Judith Thompson, Ph.D., is a scholar-practitioner with over thirty years of experience in intercommunal dialogue, psychosocial healing, leadership development and community organizing. She has specialized in developing and implementating compassion-based programs to heal wounds within and between people. One such project, Children of War, Inc., which she co-founded and directed, earned her the Peace Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies for its originality and social impact. For the past decade she has partnered with James O’Dea to build “learning communities” among international peacebuilders for the purposes of framing and articulating theories and practices in the emerging field of social healing. She has a Ph.D. in peace studies and her research interests have focused on how compassion arises in the process of social healing. She has presented on this topic throughout the U.S., in Bosnia, South Africa, Germany, Northern Ireland and Colombia. As an organizational leader, project manager and facilitator she has worked with people from over 20 countries and has a specific longstanding commitment to peacebuilding in Israel and Palestine. For over three decades she has been an avid practitioner of vipassana meditation and wilderness camping and finds daily joy in her 25 year marriage.