Ms. Balderelli is former director of the Community Mediation Center, a multi-service training and mediation program of the Worcester Community Action Council, Inc. that has provided services to local courts, schools, and community organizations since 1986.

She has worked in the mediation field since 1985 when she was trained as a community mediator. She coordinated, at the district court level, a wide variety of cases, including assault and battery, malicious destruction of property, larceny, and disturbing the peace. Ms. Balderelli is also trained in family and divorce mediation and helped parents and adolescents resolve disputes concerning chores, school work, curfews, and respect. She also helped parents resolve custody and visitation issues. She served as coordinator of a peer mediation program at Burncoat high school in Worcester, MA.

Ms. Balderelli is a graduate of Worcester State College and is a member of the National Association of Community Mediation and the Association for Conflict Resolution. She lives in Southbridge, MA.

Following graduation from WPI and World War II service as an officer in the United States Naval Reserve, William P. (Bill) Densmore joined Norton Company, a diversified multinational manufacturing company with annual sales over $1.2 billion. In  1965, he was elected a corporate vice president and then was general manager of a series of major divisions.  After leaving Norton in 1982, he consulted for nonprofits in organization development and strategic planning. He was a founder of the Nonprofit Support Center of the Greater Worcester Community Foundation. He was founding board co-chair for Worcester Area Systems for Affordable Health Care and then executive director of the Colleges of Worcester Consortium. In 1997, he became a founding member of Responsible Wealth, a project of United for a Fair Economy concerned about the growing gap in wealth and income and the excessive political influence of corporations and big money. He has served on twenty-five governing boards of educational and community organizations and has received several awards for service to the community. He and his wife, Martha L. Densmore, have lived in Worcester, Massachusetts since their marriage in 1949. They have three children and four grandchildren.

Joseph de Rivera is Professor of Psychology at Clark University, and Director of its Program in Peace Studies. His work in peace psychology includes The Psychological Dimension of Foreign Policy, many articles and chapters, and the recently published Handbook on Building Cultures of Peace. Educated at Bowdoin College, Yale University, and Stanford University, he served in the Navy’s Medical Service Corps and previously taught at Dartmouth University and New York University before coming to Clark. He is currently involved in devising ways to measure the emotional climate of different nations and the peacefulness of culture in the United States and other countries. He lives in Webster, MA.

Timothy Hutchinson is a Senior at Clark University in Worcester, MA. He is an International Relations major with a Concentration in Peace Studies and has been part of the international peace movement for over four years. His areas of specialty include Mandarin Chinese, Far East policy, and the Military Industrial Complex. After graduation, Tim plans to continue his work in the People's Republic of China and the United States of America.

Michael Langa is a native of South Africa and holds two masters degrees, in Religious Studies and in Psychology, both from South Africa-University of Westville and University of Natal. He has worked for African Constructive for the Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD), from 1998-2001. Michael has traveled extensively to African war-torn countries, including Zimbabwe, Sudan, Nigeria, and Zambia doing Peace Education. In addition, he worked with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, a court-like body assembled after the end of Apartheid. Anybody who felt they had been a victim of violence could come forward and be heard at the Commission. Perpetrators of violence could also give testimony and request amnesty from prosecution. Michael does consulting in the U.S. on Intercultural Conflict Management. He and his family live in Worcester, MA.

Over the past 30 years, John Paul Marosy has served as CEO of leading healthcare organizations, most recently with VNA Private Care, an affiliate of the Visiting Nurse Association of Boston. He is president of Bringing Elder Care Home, a training and consulting firm that works with employers and community organizations to promote elder care/work balance. He has written two books on the subject He holds a masters degree in Urban Affairs from Boston University and a bachelor’s degree in Urban Studies from Saint Peter’s College in Jersey City, NJ. He is past president of the Massachusetts Gerontology Association and a member of the National Speakers Association.

He is a member of the mission council of the Agape Community, a lay Catholic residential community in Hardwick, MA dedicated to peace education with a primary focus on colleges and universities, and including an ecumenical and interfaith embrace. John Paul is also a member of the Faith Into Action committee at St. George’s parish in Worcester, MA. He, his wife Donna Huron Marosy, and their son, Martin, live in Worcester.

Paul Ropp grew up on a small Mennonite family farm near Normal, Illinois in the 1950s. He graduated from Bluffton College in 1966, and went on to graduate school at the University of Michigan where he finished his doctorate in Chinese history in 1974. He has taught Chinese history at Clark University since 1985. He is active in the First Unitarian Church of Worcester, and retains his lifelong interest in nonviolence as the most effective tool for conflict resolution and the promotion of social justice and positive social change. At the First Unitarian Church, he serves on the Peace and Justice Committee that is chaired by his wife, Marjorie. Paul and Marjorie are also active in the Friends of the Sudanese, a support group for Sudanese refugees in the Worcester area. He and his wife, Marjorie, live in Worcester, MA.

Claire Schaeffer-Duffy is a graduate of the University of Virginia with a BA in Political and Social Thought. In 1987, she and her husband, Scott, founded the Saints Francis and Therese Catholic Worker in Worcester, MA, a lay community that offers hospitality to men and women in need and works for peace and justice. Claire began writing for the National Catholic Reporter in 2000. She has reported from Bosnia, Afghanistan, India and Haiti and has received several awards from the Catholic Press Association for her writing. A founding member of the Central Massachusetts Coalition for Peace and Justice, she has helped organize Worcester's Middle East Film Festival for the past three years. She and her husband, Scott Schaeffer Duffy, are the recipients of the Paulist Center's 2007 Isaac Hecker Award for Social Justice. They are the proud parents of four children.

Michael True, is professor emeritus, Assumption College, and the author and editor of twelve books, including An Energy Field More Intense Than War and The Nonviolent Tradition, 1995, and People Power: 50 Peacemakers and Their Communities, 2007. His essays, reviews, and poems have appeared in scholarly and general periodicals, including Commonwealth, America, New Republic, The Progressive, Boston Globe, Harvard Divinity Bulletin. A native of Oklahoma, he is former chair, International Peace Research Association Foundation (IPRAF), and former co-chair, Consortium on Peace Research, Education, and Development (COPRED).

A National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, and twice a Fulbright Scholar in India, Michael True has taught at twenty colleges and universities in this country and abroad, including Duke University (where he completed a doctorate in American literature), Columbia University, University of Hawaii, Nanjing University and Nanjing Normal University (China), Utkal University, Bubaheshwar, and University of Rajasthan, Jaipur (India). The father of six children and ten grandchildren, he lives with his wife, Mary Pat Delaney True, in Worcester, Massachusetts.