Lisa Schirch
Building Peace from the Ground Up

Director, 3D Security Initiative

Again and again in Iraq, Lisa Schirch was told, “Security doesn’t land in a helicopter. It grows from the ground up.” She was in Kurdistan in northern Iraq working with Iraqi development workers to find ways of incorporating peacebuilding into development projects like building schools and water wells. “Peace and security can come to Iraq,” she says, “but it will be through locally owned projects where people use conflict resolution processes to bring Iraqis together across lines of conflict for the betterment of everyone’s families.”

Starting when she was a 20-year-old college student volunteering in a Costa Rican refugee camp for Nicaraguans, Lisa has worked to end conflict and build security, applying her commitment and skills to projects in Lebanon, Taiwan, Ghana and other countries.

As the director of the 3D Security Initiative, Lisa’s job now is to take the lessons she has learned on the ground and persuade lawmakers to shift U.S. foreign policy away from an over-reliance on military tools and embrace a more balanced security approach that integrates development and diplomacy with defense.

Now the mother of Miranda, 6, and Levi, 2, Lisa is more cautious when she travels to war zones such as Sri Lanka and Iraq. But she invariably meets mothers who are making bigger sacrifices than she, raising their families in the midst of conflict and hoping for a better future for their children.