Kristin Loken

Kristin Loken joined the foreign service with the US Agency for International Development in 1979.  After several years of watching USAID's development programs be wiped out by violent conflicts in El Salvador, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza, she realized we needed to find better ways to manage conflict if development was to be sustainable.  Kristin returned to school to study conflict management at George Mason University, graduating in 1986 with one of the first classes in the new Masters program.  Her work with USAID later took her to Russia, back to El Salvador, Eritrea, and India until her retirement from the foreign service in 2001. After a few years working with an international NGO, she decided to return to the US and see if what she had learned about development and conflict might be useful with problems in the US.  She moved to West Virginia, a place with lots of severe problems and very limited resources.  From her little cottage beside the Potomac River here in West Virginia, Kristin wrote and worked locally on problems she saw as critical to a just and sustainable world.