Special Events

Social Entrepreneurship for Conflict Transformation Workshop

Digital flyer for September 11 John Marks conflict transformation workshop

Join the M.A. in Conflict Resolution and the GU Conflict Transformation Lab on Wednesday, September 11 from 11:30 AM to 1:30 PM ET for a special workshop with a leading practitioner in the peacebuilding field. John Marks, Co-Founder & Former President of Search for Common Ground, will teach students how to utilize social entrepreneurship for conflict transformation. This event will be hosted in the Department of Government’s M.A. Programs Suite in Car Barn 110. See below to learn more about this event.

About the Workshop

In this workshop, John Marks will teach students how he and his wife, Susan Collin Marks, used the methodology of social entrepreneurship to create the world’s largest peacebuilding organization, with a staff of 600 and offices in 35 countries, Search for Common Ground. He will present the eleven working principles of social entrepreneurship that he has developed. These principles provided the operational foundation for his work, and they are at the core of his new book, From Vision to Action: Remaking the World Through Social Entrepreneurship (2024).  In the course of this program, he will describe how his colleagues and he used these principles to bring together the CIA and KGB to prevent terrorism; how he sponsored unofficial Track 2 negotiations between former Israeli and Jordanian general that lay the groundwork for the eventual peace treaty between their two countries; how the principles played a key role in preventing genocide in Burundi; how Search retrained almost the entire Congolese Army in preventing gender-based violence; and how John produced or executive produced more than 400 episodes of TV and thousands of radio episodes in more than 25 countries in order to defuse ethnic, religious, and gender conflict. The workshop will be interactive, and students will be free at any time to ask questions or to make comments.

About John Marks

John Marks was, until 2014, the President of Search for Common Ground, a non-profit organization he founded in 1982 and built with his wife Susan Collin Marks into the world’s largest peacebuilding NGO with 600 staff members and offices in 36 countries. He also founded Common Ground Productions and is still a Senior Advisor to both organizations. In 2018, his work was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. In addition, he is a Visiting Scholar in Peacebuilding and Social Entrepreneurship at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He is a best-selling, award-winning author, a former US Foreign Service Officer, a Skoll Awardee in Social Entrepreneurship, and an Ashoka Senior Fellow. He has been a Fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School. The UN’s University of Peace has awarded him an honorary PhD.

In addition to this workshop, John Marks is joining us on campus for a book talk on September 10. Please follow this link for information about the additional event.

 

Registration & Seating

Registration: Seating for this event is limited. Attendees are required to register in advance via this Google Form. This event is open to students, faculty, and staff of Georgetown University.

Doors Open: Seating will begin at 11:15 AM. Attendees are expected to arrive before the program begins.
Doors Close: Seating will end promptly at 11:30 AM. The program will begin on time.
Lunch will be provided. Attendees can submit food allergies and dietary restrictions in advance by using this form. These should be provided by Friday, September 6 to allow event organizers time to coordinate catering.
Attendees who register by Friday September 6 will receive a copy of Vision to Action: Remaking the World Through Social Entrepreneurship (2024). 
 
Note: Since we are providing lunch and a free copy of John Marks’ book, we ask prospective attendees to register mindfully and to make a good faith effort to attend the event.