Board of Directors

Meet our Board of Directors, whose diverse expertise, unwavering commitment, and visionary leadership guide our mission! 

To learn more about the board and its role, you can reference the CGS bylaws.

 

Donna Park, 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

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!”

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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.

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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.

Brenda Bertsch

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

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.”

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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.

Shirley Davis

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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Justin Haner

Justin Haner

Dr. Justin K. Haner is a political scientist and research fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. From traditional security concerns to artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, his scholarship focuses on the transformative power that international law and organizations can have on solving complex global and regional security issues. Committed to ensuring his work resonates beyond the classroom, he campaigns on the dire need to reform the United Nations, including as a co-drafter of the People’s Pact for the Summit of the Future and an active contributor to the Coalition for the UN We Need. Justin is also a committed public servant with twelve years of combined experience in the military and local government. As a former Captain in the US Army Infantry, he led a mechanized rapid reaction force just south of the Korean DMZ and was selected to serve as Executive Officer to the United Nations Command Honor Guard. He currently serves as an elected Representative for Town Meeting and appointed Capital Budget Committee board member in Walpole, MA, where he works on a variety of local issues from promoting racial and gender inclusivity, to reducing his town’s environmental impact.

Gail Hughes

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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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

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

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 Zill

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.

Anthony Vance

Anthony Vance

Senior Representative, Bahá'ís of the U.S. Office of Public Affairs

Anthony oversees the development of the Bahá'ís of the United States Office of Public Affairs programs and strategic direction. He joined the office in 2010 after spending four years at the Baháʼí World Center in Haifa, Israel representing it to the diplomatic community, civil society, and parts of the host government. A lawyer by training, he spent 21 years in the U.S. Agency for International Development in legal and managerial positions in Washington, Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Botswana, and Egypt. Anthony holds a B.A. in Economics, an MBA, and a J.D. from Harvard University.

James Lowell May

James Lowell May

Program Officer

James May is a programme and project development specialist. He has lived in Serbia since 2005, and prior to joining Citizens for Global Solutions, worked across the Western Balkans on a broad range of issues including human, minority and child rights, accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity, Holocaust commemoration, democratic participation, social justice and economic empowerment, and environmental restoration.

James began working in the Western Balkans on issues related to accountability for human rights violations, first for the Youth Initiative for Human Rights, a coalition of NGOs active in the countries of the former Yugoslavia, as the network’s development coordinator, then the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights, leading a research project documenting the nomenclatural of the Milosevic Regime, and then the Federation of Jewish Communities in Serbia, running a Holocaust research and education project.

James then transitioned from accountability to efforts to protect and fulfil the rights of marginalised communities. For a decade James worked for the Centre for Youth Integration, an NGO that provides specialized services for children and youth in street situations in Belgrade, where he began as a volunteer before taking up a permanent role, while concurrently volunteering for community mental health organizations, as well as consultancy work for a number of local and international organizations, and most recently branched out to apply his experience to the environmental sector, focussing on social impact assessments and community-oriented nature-based solutions projects.

James has a degree in Archaeology from University College London. He was born and grew up in Great Britain. He is an avid cyclist.

Honorable David J. Scheffer

Honorable David J. Scheffer

Former U.S. Ambassador

Amb. David J. Scheffer is senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), with a focus on international law and international criminal justice. Scheffer was the Mayer Brown/Robert A. Helman Professor of Law (2006-2020) and is Director Emeritus of the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. He is Professor of Practice at Arizona State University (Washington offices). He was Vice-President of the American Society of International Law (2020-2022) and held the International Francqui Professorship at KU Leuven in Belgium in 2022. From 2012 to 2018 he was the UN Secretary-General’s Special Expert on UN Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials, and he was the Tom A. Bernstein Genocide Prevention Fellow working with the Ferencz International Justice Initiative at the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (2019-2021).

During the second term of the Clinton Administration (1997-2001), Scheffer was the first ever U.S. Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues and led the U.S. delegation to the UN talks establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC). He signed the Rome Statute of the ICC on behalf of the United States on December 31, 2000. He negotiated the creation of five war crimes tribunals: the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, and the ICC. He chaired the Atrocities Prevention Inter-Agency Working Group (1998-2001). During the first term of the Clinton Administration (1993-1997), Scheffer served as senior advisor and counsel to the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Dr. Madeleine Albright, and he served on the Deputies Committee of the National Security Council. Ambassador Scheffer received an A.B. (Government and Economics) from Harvard College, B.A. (Honour School of Jurisprudence) from Oxford University (where he was a Knox Fellow), and LL.M. (International and Comparative Law) from Georgetown University Law Center.

Alex Andrei

Alex Andrei

Director of Technology and Design

Alex is an experienced professional in designing digital products, managing online applications, and providing IT consulting services. Their background is in working with online applications design, digital accessibility, learning management platforms, user experience and interface design for online and mobile applications. They have over 10 years of experience working with higher-education institutions, nonprofits, and business.

He believes that in today’s rapidly evolving landscape, organizations need to adapt and thrive in the digital realm to gain a competitive edge and be as successful as they can be. Alex specializes in supporting organizations in their digital transformation initiatives and creating effective user experiences and driving efficiency through technology to empower people.

As Director of Technology and Design, Alex focuses on identifying opportunities to integrate various technologies in ongoing operations and new initiatives at CGS to support programs, partners, and team members in achieving their goals.

Alex has a passion strategically leveraging cutting edge technologies to maximize the value of what can be done with limited resources to create a lasting impact and great experiences for people.

Jon Kozesky

Jon Kozesky

Director of Development 

Jon brings over 17 years of experience in development and fundraising in both the public and private sectors.  He started his career in politics working in the Ohio Statehouse and later in the office of U.S. Congressman Steven LaTourette, as well as former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. After leaving Capitol Hill, Jon pursued his passion of helping nonprofits secure the resources they needed to best serve their constituents. This passion led to his founding of Jon Thomas Consulting, a boutique nonprofit management and development firm serving organizations across the United States and throughout the world in streamlining their processes and maximizing their revenue growth through grant writing, government affairs, donor stewardship, and major event planning.

Prior to his fundraising career, Jon proudly served his community as a firefighter and water rescue diver. In his personal time, Jon is a champion competitive sailor and a bit of a thrill-seeker, having skydived and bungee jumped on 6 continents.

Hannah Fields

Hannah Fields

Communications Officer

Hannah Fields is a communications and digital content specialist with over ten years of experience working in the nonprofit, global health, and higher education sectors. She has supported organizations, such as Mayo Clinic and the American Academy of Political and Social Science, with editorial projects, digital content management, and a broad range of communications outreach. During her time in global health, she worked alongside Christian Connections for International Health (CCIH) to assist in their mission of advancing health and wholeness for all people through capacity-building, networking, fellowship, and advocacy.

Hannah also has a background in book publishing, having received her Master of Letters in Publishing Studies from the University of Stirling. She has worked with several US and UK publishers to create high-quality printed and digital products for readers. Hannah also founded Folkways Press in 2020 to create a platform for authors of all backgrounds to use the power of their words to address social issues through themes of mental health, human rights, and more.

Marvin Perry

Accounting Manager

Marvin has been working in the areas of HIV/AIDS, international peace and human rights. He has worked with both national and international non-profits in the DC area. Marvin brings years of experience in non-profit finance and administration. Marvin is a certified human resources professional and holds an MBA from Howard University School of Business.

Peter Orvetti

Communications Consultant

Peter Orvetti is an editor and political analyst who has spent most of his career providing daily intelligence briefings for the White House across four presidential administrations, as well as multiple Cabinet agencies, trade associations, and Fortune 500 companies. He is the author of several “Young People’s Guides” to various U.S. federal elections and is a former daily columnist for NBC Universal’s Washington, D.C., website.

He has been involved with CGS and other world federalist organizations for more than a decade and publishes the daily “One World Digest” email newsletter. He is also a theater reviewer and an actor in both professional and amateur productions.

Drea Bergman

Director of Programs

Drea Bergman has been shaping world citizens developing global youth programs as Director of Programs for CGS. She is a public policy researcher with master’s degrees from Maastricht Graduate School of Governance and the United Nations University-MERIT (Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology). She specializes in evidenced-based public policy programs using mixed-methods research and has focused especially on spearheading digital transformation for a variety of NGOs and foundations. Some of her other projects have included research in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. More recently, she has lent her expertise by providing strategic planning for social enterprise start-ups.

Bob Flax

CGS Education Fund President

Bob Flax, Ph.D. is the former Executive Director of Citizens for Global Solutions (now retired). He has spent a lifetime addressing human suffering, first as a psychologist, then as an organization development consultant, and for more than a decade, as a global activist through the World Federalist Movement. He also teaches in the Transformative Social Change Program at Saybrook University.

Bob has a B.A. in Psychology and Philosophy from New York University (1977), an M.A. in Psychology from Long Island University (1980), a Ph.D. in Psychology from Saybrook Institute (1992), an M.A. in Organization Development from Sonoma State University (2007), a Certificate in Global Affairs from New York University (2015) and a Diploma in Global Leadership at the UN Peace University in Costa Rica (2019).

Bob’s love of adventure has led him to international trekking, scuba diving, and climbing the tallest mountains on 3 continents. He also maintains a Buddhist meditation practice and lives in a co-housing community in Northern California.

Rebecca A. Shoot

Executive Director

Rebecca A. Shoot is an international lawyer and democracy and governance practitioner with more than 15 years of experience in the non-governmental, inter-governmental, and private sectors supporting human rights, democratic processes, and the rule of law on five continents.

In nearly a decade with the National Democratic Institute (NDI), Rebecca held numerous positions in headquarters and the field supporting and leading democracy and governance programs in Central and Eastern Europe and Southern and East Africa. She subsequently moved to a leadership role steering NDI’s Governance projects globally and directing programming for the bipartisan House Democracy Partnership of the U.S. House of Representatives. Rebecca created a global parliamentary campaign for Democratic Renewal and Human Rights as Senior Advisor to Parliamentarians for Global Action (PGA), an international network of legislators committed to collaboration to promote democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. Prior to that, she directed PGA’s International Law and Human Rights Programme and ran PGA’s office in The Hague. Most recently, she helmed global programming to promote gender equality and criminal justice reform for the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI).

Rebecca has spoken at high-level conferences and events on five continents (and increasingly, globally through online platforms). Her publications include the first Global Parliamentary Report (IPU & UNDP 2012), Political Parties in Democratic Transitions (DIPD 2012), and Navigating between Scylla and Charybdis: How the International Criminal Court Turned Restraint Into Power Play (Emory Int’l L. Rev. 2018), which was honored with the Emory International Law Review’s Founder’s Award for Excellence in Legal Research and Writing.

Rebecca is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia and is a member of several bar associations, including the American Branch of the International Law Association (ABILA), where she serves as Advocacy Director for the International Criminal Court (ICC) Committee. She served as a Visiting Professional in the Presidency of the ICC and has provided pro bono legal expertise to The Carter Center, International Refugee Assistance Project, United Nations Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances, and U.S. Marine Corps University, where she helped develop the international humanitarian law curriculum.

Rebecca earned a Juris Doctorate with Honors from Emory University School of Law, where she received several academic distinctions, including the David J. Bederman Fellowship in International Law and Conley-Ingram Scholarship for Public Interest Leadership. She earned a Master of Science in Democracy & Democratisation from University College London School of Public Policy and a Bachelor of Arts Magna Cum Laude in Political Science from Kenyon College. She holds certificates in Conflict Analysis from the U.S. Institute of Peace and in Public International Law from The Hague Academy of International Law.

As Executive Director of CGS, Rebecca will continue her current role as Co-Convener of the Washington Working Group for the International Criminal Court (WICC), a diverse coalition of human rights organizations, legal associations, former government officials, and leading legal professionals. CGS and WICC have a rich and intertwined history that this dual appointment brings full circle, with CGS formerly serving as host for the coalition and with several current and former common Board and National Advisory Committee members.

She also acts, directs, and writes for the theater.

Helen Caldicott

Physician, Author, and Speaker

Helen Caldicott is a physician, author, and anti-nuclear advocate. She founded several associations dedicated to opposing the use of nuclear power, depleted uranium munitions, nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons proliferation, and military action in general. In 1980, she founded the Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament (WAND), which was later renamed Women’s Action for New Directions. In 2008, she founded the Helen Caldicott Foundation for a Nuclear Free Future.

Blanche Wiesen Cook

Blanche Wiesen Cook

Professor, Author, and Historian

Blanche Wiesen Cook is a Distinguished Professor of History and Women’s Studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. She is author of a three-volume biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, as well as The Declassified Eisenhower: A Divided Legacy of Peace and Political Warfare.

David Cortright

Author, Activist, and Leader

David Cortright is director of Policy Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame and chair of the Board of the Fourth Freedom Forum. In 1977, Cortright was named the executive director of he Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy (SANE), which under his direction became the largest disarmament organization in the U.S. Cortright initiated the 1987 merger of SANE and the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign and served for a time as co-director of the merged organization. In 2002, he helped to found the Win Without War coalition in opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

He is the author or co-editor of 19 books including Waging Peace in Vietnam: U.S. Soldiers and Veterans Who Opposed the WarGandhi and Beyond: Nonviolence for a New Political Age, and Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas.

Andrea Cousins

Andrea Cousins

Psychologist, Psychoanalyst, and Anthropologist

Andrea Cousins is a psychologist and psychoanalyst who has practiced for more than 30 years. She has a doctorate in anthropology from Harvard University and a Doctor of Psychology degree from the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology. Her father, journalist and peace activist Norman Cousins, served as president of the World Federalist Association and chairman of the Committee for Sane Nuclear Policy, and was honored with recognitions including the United Nations Peace Medal.

Gary Dorrien

Gary Dorrien

Professor, Author, Social Ethicist

Gary Dorrien is the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Religion at Columbia University. An Episcopal priest, he has taught as the Paul E. Raither Distinguished Scholar at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and as Horace De Y. Lentz Visiting Professor at Harvard Divinity School. He is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America’s Religion and Socialism Commission and the author of 18 books on ethics, social theory, philosophy, theology, politics, and intellectual history.

Daniel Ellsberg

Lecturer, Writer, and Activist

Daniel Ellsberg is a political activist and former military analyst. While employed by the RAND Corporation, Ellsberg precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of the U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War, to The New York Times, The Washington Post and other newspapers.

Since the end of the Vietnam War, Ellsberg has continued his political activism, giving lecture tours and speaking out about current events. Ellsberg was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 2006. In 2018, he was awarded the 2018 Olof Palme Prize for his “profound humanism and exceptional moral courage.”

Oscar Andrew Hammerstein

Oscar Andrew Hammerstein

Painter, Writer, Lecturer, and Historian

Oscar Andrew Hammerstein is a painter, writer, and lecturer. He has taught graduate-level courses on New York theatre history and general musical theatre history as an adjunct professor at Columbia University. He is the author of The Hammersteins: A Musical Theatre Family.

Randy Kehler

Randy Kehler

Pacifist Activist

Randy Kehler is a pacifist activist who served 22 months in prison for returning his draft card in 1969 and refusing to seek exemption as a conscientious objector, seeing that as a form of cooperation with the Vietnam war effort. He played a key role in persuading Daniel Ellsberg to release the Pentagon Papers, and later served as executive director of the National Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign. Kehler and his wife Betsy Corner refused to pay taxes for military expenditures, resulting in the federal seizure of their Massachusetts home in 1989. They continue to withhold their federal income taxes.

Gordon Orians

Gordon Orians

Ecologist

Gordon Orians, an ornithologist and ecologist for more than half a century, has focused his work on behavioral ecology and the relationships between ecology and social organization, as well as on the interface between science and public policy. He was director of the University of Washington Seattle’s Institute for Environmental Studies for a decade and has also served on the Board of Directors of the World Wildlife Fund and on state boards of the Nature Conservancy and Audubon.

Orians was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1989 and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1990.

William Pace

International Organizer

William Pace was the founding convenor of the Coalition for an International Criminal Court (ICC) and a co-founder of the International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect. He has been engaged in international justice, rule of law, environmental law, and human rights for four decades, serving as executive director of the World Federalist Movement-Institute for Global Policy, secretary-general of the Hague Appeal for Peace, director of the Center for the Development of International Law, and director of Section Relations of the Concerts for Human Rights Foundation at Amnesty International, among other roles. He is the recipient of the William J. Butler Human Rights Medal from the Urban Morgan Institute for Human Rights and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the ICC.

James T. Ranney

Professor, International Legal Consultant, and Author

James T. Ranney is an adjunct professor of international law at Widener Law School. He co-founded the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center in Montana and served as a legal consultant to the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. He has written extensively on the abolition of nuclear weapons and the establishment of international dispute resolution mechanisms.

Rick Ulfik

Rick Ulfik

The Founder of WE, The World, and the WE Campaign

Rick Ulfik is the founder of We, The World, an international coalition-building organization whose Mission is to maximize social change globally. He and his organization work closely with the New York Center for Nonviolent Communication, where he has been a facilitator since 2004. He is also the co-creator of the annual 11 Days of Global Unity - 11 Ways to Change the World, September 11-21.

He is an award-winning composer and keyboard player who has written, arranged, produced and orchestrated music for television networks, feature films, commercials, and albums. He has performed with Queen Latifah, Phoebe Snow, Carlos Santana, Bernadette Peters, and Judy Collins.

John Stowe

Bishop

John Stowe is the Roman Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Lexington, Kentucky. He is a member of the Order of Friars Minor Conventual, a mendicant religious order founded by Francis of Assisi. In 2015, Pope Francis appointed Stowe bishop of the Diocese of Lexington. He is the Episcopal President of the U.S. board of Pax Christi, an international Catholic Christian peace movement with a focus on human rights, disarmament, nonviolence, and related issues.

Barbara Smith

Author, Activist, and Scholar

Barbara Smith has played a significant role in Black feminism in the U.S. for more than 50 years. She taught at numerous colleges and universities for 25 years and has been published in a wide range of publications including The New York Times Book ReviewMs.Gay Community NewsThe Village Voice, and The Nation.

Among her many honors are the African American Policy Forum Harriet Tubman Lifetime Achievement Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and the Stonewall Award for Service to the Lesbian and Gay Community. In 2014, SUNY Press published Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement Building with Barbara Smith.

William J. Ripple

Conservationist, Author, and Professor

William J. Ripple is a Distinguished Professor of Ecology in the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society at Oregon State University. He has published two books and has authored more than 200 scientific journal articles on topics including conservation, ecology, wildlife, and climate change. He was the co-lead author on the 2020 paper “The World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency,” which was endorsed by more than 14,000 scientist signatories from around the world. He is the director of the Alliance of World Scientists, which has approximately 26,000 scientist members from 180 countries.

Mark Ritchie

President, Global Minnesota

Mark Ritchie is Chair of Minnesota's World Fair Bid Committee Educational Fund. From 2019 - 2022 he served as president of Global Minnesota, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization devoted to advancing international understanding and engagement. Ritchie was Minnesota's elected Secretary of State from 2007 to 2015. Since leaving elected public service, he has led the public-private partnership working to bring a world exposition (World's Fair) to Minnesota and he has served on the board of directors for LifeSource, Communicating for America, U.S. Vote Foundation, and Expo USA. He is also a national advisory board member of the federal Election Assistance Commission, where he serves as National Secretary.

 

Kim Stanley Robinson

Author

Kim Stanley Robinson is the author of many works of science fiction, including the internationally bestselling Mars trilogy, and more recently Red Moon, New York 2140, and The Ministry for the Future. His work has been translated into 25 languages, and won awards including the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards. In 2016, asteroid 72432 was named “Kimrobinson.”

Leila Nadya Sadat

Special Advisor to the ICC Chief Prosecutor, Professor, Author

Leila Sadat is the James Carr Professor of International Criminal Law at Washington University School of Law and the director of the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute. She is an internationally recognized expert on the International Criminal Court (ICC) and served as Special Advisor on Crimes Against Humanity to Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda of the ICC. She is also the director of the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative, a multi-year project to study the problem of crimes against humanity and draft a comprehensive convention addressing their punishment and prevention. She is a former member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, served as the Alexis de Tocqueville Distinguished Fulbright Chair at the University of Cergy-Pontoise in Paris, and is the author of several books.

Martin Sheen

Martin Sheen

Actor, Activist, and Leader

Martin Sheen is an Emmy Award-winning and Golden Globe Award-winning actor who has worked with directors including Francis Ford Coppola and Oliver Stone, in addition to starring as the U.S. president on the long-running television drama “The West Wing.” In his early days as a struggling actor in New York, he met activist Dorothy Day, beginning his lifelong commitment to social justice.

The self-described pacifist was an early opponent of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and has been a consistent opponent of nuclear arms. As honorary mayor of Malibu, California in 1989, he declared the city a nuclear-free zone. Nearly 20 years later, Sheen was arrested during a protest at the Nevada Test Site. Sheen said in 2009 that he had been arrested 66 times for acts of civil disobedience, leading one activist to declare Sheen to have “a rap sheet almost as long as his list of film credits.”

Sheen has also been active in anti-genocide and pro-immigrant causes, as well as in the environmental movement. In 2010, he told a crowd of young people, “While acting is what I do for a living, activism is what I do to stay alive.” In a 1963 episode of “The Outer Limits,” he portrayed a future astronaut wearing a large breast patch that read “UE. Unified Earth.”