Myrieme Churchill is the Executive Director of Parents for Peace (P4P). Myrieme has overseen the creation, development, and implementation of a national helpline for individuals worried about a loved one falling into extremism. She has led hundreds of intervention sessions with families and individuals across the extremist ideology spectrum. Under her strategic leadership Parents for Peace has developed partnerships with a range of organizations from across the field including Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Georgia State University, NORC at UChicago, and the Anti-Defamation League. Parents for Peace has also been awarded significant funding and support from the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the National Institute of Justice (NIJ).
After majoring in Counseling Psychology at Institut Mediterraneen in 1986, she intervened with North African immigrants trafficked into sex-work in Marseille and facilitated group therapy at a juvenile detention center in Nice. In the United States, she earned a master’s degree in Counseling Psychology at Cambridge College in 1996, where she created a curriculum adopted by the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health for career development of mentally ill and disabled clients. She directed two Boston MetroWest outpatient centers and worked as a group therapy counselor in an inpatient dual-diagnosis unit at Beth Israel Deaconess.
The work she has contributed to at Parents for Peace has been featured in Bloomberg, MSNBC, the Washington Post, NPR, WBUR, PBS, and the Boston Globe. She has presented at the European Parliament, Harvard University, Facebook and Twitter headquarters, and on Capitol Hill.
Diána Hughes, M.A. is the Senior Director of Strategy and Operations at Parents for Peace. Diána oversees its operations and administration within the organization, including federal and foundation grants.
Before joining the team, Diána worked at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Emergency Preparedness, Research, Evaluation, and Practice (EPREP), contributing to research related to extremism, radicalization, terrorism, and human trafficking. Her academic research has mainly focused on the psychology of violent extremism and terrorism. Diána has coauthored several publications on these topics.
Kevin Lambert is the Program Director at Parents for Peace. Kevin oversees the interventions, helpline, support group, and internship program. He has worked with the organization since 2021 and resides in Baltimore, Maryland.
Prior to joining Parents for Peace, Kevin was a crisis counselor with the Baltimore Child and Adolescent Response System (BCARS), a mental health crisis response team serving children and their families. He also earned the 2022 Amy Cohen-Callow Award of Excellence from the University of Maryland School of Social work for his intern work with the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3) at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Kevin is also a military veteran of the United States Air Force.
Pardeep Kaleka is an expert on addressing communal trauma who has worked with survivors, former extremists, community partners, policymakers, law enforcement, mental health practitioners, and educational staff.
He co-founded the public health organization Serve2Unite in response to the 2012 Sikh Temple hate crime outside Milwaukee, during which his father was murdered. He co-authored the memoir “The Gift of Our Wounds: A Sikh and a Former White Supremacist Find Forgiveness After Hate” (St. Martins Press).
As an intervention specialist with Parents for Peace’s helpline, he has successfully assisted American families of diverse backgrounds in rescuing loved ones from extremism.
Dr. Schumacher is a Clinical Psychologist. Formerly a Lieutenant Commander in the United States Navy, he is an expert in response to disasters, psychiatric emergences and behavioral threat assessment and mitigation.
He currently publishes & supervises PhD student research in radicalization, threat assessment and moral injury.
He earned his Ph.D. in clinical psychology in 2011 from Northern Illinois University. He completed undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Chicago.
Arno Michaelis is a speaker, filmmaker, author of My Life After Hate, and co-author of The Gift of Our Wounds. His storytelling stems from an intention to inspire people to see themselves in others, and see others in themselves. Arno draws from his lived experience as a former Neo-Nazi to work as an interventionist at Parents 4 Peace, helping to lead people away from all violent extremist ideologies, and to support their families. Refuge, his latest film project, is now available on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Google Play, and Vudu. Arno has been a professional public speaker since 2010, and has captivated audiences around the world. His keynotes and workshops leverage noble qualities of compassion, curiosity, and kindness to engage all human beings, building foundations for happiness and success. Uniquely positioned to facilitate healing for people who have been targets of hate, he has dedicated the past 14 years to bringing about a society where all people are valued and included.
A native of Toronto, Shaikh is former jihadist extremist who now helps deradicalize young people caught up in extremism. His journey into extremism began in Canada and eventually brought him to Pakistan. After the 9/11 attacks challenged his extremist worldview, he studied Arabic and Islamic Studies in Syria and deradicalized. Back in Canada, he was recruited by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to participate in several undercover counter-terror investigations. An internationally-recognized expert in violent extremism, he serves as a Professor of Public Safety at Seneca College is the subject of a permanent exhibit at Washington D.C.’s, New International Spy Museum.
