Who We Are

Staff

Sonia Silbert, Director
Sonia Silbert is originally from New York City and has been living in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood of DC since 2006.  She has been an organizer and activist on peace and justice issues for many years.  Most recently she has worked for No War, No Warming, CODEPINK: Women for Peace and organized with Common Ground Collective in post-Katrina New Orleans.  In 2010 she was awarded a Building the Next Generation of Women Leaders Fellowship from the National Council for Research on Women. She has a certificate in Non-Profit Management from Georgetown University and joined the Washington Peace Center as Co-Coordinator in May, 2008.

Dany Sigwalt, Progam Manager
Helga Herz Peacemaking Fellow
Dany Sigwalt is a third generation washingtonian who grew up in Columbia Heights. As the daughter of academics, she has been a proponent of combining theory and practice in her activist work long before learning the term praxis in the classroom. Her student-activist career focused on mixed-race, queer, and student of color issues at Macalester College in St. Paul, MN. Most recently, Dany came to us after working at Words Beats & Life, a youth development/hip-hop nonprofit housed directly above WPC’s office. She has been a core-organizing member of the DC Childcare Collective for two years- an all-volunteer organization that seeks to shift social understanding of childcare from being disproportionately placed on women of color from low-income backgrounds to community work.

Washington Peace Center Coordinating Board

The Coordinating Board is responsible for the WPC's ongoing viability. They set priorities for our work and ensure we have the resources and support needed to meet our goal.  They are engaged directly with our programmatic work and meet monthly.

Pedro Cruz 
Pedro Cruz is an experienced organizer who has worked for years with DC day laborers both independently and with DC Jobs with Justice. They have recently formed Trabajadores de Washington DC and are fighting to create a day laborer center.  In 2005 he was key in the student and worker living wage victory at Georgetown University.  He is originally from the Dominican Republic and is currently a graduate student at Georgetown.

Robby Diesu
Robby Diesu is a recent graduate of Catholic University.  Since 2007, Robby has worked as a civilian ally with Iraq Veterans Against the War, helping to develop the DC chapter office and assisting in the Winter Solider Campaign to bring the voices of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans to the America people.  After a series of bashings and hate letters posted in the school newspaper, Robby helped found CUAllies, the unofficial gay-straight alliances at the Catholic University of America.  He is a member of Civilian-Soldier Alliance and is on the Advisory Council for Peace of the Action.

Ese Emerhi
Ese Emerhi is an nonprofit management consultant, and has spent the last few years working on human rights issues here in the U.S. and in the Middle East & North Africa region pushing for progressive democratic initiatives that promote freedom and the respect of human rights. She is also a board member of the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network and serves as the Chair of the Chapters committee, coordinating and executing core programming slates and manuals that ensure the growth of the network. In addition, she is currently working with clients in Sierra Leone to provide concrete educational tools to children in the rural parts of the country.

Julian Forth
Julian Forth is a graduate from Messiah College (’06) and from Duke University’s Divinity School (’09).  He has lectured in the area of religion, violence/nonviolence, and systemic injustice.  He has extensive experience in service to low-income and homeless populations (i.e. hospice care, employment, tutoring), in interfaith dialogues, and has supported numerous causes such as anti-war demonstrations, LGBTQ rights, and AIDS awareness.  Currently, he resides in DC working as Housing Counselor/Trainer providing tenant rights education for Housing Counseling Services.

Katherine Fuchs
Katherine Fuchs has been living in DC since 2006 and is currently the Program Director at the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability. Her experience spans a decade of educational and advocacy campaigns focused on nuclear, foreign policy, and human rights issues. Some of the organizations that Katherine has worked with in the past include: the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, Peace Action, the Wisconsin Network for Peace & Justice, LGBT Center Advocates, the Wisconsin Fair Trade Campaign, and a variety of voter rights groups in her hometown of Milwaukee, where she received the Future of Change award from Community Shares of Wisconsin for her work around elections. In her spare time, Katherine enjoys gardening, volunteering with the Grassroots Education Project in DC, and supporting her local PBS station.

Lacy MacAuley
Lacy MacAuley is a global justice activist, antiwar activist, and environmentalist with a passion for amplifying voices that have been silenced and spotlighting those who work for a better world. She is currently the Media Relations Manager for the progressive think-tank, Institute for Policy Studies.  Previously, she worked with Massey Media as Project Director, coordinating media relations for organizations working for positive change, and was co-founder of the DC Resistance Media Collective in 2005.  

Paul Magno
Paul Magno has been actively involved in the Washington Peace Center since 2004 as a coordinator and a board member. He is currently on staff of Witness for Peace, an organization of people of faith and conscience engaged in supporting peace, justice and sustainable economies in the Americas. He spent 20 months in federal prison for nonviolent resistance to the nuclear arms race following a Plowshares action in Florida in 1984. He has been associated with the Catholic Worker movement for nearly three decades and operates the Catholic Worker Bookstore, specializing in titles that promote peace, social justice, spirituality and the Catholic Worker Movement.

Marie Soveroski
Marie Soveroski is Managing Director at EarthRights International, an organization that combines the power of law and the power of people in defense of human rights and the environment. Prior to that she served as Director of the European Centre for Judges and Lawyers in Luxembourg. Her focus and passion is environmental and human rights law and protection, which she has pursued both as a lawyer and as an activist. She earned her JD at Gonzaga University School of Law as a Thomas More Scholar, a full-tuition scholarship program for persons pursuing a career in law in the public interest.

David Thurston 
David Thurston is a native of Washington D.C. who is deeply involved in the movement for immigrant rights in the metropolitan area.  David helped to found both the DC Alliance for Immigrant Justice and the Metro D.C. Interfaith Sanctuary Network.  David joined the Washington Peace Center Board in February 2008 and is deeply committed to building movements against war and U.S. imperialism.

Jane Zara
Jane Zara has a JD and a PhD in biochemistry/molecular biology.  She is a former ANC Commissioner in Mt. Pleasant, co-founder of DC Metro Science for the People, and a member of the People’s Property Campaign of Empower DC.  She is presently involved in local struggles to institute a moratorium on the massive giveaways of public property to developers in DC and is a legal advocate for those experiencing homelessness. 

Washington Peace Center Advisory Council
The Advisory Council meets once a year to provide WPC board and staff feedback and input into our organizational priorities and work.  They provide us formal connection with many of our most important allies to ensure we're working in collaboration, as well as advice and experience from their own personal work.

Brian Anders, Empower DC

Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK: Women for Peace

Phyllis Bennis, Institute for Policy Studies

Nadine Bloch, activist/artist/educator, Washington Action Group (WAG)

Mackenzie Baris, Jobs with Justice DC

Adam Eidinger, Mintwood Media Collective

Lisa Fithian, United for Peace and Justice, Alliance of Community Trainers, former Peace Center Coordinator

Humberto Garcez, Manuel Zapata Olivella Afro-Latino Development Center

Graylan Hagler, Ministers for Racial, Social and Economic Justice

Anise Jenkins, Stand up! for Democracy in DC (Free DC)

Geoff Millard, Iraq Veterans Against the War

Andy Shallal, Busboys and Poets, Iraqi Voices for Peace

B Wardlaw, Peace Center supporter

Emira Woods, Foreign Policy in Focus, Institute for Policy Studies

Laura Worby, Nurse Practitioner and health care advocate

Rev. Yearwood, Hip-Hop Caucus

Partners and other relationships and affiliations
In order to effectively achieve its mission and strengthen its network, WPC is a member organization of United for Peace and Justice and an affiliate of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC).  In addition, during 2010, the Peace Center has worked with/partnered with over 50 local and national organizations, a full listing of which can be found here.