Founder, Karuna Center for Peacebuilding

Dr. Paula Green founded in 1994 the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding, an organization committed to the development and implementation of innovative and sustainable strategies for community peacebuilding and reconciliation. By invitation from local partners, the Center has worked on projects in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Its programs support community voices, visions, and civic engagement. In response to the polarization that accompanied the U.S. 2016 elections, Green turned toward our own troubled and restless country. With neighbors, she co-created Hands Across the Hills for dialogue and cultural exchange between her liberal community in Western Massachusetts and a conservative one in Eastern Kentucky. Their work can inspire us all to become advocates of interpersonal encounters as a way to shed stereotypes and prejudices and to understand and care for one another. Green was named an “Unsung Hero of Compassion” by the Dalai Lama.