Erin Breeze, MA

Associate Director, Seeking Common Ground

Erin Breeze is the Associate Director of Seeking Common Ground. She holds a Master of Arts in Peace and Development Studies from the University of Limerick, Ireland, where she studied as an inaugural George J. Mitchell scholar. Erin's thesis explored the challenges political leadership faced in their efforts to work together in Northern Ireland’s first coalition government to implement the historic 1998 agreement. To comprehend the issues that posed the greatest obstacles to full implementation – namely disarmament, decommissioning, policing reform, and the varying public perceptions of the new government - Erin interviewed key political players including Gerry Adams, John Hume, Monica McWilliams, Ian Paisley, Jr., and David Trimble.

It was while working toward a Bachelor of Arts in International Affairs at the University of Colorado at Boulder that Erin’s interest in Northern Ireland began. She was initially drawn by a desire to understand the role the US played as a facilitator of the peace process. Erin’s awareness of how collaborative strategies involving governments, international organizations and civil society could transform conflict further deepened during her time abroad in Geneva, Switzerland, where she interned at the International Peace Bureau and the Hague Appeal for Peace.

Erin has a deep commitment to public service. In 1996, she spent a year as a volunteer for AmeriCorps, the federally funded national service initiative. In 1998, as an intern for the Youth Volunteer Corps in Santa Rosa, California, Erin designed an educational seminar to teach 7th grade students about the subject of child labor that included a service project. Most recently, she was a volunteer teacher at Denver’s The Conflict Center, where she taught anger and conflict management to youth. An advocate of service learning, Erin sees tremendous value in youth and university programs that combine learning with service to create opportunities for young people to both broaden their understanding of issues affecting their communities and develop skills to effect change.

In the fall of 2003, Erin had her first opportunity since returning from Ireland to teach a group of Americans about conflict and the Northern Ireland experience. She co-moderated a senior Honors seminar in Conflict Resolution at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. She believes it is as important for Americans to become more knowledgeable about the complexities of conflict and to build conflict resolution skills as for those living in ‘divided societies’. Erin is excited by the development of conflict resolution curriculum in American schools and the increase in peace studies programs at universities around the country. Erin sees the unique position of the US in the global community as an opportunity for the US to demonstrate the strength of diplomatic alternatives to violent conflict and the potential for multilateral approaches to peacebuilding.

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