Nominations for the ballot for the upcoming National Council election are now being accepted. Please click on this link to download a PDF of the National Council Nominations Form 2013.
THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
Josie Chrosniak, HM – National Council Chair
Sr. Josie Chrosniak, HM, who has served on the council since 2006, is a member of the Sisters of the Humility of Mary. Sr. Josie is an educator by profession and has taught for over 20 years in both suburban and inner-city high schools as well as the local community college. Until recently, she was the director of Heartbeats, a non-profit organization that networks with, and markets the artwork for women, developing world and minority artists. Much of her work at Heartbeats focused on educating the public about the policies of fair trade and the impact of these policies on the people of developing world countries. Currently, Sr. Josie is involved with a number of organizations in the Cleveland area that advocate for justice. She assists the director of the Diocesan Commission on Catholic Community Action with projects such as immigration, poverty and fair trade. She is also a trustee on the board of directors for the Commission. She continues her involvement with fair trade by serving on the board of the local Fair Trade Store as well as working with the Fair Trade Planning Group that focuses on educating for fair trade choices in the Northeastern Ohio area. She serves on the HM Community Social Justice Committee and is a member of the Collaborative Initiative to End Human Trafficking. This group educates and advocates for the prevention and abolition of human trafficking while connecting services on behalf of trafficked persons. She serves on her community’s Haiti committee and has had the opportunity to visit Haiti a number of times. She is a member of the Cleveland Diocesan Global Solidarity Council and the Cleveland Diocesan Public Policy Council both of which work for change in a systemic way as well as providing services in response to local, national and international needs.
Cathy Woodson – Vice Chair
Cathy is an active member of an inner city parish in the Diocese of Richmond. At the parish level, she has served as youth minister, Adult Faith Formation Coordinator, Social Justice Coordinator, and on a local Catholic school board of directors. At the diocesan level, she served on the Commission for Black Catholics, Women Commission, and the Justice & Peace Commission. Currently, she is in her 3rd year of service on the Pax Christi Anti-Racism Team. Cathy’s professional work has been with 501c3 organizations, providing direct services and advocacy, and for the past 15 years, working as a community organizer with a statewide grassroots organization in Virginia. Her community organizing work has been with communities whose voices are traditionally unheard, so her focus is working with those affected by injustices and moving them to advocate for themselves.
Cynthia Morris-Colbert – Treasurer
Cynthia Morris-Colbert holds holds a master’s degree in business administration (concentration on women in leadership) from Trinity University, with a bachelor’s degree in human relations and a minor in theology. Cynthia has served as the coordinator for the annual Catholic Social Minsitry Gathering in Washington, D.C. during her time as the education coordinator for the Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. She has spoken at national conferences on HIV and AIDS in the African American community and co-developed And the Children Shall Fly, an HIV and AIDS resource for educators, parents, and children in 3rd-6th grade.
Nick Mele – Secretary
After Peace Corps service in South Korea, Nick joined the United States Information Agency as a foreign service officer. With over 25 years of service in Asia and Africa, Nick retired at the end of 1999 and worked as Communications Director for Nonviolent Peaceforce for six years. Part of that time, he was a member of a Pax Christi sponsored multi-cultural conflict resolution training group. Nick writes and speaks about foreign policy issues, nonviolent intervention and cross-cultural topics for audiences in this country and abroad.
Catherine Crosby
Catherine Crosby coordinates Pax Christi Atlanta and serves in several ministries at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, located directly across from the tombs of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King, and co-founded by St. Katharine Drexel in 1912 to serve African-American Catholics. Cathy’s professional life and her passion for peace based in justice meet in her work consulting on Pax Christi affiliate formation, in adult education and speaking opportunities, particularly to JustFaith groups, in retreats with homeless women and in the ministry of individual and group spiritual direction. As a board member of Christian Foundation for Children and Aging, and sponsor of five young women and one elderly woman, Cathy has traveled to Haiti, Guatemala, Mexico and Africa and been immersed in profound experiences of hope, heartbreak and insights into the reality of peacemaking. Her work with Faith Alliance of Metro Atlanta and the Atlanta Interfaith Leaders Fellowship offers abiding friendships with peacemakers of other faith traditions and reveals shared vision and hope.
Simon Harak, SJ
Simon Harak is a peace activist, professor of theology and Director of the Center for Peacemaking at Marquette University. From 2003 to January 2007, Fr. Harak served as the Anti-Militarism Coordinator of the National Office of the War Resisters League. He also helped found Voices in the Wilderness, which was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001, 2002, and 2003. Fr. Harak was named “Metro New York Peacemaker of the Year” and “National Peacemaker of the Year” by Pax Christi Metro New York and Pax Christi Long Island in 2005.
Jim Hug, SJ
Jim Hug has been the Director/President of the Center of Concern since 1989. He focuses on research and education on issues of faith and economic justice and has lectured and directed workshops throughout the U.S. and in Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. He is the editor of the Center’s best-selling Catholic Social Teaching: Our Best Kept Secret, principal author of Social Revelation: Profound Challenge for Christian Spirituality, published by the Center of Concern, and the editor of Tracing the Spirit: Communities, Social Action, and Theological Reflection, published by Paulist Press. In addition, Jim has written chapters for Globalization and Catholic Social Thought: Present Crisis, Future Hope and The Pastoral Circle Revisited: A Critical Quest for Truth and Transformation. He has served as member of the boards of the Religious Task Force on Central America and Mexico, the United States Catholic Mission Association, the Center for Mission Research and Study at Maryknoll, Maryknoll Lay Missioners, the International Jesuit Network for Development, and on the Mission and Ethics Advisory Committee of Christus Health System. Currently he serves on the board of CIDSE. He has an M.A. in Philosophy from Springhill College, an M.A. in Christian Spirituality from St. Louis University, and a Ph.D. in Christian Ethics from the University of Chicago.
Kimberly Mazyck
Kimberly Mazyck was appointed to the Pax Christi USA council in 2010. She is currently the Church Relations Manager with Catholic Relief Services, where she conducts and supports a number of CRS’ partnerships with U.S. organizations. In 2008, she coordinated national speaking tours for CRS which highlighted CRS overseas programming including peacebuilding, food security and HIV while featuring staff and partners from various countries. Kimberly joined staff at CRS in February 2005 as a Campaign Project Officer coordinating Catholic Relief Services’ Africa Rising: Hope and Healing campaign. Before joining CRS, Kim spent five years in community development at a national children’s literacy organization. She also work at Human Rights Watch from 1993-1996 in the Africa division. She has over 10 years of experience in community outreach and advocacy with particular attention to education and human rights issues in sub-Saharan Africa. She has also worked with nonprofit organizations to improve direct service, community outreach, volunteer support and resource development. Kim has a B.S. from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She also studied theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California.
Heather Brouillet Navarro
Heather Brouillet Navarro began her service on the council in 2012 after leading a campus chapter at Washington University in St. Louis and helping catalyze a St. Louis group. She is a private public interest attorney working in the area of civil rights, advocating for individuals and groups for the inclusion and equality of those at the margins of society. She also has a passion for environmental justice and serves on the board of The Green Center, an environmental education and arts center. Heather is active at the Catholic Student Center at Washington University, where she served as the social justice coordinator before entering law school, and is also engaged in her neighborhood community and a mother of two.
David O’Brien
David O’Brien is an historian who comments regularly on issues in American Catholic life. He is Loyola Professor of Catholic Studies Emeritus at the College of the Holy Cross and has served as University Professor of Faith and Culture at the University of Dayton. His most recent essay on Catholic peacemaking is in Schreiter et al, editors, Peacebuilding: Catholic Theology, Ethics, and Praxis (Orbis, 2010)
Sr. Esther Pineda, CSJ
Sr. Esther Pineda is a Sister of St. Joseph of Concordia, Kansas. She is bilingual and bicultural of Mexican ancestry. Currently, she is the coordinator of the justice and peace center for the Sisters of St. Joseph, located in Salinas, Kansas. She is the coordinator of Pax Christi Salina. This group began in 2008. She is an advocate for peace and non-violence activities; the elimination of nuclear weapons; and the abolition of the death penalty. She is further an avid advocate for undocumented immigrants living in the United States.
Scott Wright
Scott Wright was appointed to the Pax Christi USA council in 2010 and is a member of the Pax Christi Metro DC–Baltimore council. He is education and advocacy director for TASSC International, an organization of survivors of torture whose mission is to abolish torture and to empower survivors. He also works Central American immigrants in the Washington DC area as an interpreter and advocate for immigrant rights. He is the former director of the Ecumenical Program on Central America and the Caribbean (EPICA), and the Religious Task Force on Central America and Mexico, where he developed programs of faith-based solidarity with grassroots communities and led delegations to seven countries in the region. During the 1980s he worked eight years with the Catholic Church in El Salvador, accompanying refugees and displaced persons in areas of conflict. Since 9/11, he has worked with Catholics for a Peaceful End to War and Terrorism, and traveled to Iraq with Voices in the Wilderness, to Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the Japanese Catholic Council for Justice and Peace, and to Colombia with the Inter-ecclesial Commission for Justice and Peace to visit Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities displaced by the war. He is the author of Oscar Romero and the Communion of Saints (Orbis, 2009), and designed the JustFaith study guide on torture: In the Footsteps of the Crucified: Torture is Never Justified. He holds a Master’s Degree in Theology from the Washington Theological Union, and lives with his wife, Jean Stokan, and their daughter Maura, in Mount Rainier, Maryland.
