspire each other around the world.  After living with the Trump administration for the last four year that used bullying and the fantasy of a lost, white, Christian and patriarchal America, it was so super moving to  see, in the words of one of my friends “A glorious display of inclusivity including all the raw feminine power. . .  -- How bright & radiant” and knowing that that was brought about, in part, by the activism of so many of us, of which I am proud to be a part.  One turning point was on January 21, 2017, when women, with our pussy hats on, marched on Washington in the largest single-day protest in American history that dwarfed Trump's inauguration numbers of the previous day.   So, I am feeling optimistic, but there is so much to do and the climate clock is ticking  The contribution I have chosen to make toward a deeper democracy is focusing on empowering women by building our negotiation capacity, and showcasing through the podcast some cool content about interventions to build common ground in complex systems.  One CAN bring very polarized groups, even warring factions, together to build common ground. I have done it. I have seen it. But so many of our world governments, including my own, are still so steeped in win-lose, adversarial, “power-struggle” methodologies, egged on by a media that leads with what bleeds. Making better use of the collaborative – and yes, more feminine – processes we know work would help us become less polarized, and more creative and relational. Humans are very capable of dealing with complexity and problem solving if given the right process “containers”.  Power over v power with. . . Win-lose, win-win. . . Both of these have big gender implications. On the podcast front, I've been frustrated with how slow I am to get episodes out. There are so many I would like to do, so many cool people to interview – but like so many solo “socialpreneurs” like myself, there is the issue of bandwidth and making a living. This fall, I put together a six-week, virtual course called Women, Negotiation & Power which was thrilling. I will launch an even better version of that course in March so stay tuned, please enroll, or send people my way. Check out this testimonial video here.  I am also super excited by my growing audience of women whose stories and struggles I am hearing either through my online courses, or individual or group coaching. So thank you.  I am here to serve you and make the best content I can for women around negotiation, and for this podcast.  Getting gender right is delicate -- just like democracy.  Patriarchy tends to cut humans in half and say that men can be this way, and women can be that. What is happening is people are becoming more fully human, and being allowed to develop themselves fully, not just according to gender roles, or reconnect, for example, to what it means be a woman and not have the divinity in that taken out in any way. This is exciting, and this will create a more peaceful world. As Carol Gilligan so aptly said feminism is the movement to free democracy from patriarchy.  We have a lot of work to do because honestly the model of so many things is still fundamentally the man, supported by the woman.  It's gonna be weird, but it's gonna happen in the U.S. soon enough, that a woman becomes our next president with or without an intimate partner standing beside her. It's gonna feel uncomfortable and probably unnatural to many because it is uncharted territory in the U.S. though so many other countries around the world are leading the way. So how did we get to this moment in time, to all those colorful flags and empowered women and people on the Capital steps of the U.S., a young black woman, a descendant of slaves, delivering the inaugural poem and declaring her unabashed desire to be President of the U.S. someday? I think it has come from untangling narratives that are untrue. For me, that has defined so much of the work I have done to grow as a human.  Seeing ourselves clearly v. the stories we have made up,  Discovering truth v. lies or fictions like the election was stolen from Donald Trump women came from the rib of Adam, that my brother was more valuable than I was from the moment of birth. These are all untruths, but powerful narratives that have big consequences. So in part B of Herstory, Rabia continues to unpack our human history, herstory, from the perspective of women. Read the full blog here.

Dear Podcast Friends,  I took a hiatus this summer from high-speed internet and went to the “boonies” which was great for making progress on my book, Women, Negotiation & Power (stay tuned), but made podcasting virtually impossible. Indeed, I discovered quickly how much high-speed internet is running our lives – those of us with access to it – in both good and bad ways. It was good to take a break, to slow down, disconnect. I found myself very happy, but also glad to come back and be a part of our digital revolution once again. Being off the grid allowed me some good reflection time. Perhaps because as I age there is less time ahead of me than behind, I find myself looking backwards at the big things that have shaped me and my culture. For instance, it was determined at the moment of my birth that I would be more dependent and less powerful than the men in my family simply because I was a girl. Shaking off that type of conditioning takes some doing – for all of us. And, however inspired the words of our Founding Fathers (U.S.)  “all men are created equal”, it's clear from historians that the founders were really just referring to propertied, white men like themselves, a crack in the foundation that is revealing itself and reverberating in movements like #metoo and #blacklivesmatter. The irony for those founders, products of their time, was that many of them were slave owners who also could not entertain the suggestions from both their wives and the Native Americans who inspired the fledgling U.S. democracy to include women in the process of forming it. So, in keeping with looking backwards and the big things that still reverberate, I'm super excited to bring you my current podcast episode, HerStory. HerStory Part A (and Parts B and C coming soon) will go back to the very beginning of humanity and tell the story of human evolution through the eyes of a woman. Perhaps that past seems ancient or irrelevant to you but, as my guest Rabia Roberts puts it “once you start studying things like neuroscience and how long it takes the brain to develop, you being to understand that pathways get laid down long ago that still have a great influence on us.” These recordings are actually classes that Rabia gave to a group of women in Boulder, Colorado in 2017. They're just super excellent and not to be missed which is why I am including them here. I will release them one each month for the next three months, HerStory, Parts A, B and C. I think you'll find so much useful information, and Rabia is an amazingly intelligent, sophisticated, and light spirit. Rabia was on our show in 2017. As you will see, her description of herself as an activist, who loves to be a scholar is pretty darn accurate. For the past 50 years, she's been deeply engaged in what she describes as the three great movements of our time: social justice, peace, and environmental action. Rabia has lived and worked in places as diverse as Iraq, Syria, Burma, Thailand, Jordan, Iran, Israel, Palestine, Brazil and Afghanistan. Her unique experience yields a rich harvest of insights relevant to the challenges facing us.  HerStory was intended to be a series of seven classes or so, but unfortunately after number three, Rabia has had constant medical challenges which has slowed her down. I'm hoping this podcast release might inspire her to continue, even if just in this type of audio format v. a real class.  Rabia got into this project because of  “the need for global feminine leadership, and the fact that patriarchy won't die”. This was to be her legacy for women and girls. In her words “HerStory is a great empowering story of who we women are, how it has been misunderstood and how women have the unique qualities and skills to bring our country together and our democracy forward. In fact, I believe only a woman will be able to heal and lead us into the future. Only women have the needed capacities and skills to bring men and women, people together. And history gives the evolutionary reasons why this is so.” This first episode, Part A, covers the human story from 13.6 billion years ago, basically the beginning, to about 40,000 years ago. In it, Rabia gifts us with so many incredible insights. The following is just a few of my “favorite frames”. The first is what she calls the enormous femininity of making something out of nothing, what cosmologist and scientist Brian Swimme calls “the great effulgence” commonly known as the Big Bang.  One of our first principles of our beginnings was differentiation, “that everything differentiated, nothing was the same. It wasn't a pile of gas that evolved, it was differentiated beings, differentiated things.” Rabia points out that differentiation is one of the main principles in us and “when we try to establish monocultures or mono races, we are working against the fundamental principles of Earth, and ourselves. Monocultures ruined our food and trying to have one race is ruining our civilization.” The second is that mammals began for a long time with cloning -- XX  -- females of species from insects to the apes reproducing themselves. For those of us who grew up with Adam and Eve, of course, this shows a tale turned upside down: Adam and Eve was completely backwards. The male evolved from female, not vice versa. It's crazy how so many of our traditions attribute our beginnings to a God the Father, a male with no reproductive capacity at all. Another frame is especially relevant to the search for peace and the need for women to not abdicate our power. The evolution of the Xy chromosome, the male, brought much needed biological diversity, but also more violence from the testosterone needed to get DNA into the female. Rabia goes on to say that while women can be violent and competitive, the male half of our species creates most of the violence in both intimate and larger systems. She shares insights from other large mammals that she has studied – whales and elephants -- who also deal with the same challenges of male violence, and how the female of those species handle it -- Women take note! I like her tales of the bonobos, our equally-distant cousins to the chimpanzees. The bonobos are led by females, and if a male gets aggressive, they go have sex. They are, according to the particular biologist that Rabia was studying, the sexiest creatures known – males having sex with females, males with males, females with females, young and old, a lot of sex going on, and no aggression. As the saying of an earlier generation had it – make love, not war. Another frame is just how resilient we have been as a species, how our ancestors have survived two major ice ages and so much more. One of the key reasons for our resilience was the hunter gatherer females who were, Rabia says from her research, “probably the most skilled human beings that ever existed on the planet, with the ability to kill animals to hear a snake in the brush to see a saber toothed lion to smell climate change days in advance, all while keeping her eye on her children. I mean, the working mom goes a long way back, like from always.” Finally “the oldest grave that is known about with decorations and shells all over the parks and around it was a little girl. It wasn't a big Chief. It doesn't seem like male chiefs were any more decorated than the females that were found.”  In this episode, Rabia is pointing her audience to a timeline. I've put that timeline on this page, as well as the original YouTube video if you would like to refer to that. I've also included here Rabia's introduction to her Waking Up Together series which I like very much. So my dear subscribers, I hope in the midst of all this craziness, you get a chance to listen to this episode. It has changed the way I see the world and I'm sure it will do the same for you.

As you know, I believe that empowering women, getting gender right on the planet, is the most impactful peacebuilding initiative we humans can undertake. Thus, one of my main initiatives these days focuses on building women's skill in negotiation. I'm super excited to say that I just completed my first online offering of what I call the mini-workshop series on women, negotiation and power. I had 14 participants, a great group from around the world that gathered weekly on zoom (thank God for zoom) for about a month. As always, I appreciated the diversity in the group. From national origin or current residence, folks were from the UK, South Sudan, Russia, Australia, Colombia, Morocco, Yangon, the United States (East and West Coast) and, notably to me, there was a lot of generational diversity. For women, especially as we step into our leadership across the world, it feels to me critical that we are talking to each other across nation, tribe AND across age. We have a lot to learn from each other. Most excitedly for me, I think participants got the connection between how we negotiate in our individual lives, in our families, in our workplaces, — and what is happening on the world stage. I can feel the power of a cohort of women who understand collaboration in the face of conflict, and how to use it for our own benefit and in our leadership in the world around us. If you or anyone you know is interested in staying tuned to this initiative, you can put your name on my Women, Negotiation and Power blog list here. In this current episode, on negotiation, gender and culture, I talked with my colleague and return guest, Dean Foster of deanfosterglobal.com. Dean has extremely stellar credentials in the field of cross-cultural communication, has worked with most major Fortune 500 companies, pretty much every cultural group on Earth, national governments, the UN etc. He is an author, speaker, and I like this — a “cultural concierge”. Dean and I go way back and cut our teeth together with Ellen Raider and Ellen Raider International who was one of the first to teach intercultural negotiation around the world. Dean went on to quote-unquote “major” in cross-cultural communication with a quote-unquote “minor” in negotiation, and I went on to “major” in negotiation and collaborative processes, with a “minor” in intercultural communication. Negotiation is a very culture-bound concept: Indeed, you can't really think about negotiation without considering culture. And certainly for women in many cultures, cultural norms clamp our mouths shut — we just can't negotiate period. For example, I had a client — a young woman from China that I was with in Seoul — and she was saying, “I love this material.” (We were doing a collaborative negotiation skills course.) “But I can't negotiate at home: I just do what I'm told. And actually, all the money I earn from my job, it goes to my brother.” What do I mean by culture? It's often commonly thought of as artifacts, music, etc. I'll call that “high culture”. What we're talking about here is what goes on below the iceberg, if you will, what's happening in the deep root system of the tree, what I'll call “worldview”. Geert Hofstede, who was a Dutch researcher in the area, and whose thinking I've used over the years, defined culture as the “collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one human group from another.” It's like a group personality, if you will. Culture is to a group what personality is to an individual. And culture is just the way that different humans on the planet have come up with the challenges and opportunities of living on our particular section of the globe. In this episode, I wanted to explore with Dean a question that I started thinking about as I was writing my book on women and negotiation, which hopefully will be coming soon. He and I have shared with audiences for years the variables that research highlights as differentiating national cultural groups — like individualism, uncertainty, attitudes towards time, attitudes towards authority (often known as power distance), task versus quality of life orientation, things like that. But how do these variables differ by gender within one cultural group? If in one country, where the dominant cultural norm shows up as highly individualistic, does that mean that if the men and women were looked at as subgroups, they would be equally, highly individualistic? So that's what we're going to talk about here. How does gender impact the cultural variables that research has identified? And we're going to do this just based on our own empirical evidence, our experience over the years of working in this area. One other thing, this episode was recorded right at the beginning of the outbreak of the coronavirus in the US, but before the killing of George Floyd and the ensuing protests about racial justice and police brutality which then rippled around the world. From working all over the globe, one of the things that I've learned about us humans is that we are much more alike than we are different. That's true of nations, tribes, genders, all of it. We have the same categories of needs — physical, security, belonging, etc., the same categories of feelings — mad, sad, glad, etc. But how these manifest is impacted by culture. It may seem simple to say, but simple stuff is often most worth saying, and ever more important to emphasize in our shrinking and contentious world, that when you create a climate that is collaborative across difference, that allows people to meet their basic needs, you don't need coercive and violent police, and you don't need a hyper-militarized planet either. When you build a collaborative climate in a family, a team, a group or a world, you do not get or you greatly minimize “groupo- centrism”, my elegant word for identity-group polarization. You do not need to dominate one cultural group with another. You do not need to put trillions into weapons especially when that money is so sorely needed to heal our declining planet. But understanding cultural differences is super important and super rich, and makes life much more interesting. So, if you are someone who has followed the cross cultural literature, or even if you have not, I know you will enjoy this conversation, about culture and gender. We believe we have raised more questions than we have answered but perhaps someone listening will get inspired and do some welcome research in the area. If you have any thoughts on our conversation, we'd love to you to share them in the comment section of our podcast blog below.

If my country, the United States, were to adopt a feminist foreign policy, I believe there would be a major, positive shift on this planet. I tweeted that sentiment after interviewing my current guest, Kristina Lunz.  I was a little nervous about doing it. I'm not sure exactly why.  Speaking your truth is always a little scary, especially for us women. But I got a lot of likes on Twitter from men and women alike. That was interesting to see. What is a feminist foreign policy? I will let Kristina mostly answer this question because she will do it much better than I. But I will say at the outset that, like this podcast, it supports processes and leadership that build common ground rather than dividing and polarizing people. It emphasizes more of the win-win, less win-lose to resolve differences. Frankly, the egocentric “I want it now and it's your fault that I can't get it”, the “blame game”, is wearing super thin on me. This includes the drumming up of conflict and zero-sum thinking, and attacking people to get your interests met as a style. It's not just developmentally juvenile, it's plain dangerous, especially if the person using it has a lot of power. And its end-game is a homogeneous world where one dominant cultural group, often white straight men, are on top, with the rest of us supporting them and dependent on them for handouts and our survival.  I know I'm not interested in that, and I know so many others -- men, women, people  -- who are not either. This podcast advocates empowering women, not just because it's an end in itself, which it is, but because it's the most powerful way to get to a more peaceful and sustainable planet for all of us.  To begin with, you can only have real democracy when you have real democracy starting at home — and better sex too, by the way. I hope you've noticed that what the countries with the best coronavirus responses have in common is that they are run by women. This is not because there aren't many great men leaders out there, but because these women are probably more effortlessly bringing the quality of collaboration to the table which is so sorely needed on the planet right now.  My greatest wish for the silver lining of this pandemic is that it deeply underscores our interdependence and need to further develop our collaborative skills.  As Kurt Lewin, a grandfather of social psychology said long ago, everyone understands authority, but democracy is a learned behavior. The Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy (CFFP) was co- founded by my current guest, Kristina Lunz. It's an international research and advocacy organization, was established in 2016, and is dedicated to promoting feminist foreign policy across the globe. The problem CFFP addresses is outdated, patriarchal structures, and their vision is to create an intersectional approach to foreign policy globally. Kristina tells me that research shows that… "The most significant factor toward whether a country is peaceful within its own borders or towards other countries is the level of gender equality. So, if that's true, it's pretty easy. It just means that there won't be any peace without feminism." Kristina is an award-winning human rights activist, co-founder and Germany Director of the Center for Feminist Foreign Policy and advisor to the German Federal Foreign Office. She was also recently named on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. She graduated with distinction from University College London School of Public Policy, and did a second Masters at the Oxford Department of International Development in diplomacy. Her activism started at Oxford and has continued ever since. I've learned so much from doing this episode and talking to Kristina. Here are a few of the many things that stand out: I spent years traveling to The Hague to provide intercultural negotiation skills programs for ICTY, the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia), but wasn't aware until now that 100 years ago, during the First World War, about 1500 women came to the Hague from many parts for the International Congress for Women. They called for an end to the First World War and to establish a set of resolutions to avoid another World War. These included, for example, the dismantling of the military-industrial complex, the prioritization of mediation for conflict resolution, and the democratization of foreign policy, reverberations of themes which have motivated me throughout my life.  History is always so interesting. I found it deeply moving that Sweden describes its government as “feminist” and created the first feminist foreign policy (for modern times) in 2014. This was followed by Canada, followed by Mexico. Check out the CFFP website to see the history of feminist foreign policy. It shows what's possible. I found it interesting to hear about the actor, Emma Watson's conversation with the academic Valerie Hudson, and the latter's new book called The First Political Order: How Sex Shapes Governance and National Security Worldwide. I can't wait to read it and hope to get Hudson on the podcast soon. In reading the transcript of that conversation, I learned from Emma Thompson that I can refer to myself as “self-partnering” rather than “single”. I've enjoyed my journey of the last 10 years living without a partner, though I've dated some wonderful guys. Self-partnering somehow struck me as empowering because living without the protection of a guy can still feel frightening to so many women around the world, myself included. So I'll stop there and let you listen to Kristina Lunz, a woman who is really on fire, and is going to do a lot to contribute to our common great future.

Wow, what strange, nerve-racking and global times we are living in. This pandemic certainly underscores for me how interdependent we all are and how important it is – MORE THAN EVER – that we pull together to create a more livable, humane, pleasurable and sustainable world.  There is great power in where we place our attention – and we can focus on the positive world we are trying to create – the diamonds that form under great pressure, the lotus flower than blooms out of the muck.  To quote a signature message of this podcast (Pete Drucker) “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”  Our podcast today focuses on negotiation skills for women, and the body. This topic evokes a lot in me.  In fact, the night before I recorded it, I woke up at three in the morning and wrote down these thoughts.  • First, that (as my last guest Thomas Hubl suggested), “the feminine” is the body; • That my body didn't belong to me for a lot of my life; • That my sexuality also didn't belong to me until I did a lot of work to reclaim it; • Regarding the phrases “I want” and “I need”, which are so important in negotiation and conflict resolution -- I wasn't supposed to have wants, and I'm not sure about needs either. As a girl in my family, I was supposed to serve, and I was supposed to accommodate; • It was hard for me to have a clear connection to my “yes” and particularly to my “no”. And, if not connected to your “no”, it can be difficult to walk away from a negotiation -- which is fundamental to power; • I didn't feel safe claiming value, a popular negotiation concept, because I was taught so deeply that I was supposed to let a man do that;  • Though, throughout the course of my life I have cleared out a lot of unhelpful acculturation, I'm aware of the depth with which these ideas still live in my body. My two guests in this episode, Dr. Deborah Heifetz and Dr. Martha Eddy, are both dancers and embodiment conflict resolution experts. Among other cool things about Deborah, she served as a special advisor to the crisis management team of the Israeli police and acted in Track II Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. She currently lives in northern Italy where, with her husband and other Italian changemakers, they are working to have their geo- region become a prototype for human scale, community-based sustainable development. Martha is an author, researcher and worldwide lecturer on somatics (i.e. the body as experienced from within), peace and violence prevention and the role of the body in negotiation. She lives with her family in New York City. As I recounted my 3a.m. thoughts to the two of them, Martha shook her head in agreement. As someone who is so deeply experienced with the body, she affirmed that my reality is pretty universal to women. She's not aware of many, if not any cultures that uplift the strength and value of the female, such that the female body, or our experience as females in the body, comes forth as power automatically. It's like “swimming upstream to find our power and reclaim it” she says. For Deborah, the first trauma she experienced was being born female.  She had three older brothers, a very patriarchal father and mother, and felt inherently less valuable. She says, “ I was the whipped cream on the cake, but I didn't want to be the whipped cream, I wanted to be the cake. I wanted to be where the action was, where the real politic was.” In talking about the inspiration for her work, Martha talks about the influence of her gender-fluid parents, her father who had sexual relations with men and liked gardening, her mother who liked to shoot out windows with her BB gun, and her very sensitive brother, who was not allowed to be the way he was in the very macho and rough climate of Spanish Harlem in New York City. Deborah says “the body is the central location for social change -- that it all begins with the body.” Martha concretely observes that young women who literally can pull their own body weight up, have a different kind of agency, a different kind of ability to self protect. We women  “need to self-assert, without hiding, to step, forward to stand up. These words mean something” she says. Please enjoy these two unique voices and share with us in the comments below “What is your experience of the body in negotiation?”

One of the things I love most about doing this podcast is I get to spend time with, and really "tune in" to some amazing people. Thomas Hubl is one of them. Thomas is a contemporary spiritual teacher – sometimes referred to as a modern mystic. His teaching combines somatic awareness, advanced meditation and transformational practices that address both individual and collective trauma. I was introduced to him through my friend and colleague Amy Fox and affiliation with Mobius Executive Leadership.  He was working with a group of us organizational consulting types bringing the wisdom traditions to the world of work.  I also participated in the online course he created with celebrated negotiation expert William Ury – Mediate and Mediate.  Thomas' presence is incredibly light, smart, and deep and always seems to elicit in me an inner smile. He's never afraid to tackle the difficult stuff and does it by listening, as he says, with “eyes all over his body”.  It's a whole body listening practice I have adopted from him. In the short time I have known him, I have seen his visibility grow rapidly around the globe. He is a master with: Building community Managing projection and his own authority in groups Somatics Epigenetics  and the specifc topic of this podcast, Healing Collective Trauma As my listeners know, I started this podcast because there is a “process crisis” in the world – we use too much win-lose, debate-based processes to deal with our differences, and the media just loves it. Win-lose processes are certainly better than use-of-force but, because they are win-lose, they can lead to use-of-force quickly -- as we can see from looking around the globe. They are not relational, they are patriarchal in origin and they dumb down us humans in terms of how incredibly capable we are of managing complexity and building common ground with each other given the right container and good facilitation. I wanted to interview Thomas because of the large group processes he has designed -- for up to 1000 people at a time -- to heal collective trauma. This kind of work truly excites me. As Thomas says “we have all been born into a collectively traumatized field and collective trauma needs collective healing.” While I have never personally experienced one of Thomas large group processes, I can tell how amazing they are because of how many large group process I have led and participated in.  He started this work about 15 years ago under the banner of what he calls the Pocket Project and has brought together thousands of Germans and Israelis to acknowledge, face and heal the cultural shadow left by the Holocaust.  He has then gone on to do processes in other parts of the world addressing the various “scars” of humanity that exist everywhere. The other day, I was talking to a very close friend who is now about 50, grew up in Germany and lives in the United States. I know her struggles well, her desire to break out and manifest what I call a culture-shifting entrepreneurial enterprise. Without knowing I was working on the post production of this episode with Thomas, she started sharing with me her heightened awareness that the only way she was going to move forward was to unfreeze the past – that there is an “absent”, “nowhere” feel to her and her entire generation of Germans, and how much she suspects now that WWII was a direct result of all the undigested trauma of WW1.   I felt the same kind of absence in Beirut when I was there a few decades back, and a similar awareness in myself about how I have had to unfreeze and feel the sexual trauma from my past in order to heal it and stop it from recycling to the next generation. To quote Thomas in this episode...  "The past doesn't just disappear. The past needs to be digested".   "Many of the conflicts we see in the world are actually wounds that break open again, that show up again in different forms” because they have not been processed or digested. So Thomas' processes are about exactly that – digesting and processing those scars around the globe we humans have created so they do not need to recycle themselves. It's like a chimney cleaning he says. The more you do it the cleaner it gets, the less reactivity people experience, the more they are able to come fully into the present no longer triggered by unseen ghosts in their beings. This resonates with my gestalt training and specifically the "paradoxical theory of change" – that the only way to “change” is to integrate fully the “what is” -- to embrace the shadow and the alienated parts of the self or system. And, Thomas recommends, to do this kind of work in community, with solid facilitation, and presence.  Throughout the interview, we touched on patriarchy as a collective trauma, the thousands of years patriarchal structures have been in place, their connection to war, the woman's holocaust in Europe where millions were burned at the stake for practicing witchcraft, the challenges for women to release our codependent conditioning and step fully into our leadership and power. “Yes”, Thomas agrees, “#metoo was a trauma eruption”. I am left with a desire to create a large group process with him to address it as I believe it is the core trauma of all the other "traumas of domination. So please give a listen, share widely if you can, write a comment on our blog here and learn more about Thomas here.    P.S. For great content on Women, Negotiation and Power,  join our list here or follow us on Facebook at susancoleman.global for our latest updates. P.P.S. Listen as Susan talks about the motivation behind starting this podcast. Important References / Links William Ury - https://www.williamury.com/ Amy Fox - https://www.mobiusleadership.com/executive-team/#amy-elizabeth-fox Mobius Executive Leadership - https://www.mobiusleadership.com/ Meditate and Mediate - https://ondemand.thomashuebl.com/p/meditate-and-mediate-essentials/

Some of the more interesting assignments I have had in recent years have been with the United Nations peacekeeping missions -- four times in S Sudan and once a few months ago in the Central African Republic. It's hard not to notice that peacekeeping missions are often set up in countries that are plagued with what some call “the resource curse” – oil that brings with it conflict and often, in spite of its value, huge income disparities and violence. But those of us who have worked with lots of conflict situations, also notice the phenomenon of "the lotus flower blooming out of the muck", or "diamonds being formed under great pressure". In this episode, I am honored to bring you one of those diamonds, Riya Yuyada, a 28 year old bright and sassy woman who has known nothing but war and conflict in her native S. Sudan. Riya Yuyada fled S. Sudan as a baby and grew up in an IDP (internally displaced person) camp in nearby Uganda. In spite of the challenges of growing up in a refugee camp and then later living in the midst of a very “cold peace” in S Sudan with regular outbreaks of civil war, she has grown herself into an impressive young woman and built an organization called Crown the Woman. Crown The Woman (CREW) is a “women founded and led nonprofit, non-governmental, non-political, humanitarian and national grassroots organization that aims at empowering girls and women to ensure they harness their potential and contribute to nation building economically, socially and politically. Established and registered in 2016 by concerned young South Sudanese women who realized the need to promote meaningful gender equality and equity as well as the need to recognize, appreciate, strengthen and empower women. CREW strives for realization and respect of women's rights, enhancement of women's security and the prioritization and provision of women's basic needs. CREW has a special focus on investing in young women and children as the means of securing the future of South Sudan's women in nation building and development. Two themes that stand out to me from this episode. The first is what I have concluded from doing this podcast for the last few years -- that the most impactful peacebuilding initiative we can undertake on this planet is to empower women – in our family, organizational and planetary systems. In the case of S Sudan and many countries like it that have been plagued by civil war, it means women equipping themselves to be part of the peace process – go Riya!! -- and men welcoming them in to sit alongside them at the negotiating table. For more on this, please go back to Ep 31 and my interview with Dr. Scilla Elworthy, A Business Plan for Peace. Peace agreements last longer by a lot when women are involved in the process. The second theme is interdependence. From the affluent and island continent of the United States from where I write, it's easy to think of S Sudan as a far off land. But, of course, as the famous environmentalist John Muir said, “when you pick up anything in the universe, you will find that it is connected to everything else". While I'm grateful for the oil that has heated my house and runs my car,  I'm also aware of its cost in the form of global conflict and its impact on the lives of people like Riya.  It's felt good to move off of fossil fuels to solar and wind as much as I can. An important step not just create a cleaner world but a more peaceful one. P.S. We are hard at work creating great on-line and live content on Women, Negotiation and Power,  join our list here or follow us on Facebook at susancoleman.global for our latest updates. P.P.S. Listen as Susan talks about the motivation behind starting this podcast.

Probably a deep reason I went into the field of conflict resolution long ago is that growing up as a girl in the heart of an affluent, male-dominated, Wall Street kind of culture meant that I had to reconcile deep love for the members of my family -- especially my powerful Dad -- and my resistance toward many of their views and behaviors.  In my fierce college days, I framed things as, my Dad was a “capitalist” whose clients supported the coup in Chile (they did), and  I --  deeply influenced by the raging American war in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, my new awareness of the hundreds of times the U.S. had intervened militarily into Latin America, and women's studies -- declared myself a “radical socialist feminist”. Now after many years of growing, ripening and getting tossed around by the currents of our human existence -- seeing the contradictions in lots of things and people -- I am less interested in polarities and much more interested in finding common ground, deeper dialogue, genuine contact between people, in spite of difference. So, I would say now that perhaps I am part “capitalist” – a lover of innovation, entrepreneurship and creativity, part “socialist”, a firm believer in taking care of people's basic needs and our planet, and the rest of me, well just rogue goddess -- wanting to move beyond what my next guest calls models of domination to those of true partnership. Riane Eisler is well into her later years and is still generating unsurpassed insight and contribution into how we can live well together on this planet. I interviewed her first in Episode 28 (please give a listen), and said then and repeat now that she is one of the brightest lights and most innovative social thinkers out there. What I have always liked the most is that she transcends the polarities of right v. left, capitalist v. socialist, religious v. secular, north v. south, -- “it's useless”, she says, “because there have been repressive violent regimes in every one of these categories.” Instead, her frame is models of partnership v. domination and a special emphasis on how gender shows up in both. In my 20's, when I first read her book, The Chalice and the Blade, it was such eureka moment that was then reinforced by Harvard social anthropologist William Ury in his book, Getting to Peace to learn that humans have not always been in a state of war and violence -- that, in fact, the vast majority of human existence on earth is characterized much more by what Riane calls models of partnership v. domination, or what Ury articulated as  2,500,000 years of possible coexistence to 10,000 years of coercion. So many smart people that I talk to believe humans have always been violent, and that there has always been war. But, there's a lot of evidence that this is just not true. And there is also plenty of evidence that during those times, men and women lived together as equals and that, in many societies, the Divine was often a revered goddess, and maybe even a super sexy one. What Riane so clearly adds to this discussion is that all domination systems, whether they are left or right, are always characterized by rigid gender stereotypes. “It's not coincidental”, she says, “that whether it was Hitler in Germany, or ISIS in the Middle East today, secular Western, religious Eastern, or the rightist fundamentalist alliance in the US, that a top priority is always getting back to this quote, ‘traditional family'. It's a code isn't it?” she says, “for authoritarian, rigidly male dominated, and highly punitive family.”   Impetus for this current episode is Riane's new book, Nurturing our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape our Brains, Lives and Future which she has written with Douglas Fry. It's a delight to get to know Doug through this episode. I knew of his work as an anthropologist, documenting earlier partnership societies and the gender balance within them. Doug has a very special voice and perspective and I found his calm demeanor made me feel better and more hopeful about the world. A couple of ideas they share that I especially like. . . That gender is a key component to domination systems and is connected to the ranking of any human being over other groups whether it's about  race, religion, sexual orientation. . . In other words, you get rid of gender ranking and you get rid of a lot of “isms”, That as the status of women rises, men no longer find it such a threat to their status, masculinity or role to also embrace caring values like universal health care, generous paid parental leave and have the freedom to be more fully themselves . . That in the partnership societies that Riane and Doug explore in the book: there are the narrowest gender gaps there is an investment in people starting from early childhood there's no homelessness no violence (although certainly people lose is from time to time) military budgets are just a few percentages of government spending (compared to $.57 on the dollar in the US) they are always in the highest ranks of the global competitiveness indices AND, perhaps the most important of all, people are the happiest!! Go figure. Hope you get a chance to listen to Riane and Doug. Tell us what you think below and please follow us on Podbean.

I like to think of myself as fairly courageous. In fact, one of my mottos (adopted from Barbara Stanny (Huson — an earlier guest on the show) is to “do something scary every day”. So, I readily take work assignments in war zones in Afghanistan, South Sudan and most recently the Central African Republic; I go backcountry skiing on glaciers in remote parts of Alaska; I try to be courageous with my own inner evolution — to keep growing as a human; to be honest with myself and others, speak truth to power and to keep doing what I can to create a more peaceful and sustainable planet. But whatever courage I may have doesn't hold a candle to my current podcast guest, Saba Ismail, who grew up in Northwestern Pakistan, the most dangerous place on earth to be a woman. Saba and her sister, Gululai, and the well-known Malala, who comes from the same region (and was shot in the head simply for advocating for girls' education), are speaking up in the face of many forces that would like to silence them and which would terrify me if I was confronted with the same. I'm glad I can give a platform on this podcast to young women like Saba, who now is 32. Here are a few excerpts from her bio: "Saba Ismail is a feminist, peace activist and is working for the empowerment of young women. At the age of 15, with other young women fellows, she co-founded “Aware Girls”, a young women-led organization working for empowering young women by strengthening their leadership. . . The young women of Aware Girls engage in Countering Violent Extremism (or CVE) programs in which young people are persuaded to not join militant groups and instead create open spaces for dialogue, and promote nonviolence and pluralism in the community. She was one of the first to convince the diplomatic community of the importance of including youth in building a more peaceful world. Foreign Policy Magazine acknowledged her bravery and activism by recognizing her as one of 100 Leading Global Thinkers of 2013 and she has been acknowledged in the “30 under 30 Campaign by the “National Endowment for Democracy” for her long struggle for democracy, peace and women's rights." Here are some of my favorite "frames” of the episode: She couldn't even talk -- First of all, a few months back when I first reached out to Saba, she didn't even feel she could talk to me because her sister was in hiding from the Pakistani military and things were just too dangerous to bring any more attention to the situation. The Critical Role of Fathers -- Saba grew up in jihad, the influences were everywhere and as a young person she believed them. But when her father, a human rights activist, realized what she was bringing home from school, he intervened to make sure that all of his kids, especially his girls, were given information and education to counter the indoctrination. The critical role fathers play in the empowerment of their daughters is well-documented and I have experienced it personally: when I was working with two factions of Kurds in northern Iraq and i suggested it might be good to have some women among the representatives, it was a father who insisted that his daughter join us even though her mother and grandmother were dead set against it; when I had the privilege of working with the senior women leaders in the Afghan government, many of them shared with me that they would never be where they are without their father's support; in Saba's story, a father who really paved the way for her sister Gululai and her to make a real difference to their community and world; and finally, in my own life, my father who loved me a lot but was ambivalent about my professional success -- how much effort it has taken me to transcend his messages. Advocating nonviolence in Madrassas -- Saba and Aware Girls going into the madrassas to convince young people that the Koran doesn't support violence and jihad; Pakistani Military -- the Pakistani military seem so hell bent on oppressing young women like Saba and her sister rather than recognizing them as the global peacebuilders that they are. I mean really!! What the heck!! What Saba calls the #Metoo Movement of Pakistan -- the delegations of women, many illiterate, that traveled to the northwest of Pakistan in spite of great difficulty, to show solidarity with other women that were being harassed and defiled; U.S. Supporting Military Solutions, not Aware Girls -- that my country so often supports authoritarian regimes like what currently exists in Pakistan rather than the development of young women and men like Saba. How our ‘war on terror”, rather than making the world safer, has led to way too many kids like Saba growing up in cultures of extremism, jihad and violence. Shame on us. I hope you enjoy the episode. Please share this episode to anyone you think it might interest, write a review wherever you get your podcasts -- they really help!!, and please stay tuned to our monthly releases of The Peacebuilding Podcast.

I've been looking for somebody who could talk credibly about money. Of course, this podcast isn't really about that. This podcast is about focusing on processes and ideas that build common ground and complex systems. However, I've always believed that one of the things you need to look at is money. I'm so excited to have found Stephanie Savell and The Cost of War project. There are three women who are doing an amazing job documenting what has been spent by the United States and to some extent, other countries, on what they call the post 9/11 wars. Stephanie Savell is an anthropologist of militarism, security and political culture and has studied these topics in the United States and in Brazil. She co-directs Brown University's Cost of War project. She was one of the younger members and I thought it was appropriate that one of the younger members of The Cost of War project speak because it sounds like we are really mortgaging our children's future in the United States with the amount that is being spent on the military. Let's hear Stephanie talk about this more as she has done a lot of research and talks credibly and clearly about what exactly is going on.

A main focus of this podcast is to explore the best process interventions that build common ground and consensus in diverse and often polarized groups. But the reality is -- unless you are a process person like me – eg. a facilitator, coach, mediator – you probably don't pay attention to process. Process is a little bit like plumbing: if it's working, you don't notice it, but if it's not, watch out!! I started this podcast because I know that HOW we come together to resolve our differences has everything to do with whether we will be successful. If you create the right “container” with the right ingredients -- including meeting conditions, stakeholders, design – I am confident that you can make significant progress in bridging divides that seem unbridgeable. So, that's why, when Convergence and Rob Fersh came to my attention I got interested. A divide that currently seems intractable to many people, especially those living in the United States, is the one between the Democrats (the left) and Republicans (the right) in the US Government. Most Americans these days are pretty frustrated, and even despairing, at the tone in Washington, the level of polarization, the acrimony. Rob founded Convergence in 2009 “to promote consensus solutions to issues of domestic and international importance”. Convergence has “mediated” or done creative problem solving around public policy issues where opposing sides agree on a goal but disagree, sometimes intensely about how to get there. The organization creates “containers” that allow opposing sides to build relationships and think together more clearly about creative ways forward. To date, it has worked on initiatives around health care, education, incarceration and is exploring other hot topics in the public policy arena such as gun safety and climate change. Rob came to Convergence after serving as the U.S. country director for Search for Common Ground, an international conflict resolution organization, where he directed national policy consensus projects and health care coverage for the uninsured and U.S. Muslim relations. He is also a very seasoned Washingtonian after many years of public service prior to Search for Common Ground. What I think will stand out to you, as it has to me, is the commitment that Rob brings to creating a safe and neutral environment for opposing sides to come together and think constructively about ways forward. When you create a good climate, people stop the demonization, trust builds, and it's even possible to create solid and lasting relationships though people may still disagree on a number of issues. In Rob's own words “ at a minimum, at a time when people don't talk to each other well, the people that we get to come to our tables --who are very diverse politically and otherwise -- have an amazing experience of seeing and understanding people -- and at a minimum we are lowering temperatures of the most important people – and at the best end we are having a real impact on the issues we care about. So, I invite you to tune in and hear Rob's stories. Get inspired. It will give you hope that we can find common ground in the belly of the beast.

When I travel outside of the US I often think that American citizens have no idea what a “war zone” we are actually living in. Guns are rampant every where. Military hardware comes back from global combat for use by our police departments further escalating violence. Since 2001, the US has spent $32M PER HOUR on war with each taxpayer paying a total of $24,000. US military spending far exceeds every other country on earth including China which comes in a distant second. Those of us in the conflict resolution field know all too well that when you create an adversarial climate, you get identity group polarization. Sure enough, racial tensions in the US are at an epic high and, while “the feminine” is rising, girls and the feminine are under harsh attack with man in our White House who brags of assaulting women and a Supreme Court majority that does not protect women by law from domestic violence. We in the US typically think of ourselves as the envy of the world to which certainly there is some truth. But we are numb to what it costs us — on every level — to dominate the planet. So when I heard Melanie speak at the AfP annual conference about the Hands Across the Hills initiative which applies the same peacebuilding approaches used in the most deadly conflicts around the world to conflict in the US I was intrigued and wanted to learn more. Melanie is one of those souls who exudes both integrity, kindness, high professionalism and intelligence. She is currently the Managing Director at Humanity United (HU) overseeing the peacebuilding and conflict transformation portfolio which develops, refines and implements strategies to build peace and counter violent conflict. She has helped design and facilitate public peace processes in the Middle East, Northern Ireland, the Caucuses and much more. Because she is one of the most seasoned and respected practitioners in the peacebuilding field, I wanted to hear her definition of peacebuilding, how it has emerged as a field, and what she sees as the trends. “Peacebuilding” emerged in around 1990 and was first articulated by Boutros Boutros-Ghali from the United Nations. Melanie describes the various streams coming together (at least in the US) to form the peacebuilding river: the Vietnam anti-war movement, the anti-nuclear movement, the environmental movement which required large scale consensus processes to resolve disputes around land, and the Alternative Dispute Resolution movement giving rise to mediation and other collaborative processes as an alternative to the adversarial American legal system. All of these movements, she says, inspired people to act for themselves and realize that building peace wasn't just the role of the government but could and should belong to citizens as well. She continues on with an excellent definition of peacebuilding which you can hear on the track. She sees many exciting trends in peacebuilding — what we are learning about the connection between neuroscience and peacemaking, and how peacebuilding is becoming more systemically integrated into our institutions. Cool to know that many of the large peacebuilding organizations have come together to improve the “branding” of peacebuilding — to make peace enticing, and counter the news culture of “if it bleeds it leads”. The most discouraging trend to her is that, among practitioners, the US is now generally seen as a “peacebuilding problem”. All of the criteria that are red flags for a peacebuilding initiative are present in this country — the level of gun violence, the tensions, the polarization, the number of deaths from violent conflict. In the Hands Across the Hills initiative, peacebuilder Paula Green is creating dialogue between people from a very conservative area from Eastern Kentucky and a very liberal area from Western Massachusetts. Please see show notes for more information. Leave us your thoughts at https://www.susancoleman.global/the-peacebuilding-podcast. We love hearing from you.

When Priya Parker published her recent book, the Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters, Susan and her colleagues commiserated that we hadn't written it ourselves. The book is excellent, highly recommended and we are greatful to Priya for having written it with such great artistry.  How we meet and how we gather is critical not only to the quality of our lives and connections, but to our ability to build a more innovative and peaceful world. It is the HOW that is the main focus of the Peacebuilding Podcast -- what are the best tools, techniques, processes that can build common ground in complex systems. Priya Parker is a facilitator and strategic advisor. She helps activists, elected officials, corporate executives, educators, philanthropists create transformative gatherings. She works with teams and leaders across technology business, the arts, fashion and politics to clarify their vision for a future and build meaningful purpose driven communities. She began her career and has been deeply impacted by the field of conflict resolution where she has worked on race relations on American college campuses and on peace processes in the Arab world, Southern Africa and India. Some highlights and main ideas from the episode: The first is just simply who Priya is and where she comes from, the perfect person for the job that she has. “Priya” “Parker” -- Priya is from her mom who is a South Asian Indian, and Parker, from her dad, a white Anglo-Saxon American. Her Mom, as she describes it, is a vegetarian, very liberal, comes from families that worships cows; Her father, very conservative, from an evangelical Christian background, and from a family (of cattle ranchers) that slaughters cows. Her parents divorced when Priya was 9. She spent her childhood going back and forth between these two very different worlds while thoroughly immersed in each. It was a rich learning laboratory for somebody who ultimately has become a professional gatherer and facilitator of diverse groups. We began the conversation talking about language. The word “peacebuilding” makes Priya cringe a bit because "there can be no peace without justice". Susan explains that there is strong evidence that we no longer need armed conflict, that it's a huge waste or our precious planetary resources, and that HOW we bring people together and, in the words of Bill Ury, make the room and world safe for conflict is key. Priya agrees and quotes a friend: “if we had more conflict in the world, we would have less violence.” Susan's favorite ideas from the interview are the linked ideas of the power of modern ritual to help groups connect across difference and creating temporary, alternative realities in gatherings to, in a sense, make them safe for conflict. Pulling from shamanic traditions, Priya describes how she creates rituals, processes and experiences that actually help people experience alternative worlds where people can deal with the “danger” of conflict and difference. She shares an example how she created a unique and fun process with an architecture firm to help them shift out of their polarization and “stuckness”. In the course of interviews for her book, Priya realized that the most powerful rituals come from more monocultural groups. But, many of these don't work anymore -- both for people coming from those cultural groups and for communities or gatherings that are multicultural. So how, she asks, do we intentionally, purposefully, create a sense of ritual, maybe perhaps even a sense of the sacred, that will ultimately be the magic that allows people to connect, make contact, transform and move into a different state? How do we reinvent modern ritual to match the needs of our communities in an explicit way that allows us to connect with each other when we are not the same? Please give a listen to this episode. It is chock full of insights for any gathering, conflictual or not, that you may find yourself at the middle of hosting.

In this episode, Susan turns to the topic of money and its connection to women's empowerment and building a more peaceful planet. If you really want to understand what's going on in a complex system, follow the money. As earlier guests on the show have pointed out, our war system is hugely profitable to some (and very costly to all other people and life) – approximately $2 trillion dollars a year. We also have a virtual global epidemic of women's codependency on men – by one seasoned expert's estimation -- about 90%, and money is very much at the heart of this. Women stepping into their power is key to building peace and, as money is the currency of power, women getting smart about money goes hand in glove. That's where Barbara Huson comes in, not because she professes to be an expert on military expenditures or global peace but rather is the leading authority on women, wealth and power. Barbara is a bestselling author. She's written books like "Prince Charming isn't coming” "Secrets of Six Figure Women", "Sacred Success” and has been featured on many popular shows. Her own story is compelling: “I grew up relying on my father (the “R” of H&R Block), then my husband, to manage my money. But early in my marriage, I found out my husband was a compulsive gambler. And here's the insane part — I continued to let him manage the money because that's how scared and intimidated I was by money. It wasn't until a devastating financial crisis became a personal wake-up call. I got tax bills for over $1m for illegal deals my ex got us in. He'd left the country, I didn't have $1m, and my father wouldn't lend me the money. I had three daughters — one just a baby, and I was not going to raise them on the street. That's when I knew I had to get smart. And I did.” Some episode highlights: “Its not the money that's going to give us power. I don't believe that money gives you power. Money has no power. It's the process of who we have to become to be good stewards of our money. We have to become a powerful woman, and a powerful woman, is someone who knows who she is, who knows what she wants and expresses that in the world unapologetically.” Women are still so deeply codependent from so many centuries of conditioning. As a result, we will undermine ourselves in all kinds of ways such as care-taking dysfunctional men or putting ourselves in harms way, because of our deep belief that our survival simply depends on it. Throughout the episode, Susan and Barbara both share personal stories of how they fell into this trap and pulled themselves out of it. A second is, Barbara confirms what Susan has been hearing in different venues, that -- at least in the United States --70% of all wealth will be transferred to women in the 21st century. Women are earning more money and inheriting more, but not necessarily commanding this resource with confidence and power but rather often handing that job over to men. Finally, according to Barbara, when it comes to money, women are motivated by different things than men around money. They will yawn and glaze over when it's just about money for money's sake but get more fired up when they begin to see the power of helping their families and communities. That's why her target audience is women who want to create wealth because they are purpose driven and know, as Mother Teresa said, that it takes a check book to change the world. Given that, Susan takes the leap that if women get much smarter about their own money, we might also start paying attention and saying NO, like Leymah Gbowee did around war in Liberia, to the trillions of global annual military spending that is not addressing any of our very urgent planetary problems today. Please listen to this delightful person who is so generous and simply great fun to just spend time with. Whatever gender, you will gain a lot of insight.

What's the connection between what happens between people in their intimate relationships and what's happening on the global stage? In this conversation with Susan, Terry Real makes those connections – clearly, powerfully and with huge insight. Terry is a nationally recognized family therapist, author and teacher in the United States. He's particularly known for his groundbreaking work on men and male psychology as well as his work on gender and couples. He's been in private practice for over 25 years and has appeared often as a relationship expert on popular shows in the United States like Good Morning America, ABC News, media venues such as Oprah 2020, The Today Show, CNN, The New York Times. A statement that Susan most associates with Terry is “to walk into intimacy, men and women must walk out of patriarchy.” And his unorthodox approach to couples' therapy, which is essentially mediation at the intimate level, is “ whenever I have a woman who's in trouble in a couple, my first move is to empower the woman, and whenever I have a man in trouble in the couple, my first move is to empower the woman.” “Women's voices”, he believes, “are the voices that will be the wedge into patriarchy. Men will catch up, but women will lead the charge.” This is a powerful metaphor for why Susan believes that empowering women, and getting gender right on the planet, is the most impactful peacebuilding initiative we can undertake. When Susan asks Terry to make the links between the intimate and the global, he says “it is dead easy, it's about the basic mistake of patriarchy which is also known as dominion. The essential mistake of patriarchy is that as a man -- and patriarchy is masculinity writ large -- you are to be in control, you are above nature, you are Lord and Master, whether you are above the nature of your child, above the nature of your own vulnerabilities or nature as embodied by your wife or mother nature.” He also goes on to say that masculinity is basically at war with itself between the old model, the patriarchal model, and the new model, what he calls an ecological model, emerging especially among millennial men. He says that “the shift from a dominion model to a collaborative model, or the shift from a patriarchal model to a democratic model, is that you move out of the hubris, the pride, the delusion that you are above nature, and standing above the system, whatever that system is: your marriage your family your planet. You're not standing above this system, you're in it; you are a subcomponent part of it and you have to move inside the system effectively with the humility and clear perception of where you are in it.” Powerfully he says, "the delusion of dominance is lethal. . . Let me say that again because I conclude many of my talks this way: we will move beyond patriarchy or we will die. It's that simple." And addressing women, Terry says "Women are up to their eyeballs with co-dependency whether it's mothers tearfully and pridefully sending their sons off to war or women voting for Trump in the United States and places like that". He says that “whenever he has a woman who fears that speaking truth to power will have repercussions. . . I will never dismiss or pathologize these concerns because guess what, there are consequences. . . but ultimately you should do it anyway . . .because life is better when we speak up. . . when you have congruence inside your skin.”

Join us in conversation with Catherine Barnes. I (Steve) first met Catherine at a dialog and facilitation retreat in rural Myanmar. I was struck by the degree of presence that she bought to her work, mentoring and accompanying an emerging generation of positive change makers in that fascinating yet troubled country. Catherine is a rare breed of scholar practitioner. Her work is deeply grounded in decades of field work across thirty countries, while her research and writing covering topics of facilitation, dialog, activism, and social justice blends a high level of insight with accessibility. She is faculty member of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University and freelance peace researcher and practitioner, particularly as concerns dialog and facilitation techniques across conflict divides. Her comments in this episode are so relevant to our times. She describes our “addiction to coercion”, whereby we – internationally and domestically – try to compel others to accept our goals and points of view rather than expending our efforts and resources on collaborative activity for the greater good. She relates this to the increasing polarisation that we are experiencing domestically and internationally, and how we have in the past, and can in the future, find ways back through dialog and collaborative action. Catherine demystifies peace processes that are designed and implemented to end civil wars, drawing on examples from Tajikistan, Sierra Leone, Bosnia and elsewhere, and tracing the path from elite lead peace agreements to more the more inclusive peace processes of modern times. This conversation takes place against a backdrop of the increasing complexity of local and global forces that shape civil war conflicts, which renews calls that peace needs to be grown organically from within an affected society, not implanted in the form of blueprints from outsiders. Take a listen, and check out the show notes for a detailed summary and Catherine's bio: https://www.susancoleman.global/sn033-catherine-barnes

Join us in conversation with Graeme Simpson, US Director of the non-profit Interpeace, and lead author of the United Nation's flagship Progress Report on Youth, Peace, and Security. The highly participatory process of producing this work has been as important as some of its findings. Hundreds of youth across dozens of countries were involved in developing recommendations that underscore, among many other things, how young people are creative sources of peace, confronting their stereotype as primary perpetrators of violence. The young people that Graeme engages with question the efforts of peacebuilding institutions to “bring youth to the table”, highlighting a marginalisation and mistrust of governments and global institutions that has huge and troubling implications, yet at the same time inspires us with alternative, creative forms of organising and peacebuilding in a modern world. Graeme's work shines a light on a glaring disconnect between the “integrated lived experience of people caught up in violent conflict”, and our national and global policies and organisations, which divide peace and conflict up into illusionary stages and distinct themes that are intimately connected on the ground. As with Graeme's earlier work founding and leading South Africa's Centre for Violence and Reconciliation, our approaches to supporting people and societies need to be better integrated and less siloed according to outsider priorities, and better at “listening down” to affected communities so we can “talk up” to donors and policy makers. We end by touching upon gender, where Graeme challenges the stereotype of the girl as a victim and the boy with the gun. Graeme is an articulate and passionate speaker whose policy work is deeply grounded in the lived experience of people experiencing conflict and forging peace. You can review a detailed version of the show notes with full links and a copy of his biography here: https://www.susancoleman.global/sn-32-graeme-simpson

In this episode, Susan speaks with Scilla Elworthy Ph D. three times nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the Oxford Research Group, which she founded in 1982 to develop effective dialogue between nuclear weapons policy-makers worldwide and their critics. She founded Peace Direct in 2002 to fund, promote and learn from local peace-builders in conflict areas. Dr. Elworthy has been an adviser to Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Sir Richard Branson in setting up “The Elders”, an independent body of global leaders working for peace, and her TED talk on nonviolence has been viewed 1,400,000 times. Her latest book, The Business Plan for Peace is a clear and very readable how-to to create a world beyond war. Scilla also co-founded Rising Women, Rising World in 2013 and Femme Q in 2016 to establish the qualities of feminine intelligence that are so needed by both women and men to build a safer world. For Susan, this guest, more clearly than anyone, links to her passion of connecting gender and peace. Susan asks Scilla to speak to “women worldwide” about why it's time to step into our leadership on the issue of war and peace. “We have research-based evidence that indicates that preventing war is not difficult” Scilla tells us. “We know what we can do and we know what we shouldn't be doing in order to get war to stop--we just haven't done it. The first thing we need to stop doing is spending $1,686 billion annually on militarization. $30 billion would eliminate starvation worldwide and $10 billion would bring clean water to every child on the planet. Many people haven't noticed how enormous this spending really is and how much it is costing society.” Scilla describes how, in the last 20 years or so grassroots peacebuilding organizations worldwide working within their local communities have grown from 350 to 1600! She tells the story of a woman named Gulalai Ismail who lives in Northwest Pakistan –perhaps the most dangerous place in the world to be a woman, and the same place from whence came Malala. Through her conflict prevention efforts, Gulalai has been able to dissuade hundreds of suicide bombers from their mission. In the interview, Scilla observes that the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council are also the biggest arms sellers in the world. This is an irony that we all need to be more aware of. Susan and Scilla talk about the amazing example of Leymah Gbowee and her Nobel award winning work to end the civil war in Liberia. Dr. Elworthy has gotten to know many grassroots organizations globally who are working to prevent war in their regions and has found that the organizations that are woman-run are having a greater impact. Dr. Elsworthy provides an example of a violent episode where a crowd was about to lynch someone. A trained woman would enter the mob and raise her hand, palm forward and shout, “Stop this. Go home. Your mother would be ashamed of you.” There would be complete silence and the crowd would disband. Dr. Elworthy does not use the word “patriarchy” much because she believes that both men and women are capable of embodying what she calls “masculine intelligence” and “feminine intelligence.” The reality of the history of the last 3000 years is that most, if not all, major decisions have been made using masculine intelligence and what we are left with is a series of wars. Scilla talks about her early childhood and the seeds that were planted in her to become a peacebuilder, as well as the inner critic she has had to face to do her best work. She advises that, when you combine what breaks your heart with what you're skilled at, you will be most effective and ultimately full of hope and joy instead of anguish and anxiety. Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa is the most joyful person she has ever met and he has experienced some of the most brutal things in the world. Please listen to this amazing episode. You will not be disappointed.

The United Nations is a polarising institution. Some people look to the UN as a trusted expert and moral voice concerning issues related to the environment, development and poverty alleviation, human health, and peace and security. Others see United Nations agencies, funds, and programs as highly bureaucratic, ineffective, and outdated. The United Nations might have weaknesses, but when it comes to the complex challenges of peacebuilding in some of the world's toughest contexts, can we imagine a viable alternative if the United Nations were not to play a leading role? And what is the nature of that role? How does it relate to the work of other stakeholders in conflict settings, and what is life like for the diverse mix of international peacebuilders who choose to make far-flung countries their home in the pursuit of peace? Joe Washington recently retired from the post of Chief Training Officer for the United Nations Mission in South Sudan. His more than ten years of experience of working throughout the United Nations peacekeeping missions in Sudan and South Sudan spanned these countries' historic peace process and partitioning into two separate states, and the subsequent violence that engulfed South Sudan in the years after independence. Prior to this Joe served for more than two decades as an adjunct or visiting professor, researcher, lecturer, or director of programs for various academic institutions in Europe and the United States in the fields of conflict resolution and human rights. Joe's personal warmth and acute sense for the human, relational dimensions of effective peacebuilding are matched by deep insight on the strengths and weaknesses of the United Nations. This episode will be of particular interest to people who are interested in this organisation or the broader challenges of peacebuilding working in a difficult context like South Sudan. For those that have experienced either, Joe's words might be therapeutic! Some highlights include: •Joe's recollection of what motivated him to pursue an international career, and the role models and educational pathways that led him to a United Nations career; •The need as a peacebuilder for reflective practice, whereby you try to realise that you see the world with different eyes and may have different priorities than your counterparts. Joe reminds us of the need for peacebuilders to have high cross-cultural sensitivity, especially when local counterparts have basic needs and livelihoods concerns that international peacebuilders don't; •The separation between local and international stakeholders in peacebuilding settings is again discussed in relation to the relative wealth of international people in poor countries, which can drive up local prices and reinforce divisions between insiders and outsiders that makes fostering local ownership difficult; •Joe dissects United Nations infamous bureaucratic challenges, and argues that instead of finger pointing at other parts of the UN system, staff should focus on their circle of influence, and work more collaboratively in order to expand that circle; •The reality of 'camp life' is laid bare, as Joe paints a picture of daily life living in shipping containers in a United Nations compound, and describes the lifestyle in remote areas in the midst of conflict; •In response to Susan's question on the value of the United Nations as opposed to other actors that could potentially use the same resources more effectively, Joe suggests - with good reason - that the peacekeeping mission might have prevented a genocide in this country in the last few years. A fascinating man and life story - take a listen.

Gender, “We Q” and the Urgent Need for Collaborative Intelligence In Organizations with Professor Peter Hawkins It's my contention, that, in spite of what's been happening between the United States and North Korea, Syria, and that the Doomsday Clock is at 2 minutes to midnight, arriving at a world without armed conflict is possible in our life times. This is not just my hunch but based on some serious work by some serious people many of whom have been or will be interviewed on this podcast (John Horgan, “The End of War”, Episode 10, William Ury (“Getting to Yes” and “Getting to Peace”), Dr. Riane Eisler, “The Chalice and the Blade” (Episode 28), and Nobel Nominee, Scilla Elworthy, “The Business Plan for Peace” (upcoming guest). It's also my contention that the single greatest key to a more harmonious world is “getting gender right” in family systems and in organizations, the two building blocks of our world. In this current episode of The Peacebuilding Podcast: Bridging the Divide, it's my great pleasure to explore the connection between organizational culture and a more peaceful world with Professor of Leadership, Peter Hawkins from the Henley Business School in the UK. Peter has been working with companies for decades on leadership culture and change initiatives. He is a leading expert in what he calls Systemic Team Coaching which I was lucky enough to receive training from him in. I think of his models as kind of the infrastructure for building collaboration in systems, very much like the extensive education I received from John Carter and the Gestalt Organizations and Systems Design Program. I was drawn to interviewing Peter not just because of his stellar professional credentials but because of the human being and man that he is. I appreciate how he gets senior executives from the very largest companies to invoke all of the stakeholders of their decisions including their collective grandchildren and “more than human world”. As he likes to say, he gets people thinking "forward, back, outside, in". Peter is brilliant and deep, and I think you will find it well worth your time to listen to him. Here are some highlights of the episode. -Peter will address with great sophistication my question about whether there is a relationship between getting gender and diversity right inside organizations and creating a more harmonious world; -He will address the idea that the era of heroic leadership is dead and gone, and that we face an urgent need to develop collective leadership and collaborative intelligence; -He will talk about what men and women can do together as leaders in our places of work that we couldn't do apart, and why this kind of leadership is so critically important for our organizations today; -He will speak directly to men in organizations, whether they are leadership or rank and file, and provide valuable guidance about how to think and proceed in the #MeToo era. -He will address the need for companies to rethink their career design models, which he says are designed for twentieth century white men, not twenty-first century human beings; -He will address a question that has always nagged at me, about how companies can get gender right and still stay competitive -- in other words, not feel like they're doing the right thing, only to fall behind in a hyper-competitive world; -And lastly, he will talk poignantly about the impact of absentee fathers, either because of wars or work and offer some profound words of wisdom to guide us as we go forward into this complex and exciting future together. I know you will enjoy this deeply intelligent and thoughtful man talk about issues that are so critical for our time.

In these darker days (we are fast approaching the winter solstice in the US), and with the darkness created by the Harvey Weinstein's of the world, Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un putting us on the brink of nuclear war, fires raging in Los Angeles, and the Middle East being set on fire by the Trump's decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem, I bring you one of the brightest lights and clearest thinkers about a path forward. Dr. Riane Eisler is President of the Center for Partnership Studies and internationally known as a systems scientist, attorney working for the human rights of women and children, and author of groundbreaking books such as The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future, now in 26 foreign editions, and The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics. She has been hugely influential around the world and, if you haven't already heard her name, you will now as she is frequently quoted by some of the most interesting thought leaders. In this episode, Dr. Eisler will focus the relationship between gender and issues of war and peace – a topic about which I am most passionate. When I read the Chalice and the Blade in the 80's my eyes were opened! She elegantly divided the history of the planet into models of domination and models of partnership – and observed (like Bill Ury in his book Getting to Peace) that models of domination are more recent in our history and for the vast majority of human time on earth we have been living in partnership. Dr. Eisler clearly connects the dots of societies that have male-dominated family structures and those that support militarism and violence as a method of influence. She points out that the “regressives” in the USA (and around the world) get the connection between the family and national/international policy and have systematically pressured women back to their more traditional, subservient roles. She wants “progressives” to connect these dots as well and provide leadership for a new economic system where all things "feminine" -- child care, the environment, etc. are clearly reflected in our economic metrics of what contributes to our collective well-being. Children get a profound imprinting when they are raised in patriarchal or dominator families, where they learn that some humans are more valuable than others and that violence and strong-man rule is an acceptable method of influence. This translates to support for a domination system that not only supports a planet in conflict but polarizes groups by gender, race, tribe, religion, etc. As Dr. Eisler points out -- "it doesn't have to be this way." Please listen to this episode. We need people to more fully understand the brilliance that Dr. Eisler has to share with us and this path forward.

In this episode, Susan interviews Charles Crawford, who was the British Ambassador for Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1996-1998, Serbia and Montenegro from 2001-2003, and Poland 2003-2007. Crawford previously served as a British Diplomat to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, South Africa, and Russia. Susan got to know Charles when they were working together conducting a leadership development program for senior women in the Afghan government. Crawford led the component on speech writing – a topic he knows a good deal about. (See Speeches for Leaders, his website and other info in the shownotes.) He is a great storyteller with an amazing assortment of anecdotes from a rich and interesting life. In this episode, Crawford talks about his early days as an ambassador in war-torn Bosnia. With colorful detail, he tells the tale of being part of the ambassadorial group attempting to bring conflicting parties together across ethnic lines. He describes his early days arriving in Bosnia and seeing the absolute destruction of war. He observes that the places massacres occurred in the Bosnian war were the very same as where they happened in World War I, II and maybe earlier -- perhaps “pay back” for sins inflicted on grandparents. He describes the large industry that pops up during peace negotiations – foreign nationals pouring in, eating too much, getting paid too much in comparison with the local population, an assortment of issues arising including things like prostitution. He provides perspective such as – the internet did not exist when he went to Bosnia and reflects on the potential uses the internet can provide now in peacebuilding efforts. He talks about the dilemma of having to engage the worst leaders if you want a deal – something that will suit the extreme ends of a conflict and might not serve the moderate middle. Most noticeably, in contrast to the many processes explored on this podcast, he describes the typical but top-down approach of building peace in Bosnia and the very real influence of the American president at the time, Bill Clinton, who needed an international policy success with ordinary people having little or no say whatsoever in this peace process. Charles was also in South Africa during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process held there. He talks about the difference between a justice and reconciliation lens with the latter not applied here. He posits that it's reconciliation that is needed if you want a real break from the past and this did not happen in Bosnia. Please enjoy this episode. Charles Crawford is an amazingly bright and interesting teller of a complicated and relevant tale for those interested in creating a more peaceful world.

This episode is a recording of the speech Susan delivered in Shanghai on May 14, 2017 to 1000 women at the International Elite Women's Forum -- a women's leadership and empowerment gathering. The speech was delivered in English (with direct translation into Chinese which has been cut out here for easier listening.) For a full transcript of the speech along please go to thepeacebuildingpodcast.com and for the presenter slides that go with the speech, go to our Facebook page.

Exciting News! We have a new feel, rythym and sound to The Peacebuilding Podcast. Please check it out in this episode. In this next podcast conversation, Susan talks with Dean Foster whose name is synonymous with building intercultural competency. Dean has worked in almost 100 countries, has been a speaker at major business schools in the United States including Harvard and Columbia, is the host on CNN of the nationwide “Doing Business in…” series and is also a frequent guest commentator on culture, global work and social issues for global media networks. What is culture? Who am I culturally speaking? Those are questions that are almost always salient to any conflict resolution or peacebuiliding process. Groups get easily polarized around identity and culture when conflict is handled in an adversarial way. And many of the biggest conflicts on the planet today have a strong component of cultural misunderstanding. As the world get's increasingly more-crowded, it's important that all of us build both our ability to deal with difference in constructive ways and also our understanding of how we differ culturally speaking. Susan likes to say “culture is to a group what personality is to an individual. It's a group's personality, the unique way that a group has devised to deal with our common human challenge of staying alive on the planet.” Susan caught up with Dean somewhere between a trip to Prague and New York. Early on in the interview, Dean says: “When faced with something we don't understand or that we find mystifying, we always have a choice. We can decide to approach it as an opportunity for growth and learning. . . or we can approach it fearfully -- as something dangerous”. Dean talks about his early “cross-cultural education” growing up in Brooklyn, New York and reflects on the shift of globalisation over the last twenty-five, thirty years. The conventional wisdom in the multinational world when Coleman and Foster got started in their professional work was that we have a global multi-national culture now that transcends any invidual culture. Dean says that while there is some truth to this, it is far from accurate. He sees in millennials a greater acceptance that cultural differences exist, but not necessarily a real increase in understanding about what those differences are. Foster talks about some projects he did, supporting an American multi-national working with a Russian team, about China, and about multi-cultural teams where so much business is done these days. Please enjoy the episode and send any feedback to susan@thepeacebuildingpodcast.com. More information about Dean Foster and his work can be found at www.thepeacebuildingpodcast.com.

In the current political climate in the United States, there is a heightened interest in bringing people who don't agree together for dialogue. One of the first to do this work was the Public Conversations Project (PCP)* out of Boston over the hugely contentious issue of abortion. In the 1980's and early 90's, the abortion conflict got to such a feverish pitch -- allegations of “baby killers”, “woman haters” -- and resulted in the murders of two women outside an abortion clinic. In response, Laura Chasin, the founder of PCP, became the co-facilitator of a multi-year, clandestine dialogue between Boston area “pro-life” and “pro-choice” leaders, aka “The Leaders Dialogue”. In the years that followed, Laura and others applied this method, which combines aspects of family therapy, neuroscience and mediation, to a wide variety of communities and issues including same-sex marriage, immigration, gun rights, gender issues, peacebuilding, and many others. Over the last 22 years, Bob Stains has helped build the PCP. He is a pioneer of the modern dialogue movement, a seasoned facilitator of challenging conversations about identity, religion and values and has trained over 20,000 professionals in the PCP dialogue approach known as “Reflective Structured Dialogue”. In this episode, Bob describes the process in detail with some examples of an application in the setting of a polarized church congregation, as well as the “Family Dinner Project” and some other initiatives. Bob shares that a “seed planted in him” to do this work was being raised by a single father which marked him as different; His teachers treated him differently, friends were not allowed to come over to his house because there was no woman present. His father did everything, the ironing the dishes which left Bob often feeling ostracized. The experience shaped his ideas about what it means to be a man and not conform to stereotypes Bob always engaged in difference but did so more “by the seat of his pants” until he encountered the PCP. In his first PCP dialogue, an exchange with someone with polar opposite views on abortion left him amazingly uplifted and connected even though they deeply disagreed. Bob tells the story of a church congregation that was deciding whether or not to be welcoming to openly LGBTQ people. Many people had left the congregation because of the issue but came back for the dialogue process. As a result, the congregation voted overwhelmingly to be openly accepting of LGBTQ people. The people who left re-joined because, as Bob says, they felt heard. Bob explains, some conflicts can't be resolved but you can have good conversations if you create the right “container.” He has come to realize that what's most important is the relationship and how people come together, not whether the issue is resolved, especially in highly contentious issues where people are not likely to ultimately see eye to eye. As evidence of the profound nature of the PCP work, the members of the Leaders Dialogue continue to speak in pro-life, pro-choice pairs to tell people the value of talking across the divide. Interestingly, all of them will say that their perspectives not only did not change as a result of the dialogue, but rather were enhanced. But they will also say that they have grown to deeply respect each other through the process and have developed love for each other that has kept them together. Please tune in and get some great insights into some of the best practices to bridge the divide. *PCP is now known as Essential Partners.

Elizabeth Rabia Roberts, Ed.D, is an internationally known citizen activist and women's advocate. She is MaShieka — spiritual guide and teacher—in the International Sufi Way, and a lifelong student and teacher in nondual Buddhism. She has spent nearly 50 years working as a change agent for environmental and social justice, and the past 26 years working in 17 countries using “Bearing Witness” as a model for transformative action. Bearing Witness is a process that has grown out of the teachings and inspiration of many people (Bernie Glassman, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Witness for Peace, and Elias Amidon, to name a few). It has deep spiritual roots — but is being newly adapted to improve the effectiveness of working with transformative change. Rabia has slept in tents, bamboo huts, ashrams, church basements, hotels, the occasional palace, and the guest rooms of friends around the world. She describes her work as an exercise of happiness and optimism – something that you can feel palpably when talking to Rabia. In this episode of The Peacebuilding Podcast: Bridging the Divide, Rabia shares a specific story of Bearing Witness, in a multi-party conflict playing out in the national park system between native people, environmental activists, loggers, the police and others in the then Burma where she spent many years with her husband Elias Avidon. About the process of Bearing Witness, Rabia says, “No one person, organization, or political party holds a monopoly on what will make a healthy future for us all — either at the planetary or community level. Perhaps nothing is more important today than crossing the boundaries that seem to separate us and learn to think like an interconnected system.” “Our challenge is to loosen our attachment to our personal or group agendas so that we can begin to sense what is trying to emerge from the larger whole. . . .” “This does not mean we excuse greed or need to capitulate on what is true—i.e. pretend that a river is not polluted when it clearly is—but we must continue to dialogue. Future leaders will be those who have the collaborative skills and spiritual maturity to bear witness to the totality of what is.” Rabia describes the principles of Bearing Witness as “appear(ing) quite simple—you may have heard them before from a spiritual teacher, or in your church—but like most important things in life (i.e., marriage, child rearing, committing to a spiritual path), they are not easy. Whether you work in peace building, education, community development, corporate training, or simply want to improve your family dynamics, the process of bearing witness can be helpful. •Encounter the other; show up; take the plunge •Ask caring questions that open the heart of the “other” •Practice the art of Deep Listening, without judgment •Understand techniques for setting aside one's own beliefs and attitudes •Learn to guide meetings without driving one's own agenda •Learn the difference between fixing, helping, and serving •See ways to bring forth the greater whole that is emerging •Perceive what is ‘yours' to do, and when action is ready to emerge In 1999 Rabia and her husband, sold their home and undertook a deliberate period of homelessness as part of an international pilgrimage of direct service and teaching. In 2002, while working with a peace group in Iraq, Rabia was elected the first American delegate to the Global Non-Violent Peaceforce. Since then she has worked organizing and teaching active non-violence in Burma, Indonesia, the tribal lands of Southeast Asia, Iraq, Syria, Israel/Palestine, Brazil, Afghanistan, Pakistan and most recently Standing Rock. Please tune in to this wise soul whose upbeat spirit is simply contagious, and path of activism and adventure compelling.

Sandra Janoff is really in a class by herself. No one that I know of has so systematically created a design for building common ground in a multi-stakeholder group than Sandra and her now retired partner, Marv Weisbord. The Future Search process does not portend to be a conflict resolution tool, or a peacebuilding one for that matter, but it is both nonetheless. In this episode of The Peacebuilding Podcast: Bridging the Divide, Sandra talks about the Future Search process and tells stories about its application in a community of indigenous Hawaiins, with the Children of Southern Sudan and more. Sandra co-developed the Future Search methodology, which is a non-traditional way of doing strategic planning, because it brings stakeholders together in a setting where there is a great deal of dialogue, and the opportunity to discover a shared vision and action agenda together. Janoff also directs the Future Search network where Future Search principles are applied in communities around the world for whatever people can afford. The Future Search principles include: 1. Getting the whole system in the room 2. Looking at “the whole elephant” together 3. Focusing on the future and common ground as opposed to conflicts and problems and 4. Allowing the group to take responsibility. As Janoff says, her focus has always been on structure change, not behavior change. She and Marv are probably some of the first to make this important point to systems change – that getting the structures, conditions, principles right for whatever group you are working with – whether a team, family, department or whole system, is the best way to create sustainable change. Sandra and her partner Marv have created an important legacy about how common ground can be built in spite of polarization. Both are Lifetime Achievement Award winners from the Organization Development Network. Many of the Future Searches they themselves have run around the world, or inspired, continue to make positive ripples sometimes decades after the meeting itself was convened. As is always invited on The Peacebuilding Podcast, Sandra shares some of the “seeds” that were planted in her that inspired the work she does today -- a family setting where she often had to play the role of informal mediator. She also talks about some of her early professional years that led to her insights about the need for structural change. This episode is replete with insight and quotable moments. To name a few that are especially relevant for these times: “In so many places, people are building communities that are sustainable. Under the right conditions, people can build a bright future.” “We are living under conditions of non-stop change and increasing diversity. So we must do something different – we can't repeat old patterns and believe that things will change. People only change if they do something they haven't done before.” “We need new conversations and new ways of coming together.” “When we make the circle bigger, things get better. “ Tune in now to this bright, wise soul and learn some important ways and ideas to take this planet higher.

How do you create the conditions for peacefulness in a place like Iraq that has been in such intense, destructive conflict for so long? How do you use yourself as an outsider to support people on the ground who wish to create a different kind of future for their children? And how do you go about setting up academic programs, in war-torn countries or peaceful ones, that rigorously train students in the best methods for creating the conditions for peacefulness? Thomas Hill speaks to all of these questions on this episode of The Peacebuilding Podcast: Bridging the Divide. With his mellifluous voice (that this podcaster believes should be put to use on radio), Tom talks about his near singular focus on Iraq over 16 years and 35 trips. Tom, aka Dr. Hill, is a clinical associate professor at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University's School of Professional Studies, where he is the Director of the Initiative for Peacebuilding through Education. He is a peacebuilding practitioner, researcher and has developed a series of inter-related projects focused on increasing levels of peacefulness in Iraq. Tom talks about his journey into the peacebuilding field through journalism as well as his creation of NYU's Peacebuilding concentration. He reflects on the changing perceptions about the Peacebuilding field from those who still think it's a 1960's holdout, to those who now accept it as becoming mainstream e.g. the U.S. State Department. He describes why students come to the NYU program, what they learn, and what they do when they leave. Most importantly, Tom talks in great detail about the his work in Iraq over the last 16 years and how he and Iraqi partners have gradually created academic but activist conflict resolution centers that are ground zero for those who are done with the destruction around them, and 100% committed to finding a different path. With poignant clarity, he shares his first moments in Iraq in 2003, enjoying beautiful food and wonderful Iraqi hospitality in a home with a kalashnikov leaning against every window, dark moments over the years turning into brighter ones, the serendipity of the worst events like ISIL taking over Mosul being the impetus for the University of Mosul to consider development of a program in peace studies. In keeping with the theme of those interviewed on The Peacebuilding Podcast, Tom talks about the structural or systemic changes that are necessary, in Iraq, the United States and elsewhere, for peacefulness to really take hold. He gives listeners his top three insights and learnings from the work in Iraq, his favorite book on building peace, and the tool or technique from Bill Ury that he has found most useful overall. If you are someone who is tired of our public conversation that is dominated by destructive, violent conflict and are thinking about how peace really can be built, listen to this creative, upbeat voice and become inspired about lessons you can immediately put to work!

Are there ways to use technology to build peace? How much is misinformation from social media impacting an electorates' thinking about what they want? Is it possible to create an online process of deliberative democracy to allow citizens to freely express their views and arrive at outcomes that are more closely aligned with fact and the public good? Can you bring people together online in conversation from opposite ends of the political spectrum to have constructive dialogue about issues that affect everyone? In this episode, Susan interviews Elvira Maria Restrepo, University of Miami Professor and special advisor to President Santos on the peace building process in Colombia. Elvira talks about her personal journey and the influence on her of growing up in a country that has been at war for her entire lifetime, from the period of La Violencia, through the more recent conflicts between the government, the paramilitaries and the FARC, to the historic signing of a peace accord this last year. She talks about how the Colombian experience has formed her understanding of the need for social inclusion and justice as the underpinnings of building peace. She then goes into describing a super interesting experiment that she is spearheading to use an WebApp for citizen engagement around the peace process in Colombia. She and her team have been studying the impact of social media on citizen awareness and social division. Misinformation generated from social media, especially Facebook, has had a huge impact on the outcomes of the peace referendum in Colombia as with Brexit, the Trump election in the U.S. and elsewhere. The App is an attempt to engage Colombians in a non-partisan debate to create a more informed citizenry and build common ground around the peace process, which is a hugely polarized topic. The App is based on the theory of deliberative democracy that has been applied in many parts of Europe and North America around many types of social issues. However, it is the first time an App of its sort has been created and applied to a conflict situation of this sort. In spite of the fact that you can't reach many parts of Colombia by road, more than 50 % of Colombians have access to the internet and 80% of those go on line via Facebook. The way the App works is “players” are grouped in diverse pods of 5 who think differently from each other on an issue. The idea is that through deliberation, dialogue the group will not necessarily reach consensus but rather the best conclusion for all (i.e. the public good) and greater understanding of different perspectives. So far, the testing with 100 individuals has shown an important trend to depolarize the extreme positions which is the expected outcome of deliberation. Topics can include land, system of justice for ex-combatants, tax issues, gender relations and can bring together in conversations diverse perspectives such as bankers and house cleaners. The link to the App can be accessed here if you are interested in participating and can speak Spanish. Webapp Atrévete http://atrevete.co/rc/. All feedback is welcome as the technology is tested. This episode is sure to engage your thinking about creative ways to bring people together across the divides of difference. And, of course, the possibilities for scaling in other contexts around the world are endless.

THIS IS A CROSS-POST FROM THE TEAM COACHING ZONE PODCAST: Is empowering women, especially in conflict-ridden societies a peacebuilding initiative? Can developing collective leadership among women, especially at senior levels in governments, be an important way to move towards a more peaceful and collaborative world? Susan Coleman believes the answer to these questions is yes and that women's leadership and empowerment is perhaps one of the most important peacebuilding initiatives we can undertake on the planet today. In this cross-post from the Team Coaching Zone Podcast, Dr. Krister Lowe interviews Coleman about her professional journey through the fields of commercial litigation to discovering the world of integrative negotiation at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard, to pioneering work in the field of intercultural negotiation and conflict resolution training at the United Nations and Columbia University, to her present focus as global coach, mediator, public speaker and Host of this Podcast. Coleman shares details of her recent experience working with the most senior women in the Afghan government, a project sponsored by the Office of the First Lady of Afghanistan and UN Women Afghanistan. She describes the difficulties of working in a war zone, the powerful inspiration of the Afghan women with whom she worked, as well as the intervention design and program. Coleman's professional focus includes women's leadership development, coaching and mediation of senior teams, large group facilitation and collaborative negotiation skill development. The Afghanistan work blended all of these as is elaborated upon in this podcast.

In this episode, Susan interviews James Zimmerman (“Jim”), a retired National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) official, who describes space exploration as a case study for international cooperation. Jim recounts the history of space exploration as a tale of competition evolving to cooperation. Currently, the International Space Station, circling 250 miles above the earth's surface, is a beautiful metaphor for what we can create when we tap into the exponential potential of cooperation among countries. Jim talks about his personal journey and how he came to work in the field of international relations, then with NASA and his tenure as President of the International Astronautical Federation (the “IAF”), an international organization based in Paris whose members include space agencies, companies and professional societies. Jim describes how space exploration is a relatively new phenomena which began in the 1950's during the Cold War and the competition between the then Soviet Union and the United States. The seeds that nurtured space activities in that era “not collaborative at all, they were political, competitive and focusing on which political system could produce the best types of results.” Over the years the paradigm has shifted from nationalism and competition, to an environment where scientists and engineers realize that collaboration is not just an option, but the best way forward given the limitations of financial and human resources. The partnerships have been successful in spite of the fact that the technologies they are using sometimes have both military and civil uses and therefor are restrticted. Jim talks about the value of the IAF, with more than 300 member organizations including most of the global space program stakeholders who meet annually. The IAF was founded in 1951 as a non-governmental organization to establish a dialogue between engineers and scientists around the world and to lay the foundation for international space cooperation. During the Cold War, it was one of the few places that space officials from the Soviet Union and the western countries could actually talk to each other informally without political constraints. The organization continues to offer that opportunity for informal exchanges with colleagues from China. What's especially exciting to Jim is how many younger people now participate in the IAF with over 1/3 of its participants being under 35 – a dramatic change that bodes well for space collaboration and for peaceful collaboration in a very challenging and complex field. Jim tells some wonderful stories about the important lessons he learned about intercultural negotiations and the need for respecting people from other parts of the world, cultural differences, listening and understanding different perspectives. How do you move forward when your partners are Russian, Japanese, European, Chinese, Indian, South American and you must build consensus? Jim's final reflections are about how space is a unique place to invest in a peaceful future. For the relatively small cost we pay in each of our countries, space exploration brings out the best in humanity. p.s. My apologies for mis-pronouncing Carl Sagan's name.

In this episode, Susan interviews Kamal Mouzawak, an Arab world social innovator whose business card says it all “Make Food, Not War”. Kamal created the first farmer's market in Beirut, Soukeltayeb.com, which means the market of good. Because he grew up in the middle of the Lebanese civil war, he knows first hand about what kinds of actions can build peace. Susan and Kamal met sometime in the Spring of 2016 at the Glynwood Center, glynwood.org, which supports food and agriculture throughout the Hudson Valley of New York in the United States. Kamal and his staff served an amazing meal of goat, hummus, greens, yogurts and more while talking about his work of bringing people together across huge divides in Lebanon of different cultures and religions. As he has said, “in a country as divided as Lebanon, nothing can bring people together as much as the land and food.” In the midst of divisive political tensions still prevalent after the Lebanese civil war (1975 to 1990) and continuing conflict between Lebanon and Israel, Kamal began Souk el-Tayeb. Souk el-Tayeb is the first inexpensive organic food market in Beirut, but more importantly, it serves as a platform for the people of Lebanon to forge a unified Lebanese heritage and identity based on their shared cuisine. A place where regardless of the religion or ethnic heritage—Druze, Shiite, Sunni, Maronite, Greek Orthodox, Jew—the diverse peoples of Lebanon are united around a food experience. Lebanon's tumultuous history of diversity and conflict has resulted in low agricultural production, massive internal migration, inadequate agriculture policies, and ethnic divisions. For each of these problems, Kamal's approach is part of a solution. Branching from Souk el-Tayeb, Kamal has begun a farmer visit and exchange program, a cultural tourism program, a producer restaurant, educational programming for youth, and inclusive national festivals to promote reconciliation in Lebanon. While Souk el-Tayeb is based in Beirut, due to Lebanon's compact size, farmers from the Niha Mountains to costal Saida can join together at weekly farmer's markets. Additional programs branching from the market, such as the farmer's exchange program, also connect farmers from across Lebanon in their own homes, and transnationally with investor networks in London, Galway, Amsterdam, New York, and Latakia. Based on the marked success of Souk el-Tayeb in Beirut, and the impact of its related initiatives in other parts of Lebanon, Kamal is working to introduce producers' restaurants in Dubai and farmers' platforms in Saudi Arabia. Using cuisine traditions and customs as a unifying social and cultural catalyst while also empowering and generating income to small-scale farmers and local communities—through food, Kamal is scaling peace in the Middle East.

In this episode, Susan interviews Dr. David Gage, a clinical psychologist, business mediator, entrepreneur and author. Twenty-five years ago, David founded what is still one of the only multidisciplinary mediation firms in the country that specializes in resolving conflicts among co-owners of businesses. Family and non-family closely held businesses make up the vast majority of the businesses globally, but until David wrote his book on partners, there was nothing written on the whole range of discussions, negotiations and agreements people need to have in order to lower the risks inherent in having partners. From resolving partner conflicts, David moved into conflict prevention with the publication of his book, The Partnership Charter: How To Start Out Right with Your New Business Partnership (or Fix the One You're In). The Partnership Charter Workbook, based on the book, helps potential and existing partners plan their partnerships thoroughly, improve collaboration and reduce the risk of conflict. In this episode, David describes how and why he founded his firm, gives some useful background on closely-held companies, and explains why mediation is such a perfect approach to resolve partner disputes. He also describes the Partnership Charter process, a kind of “collaborative pre-nup” for co-owners. With over two decades of resolving and preventing business partner disputes, David may be the most knowledgeable person on the planet on how to reduce conflict and promote collaboration in this niche population that controls so much of our global economic activity. If you are a mediator or someone who works in a co-owned business, this will be 45 minutes very well spent.

In this episode, Susan interviews Dr. Andrea Bartoli, someone who takes important professional risks to get good work done. Dr. Bartoli is currently Dean at Seton Hall School of Diplomacy and International Relations and an incredibly brave, intelligent and collaborative soul. He has been part of peacemaking initiatives in Mozambique, Guatemala, Algeria, Kosovo, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burma/Myanmar, East Timor, Colombia, and has been an advocate of innovative processes to build common ground in the university systems in which he has spent most of his professional career. In this podcast, he tells the story of his contribution in Mozambique to bring about the end of a 16-year civil war. This work, he says, was the most important and formative of his long career in the field of peacemaking. Instrumental to the success of the endeavor was a strong belief that, in spite of the huge challenges, peace was possible. As Dr. Bartoli says, “Peace is always possible. This must be repeated over and over in situations where you do not see the possibility of peace. . .If peace was possible in Mozambique, then it is possible in Syria, Afghanistan, it is possible everywhere.” The story of Mozambique started simply – giving assistance to just one friend. That friend, in turn was connected to expanding systems of people, ultimately to an entire country and then, by way of example, to the world. Dr. Bartoli reflects how “each of us has a daily decision to make regarding how we use ourselves to evolve systems to a more harmonious and constructive place.” And, he says, “I think that the human spirit is much stronger than war, much stronger than violence. I think that violence and war are mistakes, collective mistakes, of not applying yourself to the discipline of seeking what unites and not what divides.” Towards the end of the interview, Dr Bartoli talks about the importance of innovative process choice in peacemaking and diplomacy, and for the “diplomacy” required to run large complex systems such as universities.

In this episode, Susan interviews Aldo Civico, cease-fire negotiator, peacebuilder and, in the words of George Mitchell, “one of the most innovative leaders in the field of conflict resolution. Aldo talks about how his Austrian grandfather, a resistance fighter against Hitler during WWII, planted the seeds in him to do this work – a man who lived for something bigger than himself. He recounts his professional journey of being inspired by life coach Tony Robbins particularly Robbins' work with a live conflict on 9/11 using tools such as performance psychology, neurolinguistic programming (NLP), etc. In that experience, Aldo realized that the “Getting to Yes” and conflict resolution frameworks could be radically deepened to create lasting shifts for his clients by incorporating more of these kinds of tools. Aldo shares with humility one of his early stories of traveling to a warzone in Colombia with the mind-set of “expert” from New York and realizing that he had to throw away all of his notes, re-connect to his purpose of service and listen deeply to the group he was working with. His tale is a great one of adapting quickly to the power of storytelling and simply staying with participants -- with deep listening, no agenda or manipulation --to allow the power of story to unfold. Aldo shares his experience in building rapport with perpetrators of some very dark crimes and understanding how the capacity for violence lives in all of us. He also talks about the need to change the landscape and narrative from “let's get ISIS” and shares a beautiful image of a young German pianist whose response to the recent violence in Paris was to put his piano on a truck and travel overnight to play Lennon's “Imagine” for an outdoor audience. He talks about his vision of the future of conflict resolution work and how building capacity in urban communities to live conflict resolution principles will probably have maximum impact. There is a lot of learning in this episode. You many want to listen closely, and listen twice.

In this episode, Susan interviews Harrison Owen the celebrated creator of Open Space Technology which was “channeled” through him, he claims, because of the presence of good gin as well as past inspirations from a village where he lived in West Africa that handled differences by sitting in a simple circle. Open Space has been used in more than half of the countries on earth in what has been a 30+ year experiment in what Harrison observes as the “natural occurrence of peace and high performance.” In this episode, Harrison talks about how Open space evolved and why he thinks it works in high conflict situations. He describes some specific applications – the first, to a conflict between government agencies and Native Americans about where to build a highway on tribal lands and, the second, a meeting of 50 Israelis and Palestinians in Rome who were at polarized odds. “One of the interesting things that struck me early on (about Open Space) is how hugely conflicting people who had spent a considerable amount of time trying to deal with a particular issue would, for whatever reason, find themselves in an Open Space and, more often than not, come out hugging and kissing – problem solved.” In his typical fashion, Harrison provides insight in just about every sentence he utters including reflections on why Open Space isn't used even more widely than it is given its consistent effectiveness.

Gabrielle Kluck is now the Ombudsman for the UN's World Food Programme in Rome. I caught up with her in this episode as she was winding down her tenure Ombudsing in the Sudan Region of Africa. Gabrielle gives a first-hand account of working in the pressure-cooker of war-torn peacekeeping operations in S. Sudan, Darfur and earlier in Kosovo. She provides a vivid account of the context of hardship duty stations and then tells a story of working a conflict between an international and national staff to engage parallel issues at the group and systemic level. She also shares generally the ways her work builds collaboration internally in order to more effectively build an external peace in the region. “

In this episode, Susan interviews Mel Duncan, the Founding Director and Director of Advocacy and Outreach of Nonviolent Peace Force (NP) which provides unarmed civilian protection in the world's most deadliest of conflicts. In this moving account of the power of “the third side”, Mel talks about those who put themselves in harms way, both nationals and internationals, in conflicts in S. Sudan, Colombia, the Philippines and elsewhere. Mel also talks about how 90% of current victims of current warfare are women and children. Rape, for instance, has become a central strategy of most violent conflict today and NP has tremendous success in stopping further atrocities as Mel describes. He reflects on the origins of NP, as well as his own life path to begin this work when first challenged by a Sufi teacher to “enter the heart of his enemy and work from a place of unity”. He was then further inspired to continue by his stay with Thich Nat Hahn at Plum Village in Southern France.

In this episode, Susan interviews longtime Scientific American writer John Horgan who, drawing from the scientific evidence, counters the conventional wisdom that war is inevitable. John summarizes many of the points in his book that support the conclusion that, biologically speaking, we are just as likely to be peaceful as violent. War is not preordained, and furthermore, it should be thought of as a solvable, scientific problem. John summarizes what we know about human history – that the evidence of violent conflict between humans is just not there for 99% of human history. He makes a strong case for why we should be optimistic that ending war is attainable and what we might focus on to make that happen.

Susan interviews Loretta Raider, a seasoned practitioner of organization development, conflict resolution and large group processes. In response to severe election-related violence, Loretta gives a detailed account of a multi-faceted approach to working throughout Sierra Leone using parts of Future Search, Open Space, conflict resolution and other methodologies to pre-empt future violence. Subsequent elections were peaceful and, while it is hard to be sure of the reasons, it is easy to assume that Loretta and her partners' work contributed to that outcome. Loretta also talks about more recent initiatives to build positive change and peace in communities throughout Sierra Leone during the Ebola crisis and recovery period. Check shownotes @ http://thepeacebuildingpodcast.com

In this episode, Zach describes his extensive experience in different conflict-affected societies from Iraq to East Timor. Our conversation focuses on the conventional wisdom in the field that interventions must be systemic – “peace writ large” – if they are to be effective, and contrasts that thinking with the question of whether smaller initiatives – “peace writ small” -- can make a profound difference, particularly in pervasive, intractable conflict. Zach tells a specific and very moving anecdote about an event in 2005 Iraq in which a single intense interchange between participants embodied many of the identity group tensions in the war-torn country, while shifting the group to a different and much more cohesive place.

Susan interviews Gay Rosenblum –Kumar, a seasoned United Nations veteran, about her early career as a U.N. peace observer in South Africa and her later initiatives to co-develop the U.N.'s system of Peace Development Advisors (PDA's). She provides examples of PDA initiatives in Ghana and Guyana, offers keen insight into the evolution of the peacebuilding field inside the U.N., and talks briefly about her most recent work with GAAMAC on genocide prevention.

Join host Susan Coleman as she interviews Ava Bynum, the 23 year-old Executive Director of Hudson Valley Seed (and Coleman's daughter). Ava talks about what kids learn when they build gardens and grow vegetables – skills like cooperation, patience and an understanding of the natural processes of life that nurture peace. Bynum also talks about how school gardens can be a focal point for collaboration and building communities beyond the classroom.

Join Susan Coleman as she interviews Krister Lowe, an organizational psychologist, Leadership and Team Coach, and the Creator of the Team Coaching Zone podcast. In this episode, Krister talks about his journey from early peacebuilding and global conflict resolution training interventions to the decision to focus on team coaching as a methodology to create scalable collaborative systems change.

Join global consultant and host, Susan Coleman, as she talks with Naghmeh Sobhani about a 15 year program Naghmeh ran in post-conflict Bosnia to build peace through education. Naghmeh is a collaborative negotiation, post-conflict peacebuilding and conflict prevention consultant with expertise in developing and monitoring large-scale initiatives especially within fragile, divided zones.

Join Global Coach and Mediator, Susan Coleman and special guest Peacebuilder, Lindsay Cornelio, as Lindsay describes her master's degree program in Peacemaking and Peacebuilding at New York University Global Affairs program and her subsequent application to a local peacebuilding initiative in Bushwick Brooklyn.

Join Susan Coleman as she interviews Pablo Restrepo, a premier negotiation, leadership and strategy consultant. They reflect together on Pablo's 20+ career in the trenches of working on assignments such as the Colombia-U.S. Free Trade Negotiations, working with ex-combatants from Colombian paramilitary groups, such as the FARC and M-19, and working with Susan at the UN International Criminal Court for the Former Yugoslavia (UNICTY). Pablo reflects on the question of individual consciousness as a barrier to real transformation as discussed by psychologist, Robert Kegan and spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle. Show Notes http://thepeacebuildingpodcast.com/negotiations-to-build-peace-in-colombia-pablo-restrepo-saenz-podcast/

In the first episode of The Peacebuilding Podcast, Susan Coleman, host of the podcast, provides an overview of the podcast and her life and career. For show notes and more complete information, please go to thepeacebuildingpodcast.com.