Anita Ernstorfer works independently through her own advisory and research firm Untangle (LLC). She is also a Principal Associate with Interpeace/IPAT’s Peace Responsiveness Facility, the Course Director of IPAT’s Effective Advising in Complex Contexts’ course, and a member of the UN Peacebuilding Fund’s Program Support Team. She brings 20 years of international experience to these roles, working in a range of contexts across the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. This includes advisory, facilitation, research and management roles working with peacebuilding, development and humanitarian organizations. Anita specializes in peacebuilding, conflict sensitivity and systems and complexity approaches to enhance the effectiveness and accountability of international initiatives in complex settings. Previously, Anita was the Director of the Peacebuilding Effectiveness Practice at Collaborative Learning (CDA). She also worked as a peacebuilding, conflict prevention, and conflict sensitivity adviser with UNDP and UNICEF, and as a program manager with GIZ on Latin America. Anita has developed new systems based monitoring and evaluation approaches in the peacebuilding and conflict transformation field, and is particularly interested in working with funders and implementers to enhance collective impacts of international initiatives. Anita operates in English, Spanish, and German, and holds a Master of Arts degree in Political Science and Spanish Philology.
Hesta Groenewald is a conflict and peace specialist with 20 years’ experience in programme delivery and management, technical advice and policy advocacy on conflict-sensitive development, gender and conflict and broader peace and security issues. She has particular expertise on conflict-sensitive approaches to aid and has designed, implemented or managed several mechanisms that aimed to improve conflict-sensitive practice through guidance, learning and organisational support. These include two international NGO consortia in the UK that produced seminal guidance documents on conflict sensitivity; a conflict sensitivity mechanism for civil society, government and private sector actors in Uganda; and the multi-donor Conflict Sensitivity Resource Facility supporting donors and NGO implementing partners in South Sudan.
Hesta is an experienced facilitator and trainer and has developed and delivered training sessions and guidance documents to donor and aid recipient governments, UN agencies, local and international civil society on conflict analysis, conflict sensitivity, gender and conflict, and community-based policing. She also has significant people and programme management experience and has twice served on the Organisational Management Team of international peacebuilding NGO, Saferworld – as Head of Region (Uganda, South Sudan and Sudan) and Head of Research and Programme Support.
Originally South African, Hesta has lived and worked in the Netherlands, the UK, Uganda and France. She is therefore used to working in diverse and multi-cultural contexts. Currently, she works as an independent consultant and as Associate Consultant with the PeaceNexus Foundation in Switzerland.
Hesta holds a Masters degree in International Relations from the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa and a post-graduate diploma in International Relations and Development from the Institute for Social Studies in the Netherlands.
Salif Nimaga is a Peacebuilding Consultant based in Berlin, Germany. He has more than 15 years of academic and programming experience in the areas of peacebuilding and transitional justice. Covering a considerable variety of institutional and geographical contexts, he has worked as a Programme Manager for the UN Peacebuilding Fund in the Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO) in New York as well as at the grass-roots and local level in Argentina and the African Great Lakes Region. He leverages this experience in the accompaniment of teams and multi-stakeholder processes through the support of a wide range of partners such as UN agencies, funds and programmes, the World Bank, bilateral development cooperation agencies (GIZ) and civil society organizations.
A lawyer and sociologist by training, he has researched and published on interdisciplinary aspects of transitional justice and dealing with the past during an academic career at Berlin’s Freie Universität and Humboldt Universität. His PhD is dedicated to a methodological foundation of an impact analysis of the international criminal justice regime with a focus on prevention and psycho-social effects on victims of gross human rights violations. Salif is a well-rounded DM&E professional providing support to systemic and participatory conflict analysis, strategic project and programme design, development of theories of change, conflict-sensitive and results-based monitoring as well as formal evaluations and other forms of evaluative exercises.
In addition, he delivers participatory trainings, interactive facilitation of meetings and reflection exercises. Substantial regional expertise in the African Great Lakes Region and West Africa/Sahel and his diverse working languages (English, French, German, Spanish) round out his profile.
Jared L. Ordway is a Senior Associate for the International Peacebuilding Advisory Team. He is a peacebuilding professional specializing in applied practices of multi-stakeholder dialogue, social conflict analysis, intercultural communication, and urban violence prevention. Applying participatory methodologies and systems-oriented concepts in the design and management of conflict intervention and peacebuilding initiatives, Jared accompanies and consults for governmental and non-governmental actors across Western Europe, West Africa, and the Americas, delivering services from strategic advising and technical assistance, to direct process facilitation. As a scholar-practitioner, Jared is regularly involved in professional capacity-building and mentoring activities, providing customized learning-modules and interactive workshops to enhance the conflict-engagement and intercultural competencies of leaders, teams, and organizations. His curriculum design and teaching experience with diverse audiences encompasses traditional, informal and virtual learning spaces, and he has held adjunct teaching appointments at The Columbia University of New York, the National University of Costa Rica, American University’s School of International Service in Washington, DC, as well as the Graduate Program in Mediation and Applied Conflict Studies at Champlain College in Vermont. Jared has a Ph.D. from the University of Bradford (UK) and works professionally in Portuguese, Spanish, and English.
Dr. Nora Refaeil is an attorney by training, and a mediator, coach and trainer by inclination. By calling, Nora is a change catalyst. In the last 20 years, she initiated and facilitated conversations for systemic and sustainable change in a variety of fields: Be it as an attorney advising clients or as a transitional justice expert working with governments and civil society organization on how a society can overcome past human rights violations and work towards reconciliation. Nora also works with a variety of organizations on how to overcome racism and to move towards more just and inclusive institutions. Nora further supports leaders who are motivated to make a difference, take action and contribute to positive change in their organizations, institutions and communities.
Nora worked ten years as an attorney before she moved into the peacebuilding field. She worked on a variety of transitional justice processes and was the Special Adviser on Dealing with the Past and Reconciliation in Pristina, Kosovo. Nora also worked for a variety of organizations including the Conflict Prevention, Peacebuilding and Mediation Instruments Division of the European External Action Service.
Nora is a Senior Associate for Interpeace’s International Peacebuilding Advisory Team and has been part of Interpeace’s core training team designing and conducting the “Effective Advising in Complex Contexts” course since 2013. Nora teaches at the University of Basel and at various institutes and peace academies. Nora is on the Executive Board of the Institute of New Switzerland and the Vice President of the National Commission Against Racism in Switzerland.
Nora can be reached at nora.refaeil@gmail.com and +41 79 592 86 68.
Jeannine Suurmond is an Associate for the International Peacebuilding Advisory Team. She has supported state- and civil society-led peacemaking and peacebuilding efforts in more than ten countries around the world during the last 15 years, living in India, Nepal, Cambodia, and Thailand. Her main areas of expertise are healing, reconciliation, conflict resolution, and mediation; nonviolent communication (NVC); infrastructures for peace; and peace process design and facilitation at multiple tracks.
In Thailand, where she is currently based, Jeannine provides training on healing, conflict transformation, and mediation to government and civil society organizations as well as supports local NVC trainers. She is an associate of the Center for Sustainable Peace and Democratic Development (SeeD) in Cyprus and advisor to the Cambodian Institute for Mediation as well as Women Peacemakers Cambodia. Most recently, she was Senior Learning and Innovation Officer for SeeD, helping to design new applications and strengthen the theoretical basis of the Social Cohesion and Reconciliation (SCORE) Index, a research tool to diagnose the state of governance, social cohesion, economy, and psychosocial wellbeing of countries and communities. Before that, Jeannine worked as a peacebuilding advisor for the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ), advising the Nepalese government on peacebuilding policy and programming and implementing ex-combatant integration, reconciliation, and community mediation programs, together with NGO Pro Public. In the Netherlands, she worked for Kreddha: The International Peace Council for States, Peoples, and Minorities providing mediation support for track 1 and 2 intra-state peace processes in Asia, Africa, and the Pacific. She also consulted for the Clingendael Institute, co-founded the Pax Ludens Foundation, and taught Peace and Conflict Studies at various Dutch universities. Jeannine is a certified NVC trainer and a Ph.D. candidate at Utrecht University. She has an MA degree in Culture and Religion Psychology from the Free University of Amsterdam, as well as various certificates in peacebuilding and mediation from the Peace Action, Training and Research Institute; Inmedio; and the GIZ Academy.