Board of Directors

Donna Park

Education Fund Chair

Donna Park spent more than 30 years working in the global pharmaceutical industry. She was the first data manager to receive the Career Achievement Award from the Biostatistics and Data Management Technical Group at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association. She has been successful in working across disciplines, countries, and companies to bring about organizational change and implement global systems with new standards and well-defined processes.

After she retired, she decided to devote herself “to work for a democratic world federation to bring about world peace, eliminate nuclear weapons, protect universal human rights, and restore and sustain our global environment.”

She is a past member of the Cincinnati Peace Committee sponsored by the Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center and received the Margaret Fuller Peace Award in 2018. She is also an advisor to the Young World Federalists and received their Young At Heart award in 2021.

When not serving on the CGS Board, Finance Committee, Leadership Committee, Development Committee, and Strategy Committee, she does triathlons, noting, “At my age you only have to finish in order to get a medal!”

Matt McDonough

CGS Action Network Chair, CGS Education Fund Vice Chair

Matt McDonough is a green energy consultant who has been committed to the cause of world federalism for more than four decades. Following two tours as an Air Force rescuer in Vietnam, he joined the World Federalist Association in 1974 and became president of the Amherst, Massachusetts, chapter. He has since served on regional and national CGS boards.

He “continues to believe that the salvation of the planet is reliant on the establishment of a democratic federation of nations and will continue to spread the word to anyone who willing to listen!”

Evan Freund

CGS Action Network and Education Fund Treasurer

Evan Freund worked as a healthcare delivery executive until 2001, developing and delivering services for inner-city Chicago populations. After retiring, he became a volunteer project manager, consultant, and executive coach with Executive Service Corps of Chicago, assisting many nonprofits in planning, recruitment, and fundraising.

He has served as a leader of the Chicago chapter of CGS for more than 20 years, and on the national Board since 2014. He is also co-chair of the Interfaith Criminal Justice Task Force, which advocates for criminal justice reform in Illinois.

Christine Andrea Kischkat Dolahan

CGS Education Fund Secretary

Christine Andrea Kischkat Dolahan is a doctoral student in psychology at Saybrook University in California, specializing in Spirituality, Consciousness, and Transformative Social Change. Her doctoral research focuses on the process of personal transformation leading to action via transformative learning theory and spirituality. She participated in human rights clubs and Model UN events as a student and has worked in the world federalist movement for several years. She holds an M.A. in art history, anthropology, and archeology from Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg in Germany.

Mr. Bruce Knotts

President

Bruce Knotts was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ethiopia, worked for Raytheon in Saudi Arabia (1976-80) and on a World Bank contract in Somalia (1982-4), before he joined the Department of State as a U.S. diplomat in 1984. Bruce had diplomatic assignments in Greece, Zambia, India, Pakistan, Kenya, Sudan, Cote d’Ivoire and The Gambia, where he served as Deputy Chief of Mission. While in Cote d’Ivoire, Bruce served as the Regional Refugee Coordinator for West Africa. Bruce worked closely with several UN Special Representatives and observed UN peacekeeping operations in Sierra Leone from 2000-2003. Bruce retired from the Foreign Service in 2007 and began directing the Unitarian Universalist United Nations Office (UU-UNO) in 2008. Bruce founded faith-based advocacy for sexual orientation/gender identity human rights at the United Nations and continues to advocate for the rights of women, indigenous peoples and for sustainable development in moral terms of faith and values. Bruce is co-chair of the UN NGO Committee on Human Rights, the chair of the NGO Committee on Disarmament, Peace and Security, a member of steering committee of the NGO UN Security Council Working Group. Bruce retired from the UUA September 30, 2022. Bruce is currently the UN representative of the International Convocation of Unitarian Universalist Women. In 2006, Bruce and Isaac Humphrie were wed in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Brenda Bertsch

Brenda Bertsch is a dentist and founding member of the Greater Cincinnati Chapter of CGS. She has been a member of the national CGS organization since 2010. Her passion and concern for health and well-being is the driving force for her commitment to work for world peace and justice. She feels that “sustainable peace and justice must be found through the establishment of a world government, based on the principles of federalism and democracy.”

Now retired from private practice, she continues to work with clinics and nonprofits. She and her family love hiking and camping across the U.S., about which she says, “If we had a world government, we could drive all over the continent — another goal of mine!”

Tom Camarella

Tom Camarella has served on the Board since 1984. He serves on the Board of Southern California Americans for Democratic Action and has served in leadership roles with Jobs With Peace and the Progressive Democrats of America, among other organizations. He has “spent his whole life trying to implement the ideals of preventing war, curbing the military industrial complex, and promoting civil and human rights, equality, and environmentalism.”

Larry David

For nearly three decades, Larry David was a volunteer for the World Federalist Association, where, as Board Chair he was a leader in transforming the organization into CGS. He is an entrepreneur and project leader experienced in small business development. As co-founder of College Survival, Inc., he oversaw the development and marketing of seven editions of Becoming a Master Student, the best-selling college textbook in America. He is currently chairman of the Board of a medical device company CytoLogic, which is developing a new type of cancer therapy.

Lee Davis

Lee Davis’ interest in world federalism began in graduate school days at Cornell University in the late 1950s when she heard a talk by Norman Cousins. She became involved in the movement in 1986 with the foundation of the Orono Peace Group, which became a dedicated CGS Partners Group. She led the transition of the Orono Peace Group into the Maine Chapter of CGS.

She was a biology professor at the University of Maine for many years, with a focus on animal behavior, specifically female courtship behavior. She belongs to and supports numerous wildlife and conservation organizations, and for several years was a member of the board of the Natural Resources Council of Maine. She is also involved with Earthwatch Expeditions, which engage people in scientific field research and education to promote the understanding and actions necessary for sustainability of ecosystems.

Her academic career has inspired her world federalist activism: “Given the nature of our species, I believe that the only way that we can prevent war is by forming a world federation. We have the behavioral flexibility to create such an organization.”

Hannah Emerson

Hannah Emerson is studying international relations at Webster University in St. Louis. She has worked toward improving city services and opportunities for underprivileged communities in St. Louis and Kansas City and worked with refugees in Germany during the height of the European migration crisis to assist in integration into the community.

She serves on the CGS program committee for peace studies and youth outreach and following completion of her degree programs she plans to work in public service toward increased international cooperation and improving communities around the world.

Sovaida Ma’ani Ewing

Sovaida Ma’ani Ewing is the founder and director of the Center for Peace and Global Governance, a virtual think tank and online forum that pools and proposes principled solutions to pressing global problems through publications, podcasts, lectures, workshops, and targeted consulting. She is an international lawyer with two decades of experience in private and government practice both in England as a barrister-at law and the U.S. as a licensed attorney. She has worked for nearly 20 years as an independent scholar writing and lecturing in the area of global governance and collective security.

She was born to a Baha’i pioneer family in Kenya, and has lived in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and the U.S. She has held a number of positions on various Baha’i elected and appointed institutions and has served on the Board of the Foreign Lawyers Forum, the Board of the Baha’i Justice Society, and the Board of the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington.

David Gallup

David Gallup is president and general counsel of the World Citizen Government, a global public service human rights organization founded in 1954. He is the editor-in-chief of World Citizen News and author of the World Citizen Blog.

He is the past secretary of the United Nations Association Task Forces on UN Restructuring and on Cultures of Peace and has been published in and interviewed by many major global media outlets. He is also the convenor of the World Court of Human Rights Coalition.

Semawit Hagos

Semawit Hagos, originally from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, earned her master’s degree in international relations at Webster University in St. Louis and led the World Citizens Club on campus. She previously worked as a program intern at the Ethiopia branch of U.K.-based nonprofit HelpAge International, which focuses on the right of older people to live dignified, secure, and healthy lives.

Gail Hughes

Gail Hughes began her career as a Peace Corps volunteer English teacher in Lesotho, and later taught Development Studies in Botswana. She went on to teach global studies, sociology, and interdisciplinary social science at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota and served as a faculty member in adult and higher education at Capella University, a completely online national university, until her retirement.

She is the coordinator of the World Federation Virtual Book Club and is a past president of CGS-Minnesota.

Bryan MacPherson

Bryan MacPherson received a B.S. from Oregon State University and a M.S. in Biochemistry from the University for Illinois. He then shifted from science to law and received a J.D. from American University and an LL.M. from the London School of Economics. He spent his working career as an attorney with the Department of Energy.

He has been involved with the organization since 1990, serving in a number of local and national positions. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors and serves as the organization’s General Counsel. He is also serves on the Finance Committee and is a Trustee of the WFA Endowment Fund.

Eston McKeague

Eston McKeague is the president and co-founder of the Young World Federalists, an international organization dedicated to modernizing the movement bringing the message of world federation to a new generation.

He holds a B.A. in Global Affairs with minors in Economics and Religion and Culture from Western Washington University and currently lives in Berlin, Germany. His world federalism is rooted in his belief that “for too long, global decision-making has been in the hands of a few powerful countries and companies. We must redistribute global power and economic wealth if the human species is to address our common challenges.”

David C. Oughton

David C. Oughton has been a Board member of both the St. Louis Chapter of CGS and the national organization for many years. He has taught hundreds of courses in philosophy, the world’s religions, peace studies, and Holocaust studies at Saint. Louis University and other schools in the St. Louis area. He is passionate about promoting the need for a democratic world federation of nations in order to outlaw war, eliminate genocide, and solve our global problems. He argues that the religions of the world have the responsibility of building a firm foundation for a future world federation by promoting the teaching of a world community, world citizenship, humatriotism, the Declaration of a Global Ethic, and the Charter for Compassion.

Jane Shevtsov

Jane Shevtsov teaches math and statistics for life science students at the University of California Los Angeles. Her dissertation research at the University of Georgia in 2012 focused on the analysis, mathematical simulation, and effects of ecological networks such as food webs. Since then, she has primarily focused on teaching and curriculum development in math for life sciences and co-authored the textbook Modeling Life, published in 2017. She has also worked on developing life support systems for space habitats, both as a student intern at NASA and recently in collaboration with individuals in the private space industry.

She has been a world federalist since age 18 and has been involved with CGS for much of that time. Starting as an undergrad, she wrote or co-authored a number of articles on global government and world citizenship for the general public. She is the cofounder of the website World Beyond Borders.

Jerry Tetalman

Jerry Tetalman has been a peace activist since registering for the draft as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War. He graduated from Ohio State University with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing and later went on to receive a Masters Degree in Psychology from the University for Humanistic Studies in San Diego. He worked for a number of years in hospitals, but eventually changed careers to become a Real Estate Broker and Real Estate Investor. He co-authored a book about World Federalism in 2005, called One World Democracy: A Progressive Vision for Enforceable Global Law. He re-established the San Diego Chapter of Citizens for Global Solutions and was the Vice President of California Citizens for Global Solutions. He went on to work as the Development Director of the Democratic World Federalist, in San Francisco. In 2012 he ran for Congress in California’s 49th District, and he won the Democratic Primary but was unable to unseat the incumbent in the general election. He continues speaking and writing about peace, justice, and sustainability and the goal of a Democratic World Federation.

Larry Wittner

Larry Wittner is Professor of History Emeritus at the State University of New York Albany, where he taught courses on the history of U.S. foreign policy and international history for 36 years. Prior to that, he taught history at Hampton Institute, Vassar College, and (under the Fulbright program) at Japanese universities, including the University of Tokyo. He is the author of nine books and the editor or co-editor of another four and has written hundreds of published articles. Among his books — most on issues of war, peace, and international relations — is the award-winning scholarly trilogy The Struggle Against the Bomb (Stanford University Press), a history of the world nuclear disarmament movement. He has served as president of the Peace History Society, co-chair of the Peace History Commission of the International Peace Research Association, and co-chair of the Peace Action national board. His many lectures in dozens of nations have included talks at the Norwegian Nobel Institute and at the United Nations.

He has been awarded fellowships or grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, the MacArthur Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Anne Broderick Zill

Anne Broderick Zill is the founder and director of the Center for Ethics in Action, an organization created to promote women’s leadership across disciplines with a spiritual, values-based perspective to make local and global public policies work better. She has also played leadership roles in many organizations and campaigns including the Women’s Campaign Fund, the Women’s Campaign Research Fund, the Fund for Constitutional Government, and International Action. She has been a foundation program officer with the Stewart Mott Charitable Trust for more than 30 years, focusing on peace, human rights, government and military reform, civil rights and civil liberties, and international reproductive rights.