Our Team
Peace House Staff
Elizabeth V. Hallett
Exectuive Director
Elizabeth V. Hallett has served in Peace House leadership since 2016. She believes that teaching and practicing nonviolent communication is essential and has been involved for many years as a peace activist, from the days of the Vietnam War to the Central American wars to present time. She participated in the Nuremberg Actions resistance at Concord Naval Weapons Station near Martinez, California in 1987-88.
A former Doula and Childbirth Educator with a passion for health-care advocacy, Elizabeth has served as the Communications Director for the California Association of Midwives in the mid-1980’s; as a Doula and childbirth educator; manager of the Ashland Community Hospital Respite Center (1999-2009) and a support group leader for families living with Alzheimer’s and related memory issues (1999-2021).
Having lived in Brazil as a child, she developed a great love for multicultural communities early-on. Her BA is in American Studies and Languages from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. She speaks Portuguese and Spanish and has been involved in the Social Artistry work of the Jean Houston Foundation; the chaplaincy trainings of the Community of Hope, The Center for the Sacred Art of Living and Dying, and the Interfaith Chaplaincy Institute, Berkeley.
Kerul Dyer
Communications Specialist
Uncle Foods Diner Coordinator
Kerul Dyer (she/they) directs Communications and Uncle Food’s Diner for Peace House. Kerul has worked for decades at the intersection of social and environmental justice campaigns, as a communications specialist, nonviolent direct action activist and anti-racist organizer.
Kerul began protecting old growth forests in Oregon as a teenager, and has worked ever since to support economic, ecological, racial, and cultural justice. She co-founded more than ten justice-oriented organizations, including Common Ground Relief and the International Independent Media Center. Her academic studies include journalism, US foreign policy and Middle East studies, and graphic design.
Peace House Board of Directors
James Phillips
Board Chair
Jim Phillips, Ph.D. has been visiting, researching, and writing about Central America since 1974. He spent several years during the 1980s in Honduras and Nicaragua during the Contra War and visited refugee camps in Honduras. He provides expert witness in asylum hearings involving Honduran nationals in U.S. immigration courts. As an engaged anthropologist and professor, Jim has written many articles and chapters about refugee populations, human rights, and social change in Central America. Peace House is pleased to publish many of his pieces in our Clear Actions Newsletter.
He is an Affiliate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology (Ret.) at Southern Oregon University, where he taught for 20 year and still sits on the SOU Native American Studies Advisory Council. He spent several years as a Program Associate for the American Friends (Quakers) Service Committee in New England, promoting public education for a more equitable international economic order. He was a Policy Analyst for Oxfam America, writing policy briefings and advisories for their board and staff. He has also been Executive Director of the Institute for Global Education in western Michigan, an organization similar to Peace House.
Jim’s particular concern and work has always been to understand movements of popular resistance and social change–how and why people organize to change the conditions of their lives for the better. He writes about this and about refugee populations. Jim has ancestors among the Innu, the Indigenous first people of Quebec, and has long been concerned to support the rights and cultures of Indigenous and Native American peoples.
Author of Honduras in Dangerous Times: Resistance and Resilience (Lexington Books, 2015, 2017); and Extracting Honduras: Resource Exploitation, Displacement, and Forced Migration (Lexington Books, 2022).
Connie Saldaña
Board Treasurer
Connie Saldaña began as a Board member for Peace House in the fall of 2015. She has decades of history as a community ally and advocate with Peace House through association with other community organizations. She volunteered in the earliest days with Uncle Food’s Diner. Connie’s employment is with Senior & Disability Services of Rogue Valley Council of Governments, as a planner and program-developer. In addition to sharing community resources and problem-solving over the phone, through the Aging and Disability Resource connection, she administers a small, permanent supportive-housing program for homeless people with disabilities.She also heads efforts regarding emergency preparedness for vulnerable populations. Connie’s passion is serving the community, where her talents are most useful. She is an active volunteer with the local community radio station; with the Community Emergency Response team, and served for several years on the City of Ashland Housing and Human Services Commission.
Cynthia Taylor & Lorraine Cook
Cynthia Taylor is a retired journalist and media consultant for several nature-related nonprofits and is currently on the Core Team for the Southern Oregon Pachamama Alliance. In keeping with the Pachamama Alliance vision, and her own dream of what our world could be, she volunteers with like-minded people and organizations to raise awareness and support action that contributes to the creation of a “spiritually fulfilling, environmentally sustainable and socially just” human presence on the Earth.
Lorraine Cook retired from twenty years on the SOU campus as distance learning program coordinator and student advisor for OHSU School of Nursing and promptly began work with the international organization Pachamama Alliance, offering their Awakening the Dreamer and Game Changer Intensive programs locally. For her, serving on the Peace House board expands connections with other groups like Ashland Together and the Multicultural Center of Southern Oregon, each of which are bringing attention to systemic injustice.
Board Members
Christine Reed
Christine Reed is a retired educator, having previously worked for Central Point School District (1988-2006) as a Special Education Teacher, Middle School Administrator, and District Office Administrator overseeing multiple federal programs and federal budgets as well as the district grant writer for special projects. She is currently cooking and serving food for the Tuesday Community Dinner at the Methodist Church.
“As a retired community member I am looking to expand my “giving back” through meaningful ways to volunteer for worthy causes that have an impact on our community and beyond. I have a particular interest in addressing the needs of those most in need of our support as well as the need to support critical issues such as clean air, water, and our fragile climate.”
Board Secretary
Luciene Cruz
Board Member
Luciene Cruz is a 61-year old Brazilian mother, doula, caregiver, artist, and self-made business woman. Being the first born of 11 children and co-parenting with her mother from a young age, she learned how to foresee the needs of both her siblings and her mother. She has been living in the Rogue Valley for 32 years. She has spent her life as an activist and advocate for women’s rights, child protection, elder protection, and social justice. She brings her rich background and experience into every situation she encounters. One of her main objectives is to ensure that everyone in her community has their basic needs met, especially when it comes to having enough to eat.
Kathleen J. Gamer
Board Memeber
Kathleen J. Gamer is an assistant to the Native American Studies Department at Southern Oregon University. She volunteers with the Friday night Peace Meal at Pioneer Hall in Ashland. At SOU, she has worked for the Women’s Resource center and founded the United Nations program at SOU in 2006. She is a member of Amnesty International and the United Nations Association of Southern Oregon (since 2004). She was an assistant to Professor Robert Harrison at SOU, tutoring students from international backgrounds from 2010 to 2017. Her passion is to educate and inspire students to make a global impact on Peace efforts through conflict resolution in the community as well as internationally. Kathleen speaks Farsi and Arabic, with working knowledge of Swedish and German and worked for the United Nations Office in Tehran, Iran in the 1990’s during the time her ex-husband was head of the Finnish Embassy in Tehran, Iran until 1996.
Michael Niemann
Board Member
Michael Niemann is an award winning author Michael Niemann has long been interested in the sites where ordinary people’s lives and global processes intersect. He’s shared umqombothi with shack dwellers outside Cape Town, interviewed Morgan Tsvangirai, former Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, when he was still a trade union leader, and has seen Eduardo Mondlane’s dorm room at Northwestern University, faithfully recreated at the Museum of the Revolution in Maputo.
His thrillers featuring UN investigator Valentin Vermeulen are published by Coffeetown Press. Legitimate Business and Illicit Trade were published in March 2017. Illegal Holdings came out in March 2018 and won the 2019 Silver Falchion Award for Best Thriller at Killer Nashville. No Right Way went on sale in June 2019. The fifth Vermeulen thriller, Percentages of Guilt followed in November 2020. The Last Straw was published in November 2021.
His short stories have appeared in Vengeance, the 2012 Mystery Writers of America anthology edited by Lee Child, and Mysterical-E. Africa Always Needs Guns, Big Dreams Cost Too Much and Some Kind of Justice are now available as Kindle singles.
On the non-fiction side, he is the author of A Spatial Approach to Regionalism in the Global Economy (2000). His academic articles have appeared in numerous journals and several edited books. Copies are available on this website in the non-fiction section.
Throughout his academic career, he has helped students of all ages and backgrounds to understand their role in constructing the world in which they live, and to take this role seriously.
He grew up in a small town in western Germany before moving to the United States. He has studied at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms Universität in Bonn, Germany, and the Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver where he received his PhD in International Studies. He lives in southern Oregon with his dog Stanley.