Dot Maver, Ph.D.
Founding President & Trustee of the National Peace Academy USA, Global Alliance Ministries& Infrastructure for Peace
"Lisa Worth Huber is a peace educator with a keen understanding of the depth and breadth of this emerging field. Her capacity to connect personally and professionally, while embodying and reflecting the principles of peace, serves to bring about healthy relationships throughout her life and work. Lisa has a creative and intelligent way of developing cutting edge programs and courses while maintaining a comprehensive worldview, and demonstrates the ability to truly educate - draw forth the best in others. She is intentionally creating the conditions for a culture of peace."
Charles H. Silverstein, Ph.D.
Former Vice President for Academic Affairs
The Graduate Institute
"Lisa is a wonderful being, fully embracing her role and walking her talk as a teacher of conflict transformation and peacebuilding. Lisa created, designed, and implemented the Master of Arts program in Conflict Transformation in 2005, which was the first of its kind in the state of Connecticut. In this MA program, Lisa included fundamental methodologies of peacebuilding, the sociology of gender, and race issues, the need to celebrate diversity, and the development of empathy and compassion. She has developed programs for mitigating bullying, and is a certified Kingian Nonviolence educator.
Lisa has also trained in the Alternative to Violence Project and has inspired students to work inside the prisons utilizing that methodology. In addition, she has received training in Restorative Justice Practices and has worked with at-risk youth in urban settings such as Hartford, Bridgeport and New Haven. When facilitating programs addressing racial tensions, gang violence and bullying, she utilizes creative arts such as storytelling and poetry within the peacebuilding strategies.
Lisa serves as chair on the board of the National Peace Academy, and I am so impressed and supportive of her work that I maintain a continuing pledge to that organization (www.nationalpeaceacademy.us).
Lastly, I would like to say that Lisa is not only professional, but also very personable, polished and delightful to work with."
Mino Lora-Braswell, MA
Co-Executive & Program Director, People's Theatre Project Washington Heights, NY
http://www.peoplestheatreproject.org
"As our director, guide and colleague Lisa encouraged all of us to find our personal path towards peace in our own unique way. She was a peacemaker at each moment when conflict would arise and would always use it as a brave moment for teaching. Lisa made my experience during my MA studies a truly enriching one. I was so honored and proud to have her as an educator and friend who helped nurture my own peace project as it was being born.
During my time studying with Lisa, and thanks to her encouragement and guidance, I co-founded People's Theatre Project (PTP). Today, People's Theatre Project is an arts and social justice organization based in Northern Manhattan. People's Theatre Project unites members of underrepresented communities to raise awareness of their shared struggles through the personally and socially transformative process of collaborative theatre making. Since 2009 we have served over 5000 people in our immigrant and working class community and have created dozens of performances with our neighbors, ages 5-95, around issues important to them such as immigration injustice, tenant abuse, police brutality, racial profiling, bullying and healthy eating. With People's Theatre Project we have been able to put into practice so many of the values that Lisa so confidently instilled in us when thinking about creating peace in the world: dialogue, collaboration, safe spaces and active participation in our lives.
Thank you Lisa for all your support throughout the years. I hope our work with PTP furthers the beautiful and important peace work you do with your community each and every day!”
Erica Stinziani, MA
Art Teacher, Photographer, Filmmaker
New Britain, CT
"How many people can say a graduate course changed the course of their life? How many people can say a teacher was their greatest mentor? Being part of the Conflict Transformation Program with Dr. Lisa Worth Huber has given me both these gifts.
I am an artist and art teacher in an inner city school. Working in an urban public school, I was looking for a masters program that would bring me to the next level with my teaching. All I could see was conflict all around me. Failing schools, stressed out teachers, administrators trying everything all at once and the true victims were the students who acted out in the only way they knew how, with violence in their words and actions. I knew that not meeting the students' needs was creating a culture of escalating conflict in our school, but no one had the answers.
Through my study with Dr. Huber in the Conflict Transformation program, I have learned how to use compassion, empathy, forgiveness, mental journeying, storytelling, theater and art to create a culture of compassion in my classroom. Each learning experience was not only rich in theory and research, but also inspired me as a teacher. After many months, I started to notice a change. There was a change in my students for sure, but more surprising was the change in myself. Through using the skills from Conflict Transformation, I was becoming more confident in my own ability to incite change.
Lisa encouraged me to rekindle my love of filmmaking and create a documentary film. The film explores the how one woman transformed her inner conflicts and demons through writing. It is her journey from being a privileged prep school girl to finding herself in York prison addicted to drugs, with no hope, until she entered a writing group with Wally Lamb. Her mentorship with Wally parallels my mentorship with Lisa through this program. Reconnecting with my love of filmmaking and storytelling has reignited my "pilot light" that I thought had burned out.
I had hoped that this course would help me learn to deal with the conflict in my professional life, but I never dreamed that it would also transform my personal life. I attribute this to Lisa and her gift as a teacher and mentor. She is one of the great ones."
Jim Buckley, MA
Nature Design Architect
Worcester, VT
"I found Lisa's academic knowledge base to be extensive and wide ranging, attuned to global wisdom, global consciousness, and global wellbeing. She is one of the early practitioners of the conflict transformation school of practice in the Peace community; where systemic reasons for conflict are addressed to end the cycle of conflict. Her analytical skills and ability to grasp new ideas and adjust to new situations are exceptional.
Because of her holistic outlook she is able to combine academic rigor and visionary thinking, with a deep sense of the "other." Lisa, a deep listener herself, has the understanding of the transcendent nature of dialogue; whether working with persons in need, or mediating disparate points of view. She is also a leader in the empathetic way based in a deep sense of wellbeing for others tempered by discrimination and judgment and complemented by her message of hope. In short she is attuned to the practice of right actions. She is also able to connect people to deep lessons of learning through her adept art of storytelling."
Kate Corcoran, MA
Educator and Peacebuilder
New Haven, CT
"Working with Lisa Worth Huber, Ph.D., as my Academic Director, in the Conflict Transformation program at The Graduate Institute, has been nothing short of revolutionary. The curriculum Lisa designed is perfectly tailored to my needs as an educator, whose main goal is to create a classroom community where students can express their needs safely, while developing a deep compassion, for not only each other, but on a global level. It has been truly overwhelming, and left me full of hope for a greater future, to watch my students use methods of non-violent communication, access their ability to forgive, show great compassion for an ever-changing world, and apply restorative justice practices through my guidance. It is a piece of education that is missing, sadly, and must be brought to our school systems worldwide. The program Lisa developed has opened my eyes to many possibilities in making this dream come true. Now I am open to creating a peace education curriculum, facilitating training and consulting in my school. Conflict Transformation is not just for educators, but for all who seek to find a better way to communicate safely in a compassionate world."