Judith Thompson, Ph.D., is a scholar-practitioner with over thirty years of experience in inter-communal dialogue, psycho-social healing, leadership development and community organizing. She has specialized in the development and implementation of compassion-based programs aimed at healing the wounds within and between people. One such organization, Children of War, Inc. served as a breakthrough model for community organizing by combining insights from trauma healing, human potential research and social change activism in a grassroots movement for teenagers from over 42 countries. The program won numerous awards including the Reebok Human Rights Award. Her research interests have focused on how compassion arises in the process of social healing, and she has presented on this topic throughout the U.S., in Bosnia, South Africa, Germany, Northern Ireland and Colombia. As an organizational leader, project manager and facilitator she has worked with people from over 20 countries and has a specific longstanding commitment to peace building in Israel and Palestine where she has worked with young people and has convened dialogue between Israeli and Palestinian mental health workers. She has had the pleasure of a longstanding relationship with Global Citizens Circle in a number of capacities, including being a featured guest in 1988 with Arn Chorn-Pond and Harry Belafonte in a Circle entitled Children of War: From Despair to Hope.

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