ICfC - About Us

About Us

BOSTON HEADQUARTERS

Hillel Levine, President and Founder

Dr. Hillel Levine has written numerous books and articles on ethnic violence and conflict resolution, using an approach that is both scholarly and empathetic. His use of evocative narrative and moving life-histories makes his work engaging to non-specialists and popular audiences while remaining influential among academics and policy analysts. His research has provided the basis for an Oscar winning documentary and two of his books are being made into documentaries and a feature-length dramatization.

Hillel is a popular lecturer, guest columnist in newspapers, and makes frequent radio and television appearances. The ICfC is an extension of his life's work into the world of politics and geopolitical peace.

Hillel, in addition to his international work with the ICfC, is also a professor of Sociology and Religion at Boston University, where he has been teaching and researching since 1981. Email.

Anuradha Desai, Executive Director

Anuradha Desai joined the International Center for Conciliation (ICfC) as the first Executive Director in the fall of 2008. In this role she is responsible for building the financial, organizational and administrative base of the organization while scaling its international programs and building its capacity to work with communities around the world through conciliation.

Anuradha graduated with a Masters Degree in Public Administration from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government as a Presidential Scholar. Upon completion of her one-year mid-career program, Anuradha spent a year in Indonesia where she worked as a Senior Advisor for Tifa Foundation and Save the Children.

Prior to Harvard, Anuradha served as the Executive Director of Organizational Development at Citizen Schools, an innovative program that is revolutionizing the field of out-of-school education across the United States. She helped launch the Feinstein International Famine Center at Tufts University and worked at Oxfam America for over a decade in various leadership positions, including as the Director of Major Gifts and serving two terms as an elected staff representative to the Board of Directors. Presently she serves as an Advisor to various nonprofit organizations in the Boston area.

Anuradha was trained as an architect before coming to the U.S. As a DANIDA Fellow she received her graduate degree in urban planning from the Royal Danish Academy in Denmark and her undergraduate degree in Architecture from the Center on Environment, Planning, and Technology in Ahmedabad, India. Email.

David Steele, Senior Associate

Dr. David Steele works with religious, political, and other community actors to effectively facilitate social transformation within situations of conflict in the Balkans, the Middle East, and South Asia. He has developed conflict assessment procedures, facilitated dialogue and problem solving processes, led training workshops in relationship building and conflict resolution, developed cooperative inter-ethnic/sectarian projects in post-conflict reconstruction, established indigenous peacebuilding NGOs, and made oral and written presentations on religion and conflict. Highlights from his experience include: brainstorming and back channel communication between governments during the Kosovo War, training workshops related to the Final Status Talks in Kosovo and for provincial leaders in Iraq, recommendations for reconciliation in Iraq prepared for the US Institute of Peace, a peacebuilding vision and strategy paper for the African Catholic Bishops Conference, and an essay on engaging with religion in conflict situations for top level international negotiators at the Oslo Forum. Previously, Dr. Steele has worked as a program manager at Mercy Corps, as program manager, then interim executive director, at Conflict Management Group in Cambridge, MA, and as a fellow at the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington, DC. Dr. Steele has a Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh, is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, and is the author of numerous publications.

Linda Lam, Administrative and Development Assistant

Linda attended Bates College, where she earned a B.A. in Political Science focusing on International Relations and a minor in Chinese. She joined the International Center for Conciliation in September of 2009 and is currently an Administrative and Development Assistant in the Boston office.

ICfC Interns at Boston Headquarters

Meg attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst where she earned a B.A. in Communication with a focus on film studies. After spending time in Colorado working in TV production, she returned to Boston and focused on pursuing a career in nonprofit development.

Anne Peckham, ICfC Intern

Anne attended Williams College, where she earned a BA in Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies. She focused her senior honors thesis on analyzing changes in the US’s foreign policy towards Sudan. After graduating in 2008, she moved to Cairo, Egypt, to study advanced Arabic through a Fulbright grant. Anne returned to the US at the end of 2009 committed to pursuing a career in human rights and social justice issues.

Nasuf Restelica, ICfC Intern

Nasuf is originally from Hade, Kosovo. He holds a BA in Criminal Justice from Saint Anselm College in Manchester, NH. He is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Ethics and Public Policy at Suffolk University in Boston, MA. He joined the International Center for Conciliation in February 2010 and is currently an intern at the Boston Headquarters.

Eloise Russo, ICfC Intern

Eloise Russo has a BA from Tufts University in Peace & Justice Studies and is currently a second year MBA student at Boston University School of Management concentrating in Public & Nonprofit Management. Eloise worked in the education sector and nonprofit management for five years before starting business school, and is deeply committed to working towards creating positive social change. Eloise joined the International Center for Conciliation in February of 2010 and is currently an intern in the Boston office.

CAMBODIA Program in Phnom Penh

Sophia Dien, ICfC International Fellow

Sophia Dien holds a BA in Psychology from Wellesley College. As the daughter of Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees, she grew up hearing first-hand the stories of her mother’s harrowing escape from a Khmer Rouge work camp, and her stepfather‘s escape from a Vietnamese Communist POW camp. These stories inspired and laid the foundation for her passion to work towards mitigating the various forms of injustice and inequality that marginalized communities and survivors of war encounter. Most recently Sophia has spent time developing and managing culturally-aware domestic violence prevention, conflict resolution, and healthy marriage workshops for refugees from Burma, Bhutan, and Iraq at a grassroots organization in Atlanta, Georgia. Sophia has also worked at The Carter Center, an international humanitarian aid organization opened by former President Jimmy Carter to advance human rights and alleviate disease. Sophia's diverse background includes psychosocial counseling, facilitating healing among rural and inner city families, and conducting oral histories among immigrant and refugee communities. Internationally, Sophia has traveled and worked in Hong Kong, China, and Cambodia. She also studied grassroots development and nonviolent activism in India with Arun Gandhi, the grandson of Mohandas Gandhi and the former director of the M. K. Gandhi Institute for Non-Violence.

PHANN Chandara, ICfC-Cambodia Project Assistant

PHANN Chandara comes from Cambodia's Takeo province. He is currently studying at Cambodia Mekong University to earn a degree in Economic Development. Chandara began volunteering with the local Cambodian NGO Youth for Peace's Peace Education Program in June 2007 and assisted with conducting trainings and organizing an international conference on youth and reconciliation. He has been working at the ICfC-Cambodia office's Justice and History Outreach program since February 2008. Chandara believes that the work that he does with ICfC is very important for his country and for Khmer Rouge survivors as it helps participants and their communities heal painful feelings that linger from their pasts. This work is helping him gain a deep understanding of his country and its history. Chandara recognizes that through his work with ICfC-Cambodia he is making a positive impact on the lives of the rural Cambodians with whom he works.

Tim Minea, ICfC Project Coordiantor

Tim Minea is a Project Coordinator for Justice and History Outreach Project of ICfC in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. As a team leader he encourages the intergenerational dialogue as well as communication between Khmer Rouge survivors and former soldiers to create a safe space about their past experience.

Tim Minea holds a BA in Sociology from Royal University of Phnom Penh in 2004 and is currently pursuing a MA in Sociology and Anthropology at RUPP. He taught for two years at Kas Kralor High School in Battambang Province, a battlefield during the war. From 2007 to 2009, he worked as a research assistant for Laura McGrew, PhD. Candidate at Coventry University, UK, on her dissertation about National Reconciliation in Cambodia.

HENG Sokong holds a BA in English from Asia Euro University in Phnom Penh. Following graduation he worked for six months as a leadership and facilitation volunteer at Youth for Peace. In this position Sokong worked with youth around Cambodia on issues of violence and gender discrimination. Sokong joined ICfC in February 2008 and currently works on the Justice and History Outreach project spending a lot of time in rural areas around Cambodia working with Khmer Rouge survivors to help them heal from their past and learn about the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. Through working at ICfC, Sokong believes that he can learn a lot about what happened to his country during the Khmer Rouge period and help foster positive communication and dialogue about these issues in rural populations. He hopes that working with ICFC will help him to assist the young and old generations in Cambodia to understand about the Khmer Rouge and prevent such violence and tragedy from happening again.

ICfC FELLOWS

Nir Eisikovits, ICfC Fellow

Dr. Eisikovits, an Israeli attorney, earned his PhD in legal and political philosophy from Boston University in 2005. His research focuses on the moral and political dilemmas arising in post-conflict and transitional settings. Some of the questions he is interested in concern the possibility of sympathy between enemies, the feasibility of forgiveness in politics, and the comparative benefits of truth commissions and war crime tribunals for societies emerging from prolonged conflict. Recent scholarly publications include: “"Forget Forgiveness: On The Benefits of Sympathy for Political Reconciliation" (Theoria, 105), "I am the Enemy you Killed my Friend: Rethinking The Legitimacy of Truth Commissions"(Metaphilosophy, 37) and "Moral Luck and the Criminal Law" (in Law and Social Justice, Cambell et al., eds., MIT, 2005). He has also written numerous op-ed pieces on the Middle East conflict for American publications such as The Miami Herald, The Forward and In These Times. Before coming to Boston, he worked at the Tel Aviv District Attorney's office. In addition to his work for the ICfC, Nir is an Assistant Professor of philosophy and Director of the Graduate Program in Ethics and Public Policy at Suffolk University. Email.

Phil Gamaghelyan, ICfC Fellow

Phil is a native of Armenia. He is a lecturer at Tufts Experimental College and the founder and co-director of the Imagine Program for Conflict Transformation. Phil has an MA degree in Conflict Resolution from Brandeis University and training and experience as a conflict group facilitator. Prior to joining ICfC he has worked as a Co-Coordinator of Delegation Leaders Program at Seeds of Peace and as a consultant with Turkish - Armenian Dialogues, the Inter-Communal Violence and Reconciliation project - a joint initiative of The Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He is also the founder and co-facilitator of a Turkish/Armenian Dialogue Group that unites graduate students from Boston-area universities.
Phil's research is focused on identity-based conflicts. He is the author of the article "Intractability of the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict: a myth or a reality?' in Peace and Conflict Monitor, July 2005. Email

Brigitt Keller, ICfC Fellow

Brigitt Keller holds a law degree from Fribourg University Law School in her native Switzerland and an LLM in American Law from Boston University. Originally trained as an educator, she worked for many years in an after school program with children of Turkish immigrants. Prior to her law experience, Brigitt counseled victims of domestic violence and was instrumental in founding the Swiss National Council of Women’s Shelters. For many years, she organized and taught workshops on the prevention of domestic violence, with a special focus on the prevention of sexual abuse of children. After completing her LLM at Boston University, Brigitt began working for the National Police Accountability Project (NPAP) on a Best Practices Manual, where she currently serves as the Executive Director.

Dagmar Kusa, Senior Fellow

Dasha received her MA degree in political science from Comenius University in her native Slovakia. She is pursuing her PhD at Boston University and at the Institute of Ethnology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. She started off in the field of human rights at the Slovak Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, dealing mostly with issues relating to Roma, Hungarian, and Ruthenian minorities in Slovakia. Her thesis focuses on the role of historic memory in perpetuation of ethnic conflict and tensions in Central European politics today. She writes for various international policy journals. Dasha joined ICfC in January 2005 as the first permanent fellow and served as the ICfC Program Director until August 2008. She has led workshops in India, Cambodia, Europe, and the U.S. Currently, Dasha works at the Euroclio - European Association of History Educators - in The Hague. She continues to work with the Center on a part-time basis. Email.

Jina Moore, ICfC Fellow

Jina brings to the Institute a background in historic memory studies and experience in reconciliation workshops between descendants of the perpetrators and the victims of ethnic conflict. She studied Holocaust history and literature in Boston University's University Professors Program, during which she was named a U.S. Truman Scholar. She spent her first year out of college in AmeriCorps and then worked at Harvard University's Nieman Foundation for Journalism. Jina also earned a dual Masters degree in International Affairs and Journalism at Columbia University. She spent a month in Rwanda recently, researching and writing about transitional justice and reconstruction of post-genocide Rwanda. Jina's dream is to start an organization to equip local journalists in countries undercovered by the American press with advanced storytelling skills and help them sell their work to major international markets. From February 2008, Jina will be working in Kigali on a book on life and conciliation efforts in post-conflict Rwanda.

David B. Ramsey, ICfC Fellow

David Baharvar Ramsey is a mediator and lawyer in New York City. He is interested in how business people, lawyers and other professionals and citizens can improve understanding and peace between groups in their societies. While he regularly negotiates agreements relating to business matters, he has also been involved with various public service legal work, including mediating legal cases (employment discrimination, landlord-tenant, divorce, and small claims). At Harvard Law School, David was a teaching assistant at the negotiation workshop, a part of Harvard's Program of Instruction for Lawyers. He also taught mediation to various groups and was a research assistant to instructors at the Program on Negotiation, assisting in the editing of the Handbook Of Dispute Resolution and a book on dealing with emotions in negotiation, and he served as an Executive Editor of the Harvard Negotiation Law Review. David has also taught online negotiation courses for staff of the United Nations Development Program, through the Consensus Building Institute.

Adam Saltsman, ICfC Fellow

Adam holds a BA from Colby College where he graduated Magna Cum Laude with honors in his cultural anthropology major and is currently pursuing his PhD in sociology at Boston College. His research interests include post-conflict struggles over cultural space and the distortion of cultural memory, a topic for which he conducted field work in Vietnam in 2004. Prior to his Fellowship with the ICfC, Adam spent time interning with Human Rights Watch where he helped lead a youth human rights advocacy program. He also worked with victims of human trafficking and political refugees being resettled in Austin, Texas. From January 2006 - July 2007, Adam served as a Fellow for the ICfC in Cambodia, bringing together former Khmer Rouge cadre members and survivors from the Cambodian genocide to develop conciliatory dialogue strategies.

Shanti Sattler, ICfC Fellow

Shanti Sattler of Eureka, California graduated from the International Relations and Peace & Justice Studies at Tufts University. For the past six years she has served as an advisor to several national service organizations and is the former member and current co-chair of Youth Service America's National Youth Advisory Council. During the summer of 2005, she worked with the renowned author, psychologist and former commissioner on South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Dr. Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, in Cape Town, South Africa, assisting with her research on perpetrator remorse and reintegration into post-apartheid society. In 2006, she served on the international student planning committee of the second Women as Global Leaders conference in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. She wrote a senior honors thesis in peace and justice studies on war-affected youth in Northern Uganda and participated in a research trip to Gulu. Shanti joined the International Center for Conciliation in January of 2006. She has been working for the Center in Phnom Penh office, Cambodia, since July 2007.Email.