Kristina Hare Lyons, MPH, MALD,
Kristina is a humanitarian, filmmaker, consultant, entrepreneur, writer and mother with a particular interest in impact media and global public health. She currently sits on the governing boards of 3 public health-oriented non-profits: The Population Media Center, The Population Institute and Rehearsal for Life. She started her own business in 2007, Portobello Road, a retail concept that emphasized local, ethical and sustainable products. Previously, she worked at Physicians for Human Rights on a landmark study on war-related sexual violence in Sierra Leone and to eliminate conflict diamonds from the marketplace through the Kimberley Process, at Elle Magazine as West Coast Editor, as an Associate Producer at Frontline, and with filmmaker Oliver Stone on numerous projects. More recently, she consulted with the Ministry of Health in Liberia through the Harvard Ministerial Leadership program on efforts to address tragically high rates of maternal mortality and is developing content at her film company, Lyonshare Pictures. Kristina holds a Masters in Public Health and Population from Harvard, a Masters in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School, and a BA from Tufts. Her passions include travel, tennis, nature, reading, social justice, photography, art and design.
Kristina, a friend for decades, ranks in the top tier of my delightful alumni. She was my student as a senior at Tufts in 1986/87. In my EPIIC colloquium/symposium: The West Bank and Gaza. I almost lost her then. She came to my office to drop the colloquium, seemingly frustrated at her lack of precursor knowledge compared to her fellow students, some of whom were from the region or religiously and culturally related to the region. I knew she was fascinated by and cared about the topic and I refused to let her leave. Instead, I think she will well remember a several-hour private tutorial where I obliged her to sit and take notes as I covered a huge series of blackboards surrounding the second-floor classroom of Miner Hall. Luckily for me, I convinced her to remain and she thoroughly captured the subject and subsequently visited the region.
At the symposium, Kristina helped introduce Palestinian resistance activist and University President, Gabi Barambki, and the Palestinian student who he brought from Beirzeit. Most noteworthy, she helped convene the private Friday evening session of the symposium, when my students met with the remarkable women they had attracted to the forum: Palestinian lawyer Mona Rashmawi, now Chief of the Rule of Law, Equality, and Non-Discrimination Branch Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Naomi Chazan, Knesset member and Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Professor Galia Golan, now a leading figure for Combatants for Peace (on whose academic advisory board I serve). The students wondered what they, as young women themselves and these prominent women, could create to protest the occupation and enhance the possibilities of peace. It incubated what a year later, in the context of the first Intifada became Israel's Women in Black. Now part of a global movement.
Impressed by Kristina's determination and intelligence, I introduced her to my friend Susannah Sirkin, now a Director Emeritus of Physicians for Human Rights who supervised her research and interviewing PHR work in Sierra Leone and Kristina's subsequent contributions to a PHR Report "War-related Sexual Violence in Sierra Leone". Over the years, she participated in a variety of Institute activities, including creating a long mural, documenting the Institute's first ten years of activities, participating in EPIIC Outward Bound weekends. In 1995, having been a Representative to the U.N. Conference on Population and Development in Cairo and leading the Women’s Forum at Fletcher, including the creation of a conference on FGM, she co-led a workshop, "Beyond Beijing: The Global Empowerment of Women" as part of the Institute's 10th anniversary symposium, "2020 Visions of the Future."
We have sustained a warm friendship. I had the privilege recently of recommending her to Harvard University's Public Health and Population Master's program. Most recently, Kristina and her husband Patrick helped convene a fundraiser at Patrick's restaurant in the Charles Hotel, Bar Enza, for a fellow EPIIC alum, Patrick Schmidt, running for the 2022 House of Representatives from Kansas.