Peace On Podcast by The Peace Alliance

RJ Jennings shared a story of his personal journey, as a black male growing up in the South side of Chicago and then moving to live with other family in a different state, and how his life changed. It’s a story about early perceptions planting strong and negative ideas, and how kind mentorship shifted his thinking. Finding people who set better examples, and demonstrated possible paths forward tha...

Steffani Salter  shared a story about an experiment with trust. In the past, she has experienced the pain and frustration that resulted from broken trust, promises made and broken, and the up and down pattern of creating trust and then having it broken. Who can you trust? She began an experiment to only trust herself. The story and the reactions from the breakout rooms were compelling and inspirin...

The Peace Alliance welcomes folks from The King Center as we honor the birthday of Mrs. Coretta Scott King during our National Monthly Peacebuilders Podcast.   The King Center has graciously partnered with The Peace Alliance for a cohort to participate in the Nonviolence 365 training in beloved community. We celebrate this partnership as well as learn more about The King Center with our special gu...

Sequan Prude’s life gave him many challenges. His beginnings were a little rough, from a broken home and parents that both had their own demons, he went to 8 elementary schools, 6 junior high schools and 7 high schools. This rough start led him to make some choices that resulted in his incarceration for more than fourteen years. During that time, he had a few awakenings, and gained a college educa...

General grew up with music and then moved into dance. He has danced in many dance companies, danced and sang on the Broadway stage in CATS, toured with Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon and other shows. He has always leaned in on the arts, and took opportunities that were presented to express himself artistically. At one point, the opportunity came to teach dance, and that has continued. He now is...

Jan Fox-Petersen experienced grief early in her life, when she lost a beloved grandmother at age six. The grief, along with other events that transpired, made her lose her voice, and her will to be heard. It took years and much work to get past these barriers, and she is now a relationship coach and restorative practices advocate in Wichita, inspiring people with principles of restorative practice...

Description: Our March National Peacebuilder, Suraj Budathoki, co founded  Peace Initiative Bhutan  to advance positive peace and reconciliation between Bhutan and the Bhutanese refugees of Nepali origin. These ethnic Bhutanese were forced to flee Bhutan in the early 1990’s. Suraj wrote an article to explain the history of this forced exile: The World’s Happiest Country Needs a Peace and Reconcili...

Marianne Simon  shared a deeply personal story about the evolution of her thoughts about her next steps in life. When she began thinking about finding another man to share her life with after being a widow for six years, after 26 years of marriage, she realized that it was not about finding the next ‘big thing’ in her life - be it another man, or where her career would go next in this chapter of h...

When Jeff Wallach began to plan the story he might tell, he began with change. This story morphed into a story of survival, and about his passion for full expression. In his home, within his own four walls, he was loved and supported, and felt safe. Outside of those walls, he was under attack from bullies, bigotry, and bad humans. In middle school, a teacher advised him to get out of his shell, he...

The Peace On Podcast is your source for inspiring conversations and information from thought leaders across the spectrum on topics related to the strategies of building peace, fostering nonviolence and creating a world that thrives, shifting our understanding toward empathy, compassion and connection. Our guests this month for our National Monthly Peacebuilders Podcast are JoHanna "J" Thompson and...

Karlie Everhart  began with a Maya Angelou quote - “you may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” Her story was about her experiences that began with her feeling as though she was not enough, and collecting evidence to support that feeling. While outward perceptions may have been of a very successful woman in her 20’s, and while she was a str...

Jerry Downs  is an accomplished photographer and artist, and brought a story about the importance of allowing creativity. The fifth in a family of eleven children, when he wasn’t doing well in his first year of school having not attended preschool or kindergarten and not knowing how to read or do simple arithmetic, his teacher met with his parents. Their decision was that until he learned to read,...

We began the New Year of Hope Story Circles with Marie Murtagh. Marie shared a story about personal evolution, and how she once saw herself as small and limited based on her perceptions and circumstances, and has expanded. Especially during the time of Covid, she took on a journey of observation, reflection and study. She felt physically different, and saw that the pillars of society once thought...

Julia Gandy Torres, BCTMB, LMT, M.Div. has been studying the intersection of peacebuilding, spirituality and wellness for over 20 years and will be speaking on Becoming Aware of the Relationship between Spirituality and Inner Peace. Julia is an International Best-Selling Author, HeartMath Coach and Trainer, Canfield Success Trainer, Peace Builder and Advocate, and Board-Certified Massage Therapist...

On November 8, 2022, The Peace Alliance hosted #Peace2thePolls Democracy Vigil, a 14-hour open zoom room where folks from all over the country could come together to celebrate our democracy, share stories of their voting experience, and connect with each other in community. Priestley Johnson, from When We All Vote, shared the importance of voter participation in our midterm elections in her short...

Kevin Winkler shared a story about transitions. His perspective is that when we are going through transitions in life, we don’t really see them as a transition — and after time passes, we have more clarity. His transitions from childhood in rural Oklahoma to living in San Diego, and through three careers — from a dancer, to a career in library science with the New York Public Library, and in his c...

Special Onondaga Thanksgiving Address and Reports from TPA / DoP Strategy Group Committees

Nancy Melius  has lived a rich and varied life, with several different careers evolving over time. Beginning as a dancer, with success on a national tour of CATS and ‘Gypsy’ on Broadway, she moved into fashion design, then interior design, all along building her business acumen and skills. It became important that she combined her creative and business skills in everything that she pursued. She no...

Marie Ukeye  told a beautiful story about her mother. Born in Rwanda in 1934 as one of seven children, she was supported to go to school by her father, a school teacher. When she married, she had eleven children, beginning at age 18 with the last when she was 47. During the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, she lost three of her children, and then lost two more to HIV/AIDS. She proceeded to mother her n...