Meet the Founders:
Kelly Himsl Arthur
Originally from Boulder, Colorado, Kelly has spent her life involved in peace campaigns and activities promoting girls’ empowerment. Complementing her education at Pitzer College (Political Psychology) in Claremont, California, she has studied at the University of Strasbourg, France and the Sorbonne. Her travels have taken her on educational journeys throughout Europe and Russia. Along the way she developed a strong belief in youth activism as a vital element of social change.
Kelly has spent the past nine years working with young girls, promoting self-esteem, community involvement, and global awareness issues. ThinkPeace Workshop for Girls provides her with the opportunity to use her education and interests to help teenage girls develop into culturally aware and globally sensitive, active participants in a world in need of peaceful solutions.
Liz Overheul Curry
Liz was raised in Central Illinois and studied Fine Art/Photography at Illinois State University. She has spent her adult life dedicated to seeing the world as beautiful and teaching peace. She incorporates her passion for the arts on a local level in community theatre productions with her children. As a fundraiser and event organizer, Liz actively makes a difference in her own community.
Her passion for world travel, cultures, religions, and humanitarian causes has provided her with an education that reaches far beyond the academic! At ThinkPeace Workshop for girls, Liz shares her love of music, art, poetry and theatre. She directed ThinkPeace’s 2010 benefit play, Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. Being greatly influenced by the 60s counterculture, Liz is particularly drawn to the words of John Lennon and his non-violent approach to peacebuilding.
Together Liz and Kelly bring a nurturing approach to the workshops, allowing girls to feel safe, important, valued and heard. As mothers of girls AND boys they emphasize respect and appreciation of gender differences, knowing that if there truly is to be change in this world we must embrace each other as humans, with equal rights and shared goals. They continue their own growth as educators and facilitators through workshops and trainings by Rachel Simmons and the Girls Leadership Institute, Jane Goodall and the Roots&Shoots program, the US Institute for Peace and more.
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thinkpeace workshop for girls is thrilled to announce the addition of Jeanne Demers to our thinkpeace community this summer!
As soon as she was able, Jeanne moved from small town life in Maine to the big city of New York to realize her dream of becoming a great stage actress. Her theatre training at NYU, The National Shakespeare Conservatory and The National Theatre of Great Britain was followed by six years of doing classical theatre off-Broadway with Jean Cocteau Repertory. At some point in there writing took over as her primary passion and Ruby, the third-person version of herself, was born.
Jeanne formed a nonprofit, Realize Arts & Education, Inc., and channeled her love of performing, writing and story into creating arts-ed programs. With The Hero’s Journey after school program she guided young people in seeing themselves as the hero at the center of their own stories, which in turn informed and inspired the early Ruby Books stories. Today TheRubyBooks.org is geared toward teens and focuses on the power of story, the power of the girl voice in the world and how the two together can be used to balance and heal our world.