Christa Drew has a longstanding personal and professional commitment to nonviolence and social justice. Christa earned a Bachelor’s degree in Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution from Syracuse University and was awarded the Chancellor’s Award for Public Service at graduation. After college she served as an AmeriCorps volunteer working with the incarcerated population and on restorative justice. Christa then spent more than 10 years founding and managing nonprofit organizations and coalitions, gaining skills in community organizing, facilitation, policy advocacy, grant writing, communications, and more. Christa’s work has largely focused on conflict resolution, hunger, food policy, and public health.

Christa earned a Masters of Public Policy and Administration from University of Massachusetts Amherst with a focus on food policy and served as the Food Science Policy Fellow, Sylvia Rowe Fellow, and the Scientific Integrity Fellow. Christa was awarded the Hertz Award for Public Service upon graduation from UMass. She currently serves on the Steering Committee for Pioneer Valley Grows and Food Solutions New England while also working on food policy issues and food systems planning for Massachusetts and New England.

Prior to working for the Center for Nonviolent Solutions, Sam coordinated Educators for Social Responsibility’s Stories Project: Exploring Conflict and Character Through Literature and Language Arts. In high schools and colleges, he has taught: History, English, Computers, Speech, and Peace Studies. Sam was also the conflict intervention coordinator for Collins Middle School in Salem, MA, where he developed a peer mediation program, an anti-harassment/anti-bias peer education program that was deemed a model for the state by the Massachusetts Department of Education, and a comprehensive teen-dating-violence prevention model.

Sam has spoken at many colleges and universities around the country including U.C. Berkeley, Harvard, M.I.T., Brandeis, Lesley, Bryn Mawr, Haverford, Catholic University, American University, Bennington, Yale, the University of Phoenix, Arizona State University, and UCLA. Diener has a Masters of Education in Curriculum and Instruction with a Focus on Peaceable Schools from Lesley University.