Mike Brand, Senior Fellow

Mike is a mass atrocities prevention and human rights advocate, advisor, organizer, and educator. He specializes in peacebuilding, conflict and atrocities prevention, conflict resolution, and post-conflict reconstruction, with a regional focus on Central East Africa. Most of his work focuses on United States foreign policy, partnerships with civil society organizations in-country, and diaspora networks around the world. He has worked for various NGOs in the US, Rwanda, and South Sudan, and conducted fieldwork in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. He has also spent some time working at the US Department of State.

Mike has been published in peer-reviewed journals, publications such as The Hill, IRIN News, and the Huffington Post, and I has been quoted as an expert in his field in various news outlets such as the Financial Times, International Business Times, IRIN News, Voice of America, and the Jewish Journal. He holds a Master’s in International Peace and Conflict Resolution from American University with a concentration in Atrocities Prevention and BA’s in History and Political Science with a concentration in Human Rights from the University of Connecticut.

His website is https://miketheidealist.com/.

James P. Finkel, Senior Fellow

Jim Finkel is the co-founder of the Atrocities Prevention Study Group at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC. Finkel ended his 35-year career as a member of the senior civil service in May 2013. During the final 20 years of his service, he held positions that provided him an insider’s eye view of the evolution of U.S. policy toward the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities. Finkel assisted in crafting Presidential Study Directive 10 (PSD 10), which created the Interagency Atrocities Prevention Board, and frequently attended meetings throughout the first year of the Board’s activities. He also served as the Center for the Prevention of Genocide’s Leonard and Sophie Davis Genocide Prevention Fellow from 2013-2014. Finkel holds a Master’s degree in International Affairs from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a Bachelor of Arts from Rutgers College, Rutgers University.

Charles Hauss, Senior Fellow

Forthcoming book: From Conflict Resolution to Peacebuilding (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020).

Chip Hauss is Senior Fellow for Innovation and an emeritus member of the Board of Directors at the Alliance for Peacebuilding, where he edits its book series on Peace and Security in the Twenty-First century with Rowman and Littlefied. Hauss is a veteran activist and academic who has authored seventeen books, including four on peacebuilding. He is currently writing a core textbook tentatively entitled From Conflict Resolution to Peacebuilding. His website is https://charleshauss.info/.

Anika Maan, Senior Fellow

Anika Maan received her BS in Public Administration and Policy and Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University. She is pursuing her Juris Doctorate (JD) at Washington and Lee University School of Law. Slated for international transactional work, she has a passion for analyzing theory and equity through an interdisciplinary lens. She values dialogue as a tool in collaboration and incorporates her global perspective into her endeavors. Her previous research includes Myanmar’s democratic potential with regard to the Rohingya Crisis and the qualitative impacts of the Virginia Sexual Education (FLE) curriculum. Her current research at the Lemkin Program focuses on the influence of international human rights norms on domestic legal systems.

Emily Sample, Senior Fellow

Emily Sample is a Program Director at Fund for Peace, and a PhD candidate at the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University. Her most recent book “Building Peace in America” was published in August 2020. Previously, served as Executive Director of the Carter School’s Raphaël Lemkin Genocide Prevention Program at the Center for Peacemaking Practice. She has worked as an Associate Director of Education at Holocaust Museum Houston and for the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region Ugandan National Committee on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide and Mass Atrocities. She earned her M.A. in Human Rights and Genocide Studies from Kingston University London and her B.A. from The College of William and Mary. She currently serves on the Executive Board of the International Association of Genocide Scholars and co-founded the Women’s Caucus of Genocide Scholars. Her research spans peacebuilding, climate change adaptation, environmental justice, gender, and mass atrocity prevention.

Gretchen Sandles, Senior Fellow

Gretchen Sandles serves as a volunteer at the Alliance for Peacebuilding. In that role, she has been working on gender and diversity issues. She has also been collaborating with Peace Direct on a project designed to develop a network of organizations throughout the US that build bridges across political, ethnic, religious and other divides. Sandles is a retired US government intelligence analyst. During her 27 year- intelligence career, she worked on the former Soviet Union, East Europe and the Middle East - primarily at the Open Source Center which translates information from media around the world into English for use of the US Government.

Louise Wise, Senior Fellow

Forthcoming book: An Ecology of Social Death: Colonialism, Ecocide, and the Political Economy of Genocide in Sudan (Routledge, 2020).

Dr. Louise Wise is a Lecturer in International Security with the International Relations department at the University of Sussex (UK). Her forthcoming book (Routledge, 2020) is provisionally titled: An Ecology of Social Death: Colonialism, Ecocide, and the Political Economy of Genocide in Sudan. Her scholarship has won awards from learned societies, and has been recognized for combining in-depth interviews with survivors/victims of genocide from Sudan with conceptual analysis in order to deepen our understanding of the meaning of genocide, as well as its lived experience. Her current research develops a theoretical framework for analyzing genocide by drawing on conceptual tools from complexity theory and assemblage thinking, to reconceptualize the “event” of genocide through an emphasis on its processual, relational, systemic, and international dimensions. Dr. Wise has held research and teaching positions at the International State Crime Initiative (ISCI) at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), and Departments of War Studies and Political Economy at King’s College London. Dr. Wise holds a PhD in War Studies, an MRes in Research Methods, and an MA in International Conflict Studies from the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. Her undergraduate training was conducted with the Department of Philosophy at the University of Warwick.