Jay Schnitzer

Jay J. Schnitzer is Senior Vice President, Corporate Chief Engineer, and Chief Medical Officer at The MITRE Corporation. As an M.D. board certified pediatric surgeon, Jay led early studies of pulmonary developmental anomalies. With a Ph.D. in chemical engineering, coupled with field experience in international and domestic disaster medical response, he co-led a national effort of over 1,000 private sector organizations to discover solutions to the current COVID-19 pandemic, building on his experience leading the Defense Sciences Office of DARPA.

As CMO he leads MITRE’s corporate and national initiatives in health and biological sciences, building coalitions leveraging the best talent across the nation in these areas. He created and directs two signature “moonshots”: 1) the Oncology–Standard Health Record moonshot to use electronic clinical data to derive clinical trial endpoints with the goal of reducing risk, cost, and length of time required for clinical trial execution (https://health.mitre.org/mcode/); and 2) the Quantum Information Science (QIS) moonshot to create major advances in quantum computing, sensing, and communications based solely on photons as quantum bits (https://www.mitre.org/quantum-moonshot). He co-led an assessment of NOAA scientific integrity policies and procedures as applied to Karl T, et al.: Possible Artifacts of Data Biases in the Recent Global Surface Warming Hiatus, Science, 2015

(https://www.mitre.org/publications/technical-papers/assessment-of-national-oceanic-and-atmospheric-administration). He led the writing and editing of the Integrated Report for the Independent Assessment performed in response to Section 201 of Veterans Choice Act in 2015, which became the blueprint for the VA MISSION Act of 2018, and organized and facilitated the associated Blue Ribbon Panel, which unanimously endorsed the Report (https://www.va.gov/opa/choiceact/documents/assessments/integrated_report.pdf). He co-chaired (with Dr. John D. Halamka, President of Mayo Clinic Platform) the COVID-19 Healthcare Coalition, https://c19hcc.org, which delivered products that were implemented and improved Covid outcomes in four areas: the COVID-19 supply chain, social policies (e.g., criteria for implementing non-pharmaceutical interventions), discovering novel data-driven clinical insights for therapeutics, and using technology to successfully harness the power of a large, pro-bono consortium of over 1,000 private sector organizations (COVID-19 Healthcare Coalition - Impact Report (c19hcc.org).

As CTO he directed MITRE’s independent internal research and development (R&D) program and oversees development of MITRE's corporate technology strategy, to 1) ensure a world-class internal R&D effort across multiple technology disciplines that supports the entire corporation; 2) deliver capabilities directly to government that will transform outcomes in six key federally-sponsored areas: healthcare, national security, aviation and transportation, commerce, veterans affairs, and cybersecurity; and 3) return value to the nation by transferring innovations to industry (Research Overview | The MITRE Corporation).

Before joining MITRE, Dr. Schnitzer was the Director of the Defense Sciences Office (DSO) at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where he led a team of 20 program managers and 70 support staff and oversaw research and development across multiple domains, from life sciences and biomedical research to quantum physics, including materials science, advanced mathematics, and engineering. He also expanded the portfolio of new programs, improved staff morale, and managed an annual budget of $460 million.

Formerly, Dr. Schnitzer led medical and clinical teams as chief medical officer at Boston Scientific Corporation. He provided medical and clinical oversight of the entire product lifecycle, including clinical trials for all medical devices manufactured by four business divisions: endoscopy, urology/women's health, neurovascular, and neuromodulation. He provided medical and clinical leadership that supported the successful sale of a $1 billion medical device division (neurovascular); oversaw and led the design and successful initiation of two new pre-market neuromodulation medical device clinical trials (an international trial for deep brain stimulation for Parkinson’s disease and a US trial for occipital nerve stimulation for migraine); and championed successful acquisition and integration of a new business opportunity for first ever medical device therapy for asthma, including a successful clinical trial portfolio.

Earlier, Dr. Schnitzer held a staff appointment at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) as an attending pediatric surgeon, with a joint appointment at the Shriners Burns Hospital, and was a faculty member at Harvard Medical School. His research focus included: 1) studying the developmental molecular biology of abnormal lung growth and maturation in a mechanistic search for novel prenatal therapeutics for congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) as an NIH-funded investigator, and 2) exploring the interface between healthcare simulation and medical disaster preparedness and mass casualty response—a logical combination of his engineering background coupled with field experience in international and disaster medicine. At the MGH, he was the site miner for the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT). He supervised a six-member medical response team at Ground Zero for two weeks following the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, treating FDNY, NYPD, and Iron workers so that they were able to conduct continuous uninterrupted 24-hour search and rescue operations following the destruction of the twin towers. Subsequently, he led a mobile operating room surgical team for US response to the Bam, Iran earthquake in December 2003. In the laboratory, he demonstrated efficacy of prenatal glucocorticoid therapy to improve lung maturation in animal models of congenital diaphragmatic hernia.

Other credentials include: board certification (and recertification) in general surgery and pediatric surgery; Fellow of the American College of Surgeons (FACS) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (FAAP); provider and instructor in Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS), Advanced Burn Life Support (ABLS), and Advanced Trauma Operative Management (ATOM); and provider in Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) and Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS). Memberships in national and international societies include, among others, the American Surgical Association, Association for Academic Surgery, American Pediatric Surgical Association, Surgical Biology Club I, Boston Surgical Society, American Burn Association, New England Surgical Society, and the British Association of Pediatric Surgeons.

Dr. Schnitzer was born in Springfield, Massachusetts and attended public schools in Springfield and Longmeadow, MA, graduating from Longmeadow High School as class valedictorian and an Eagle Scout. In 1973, he graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts with a B.S. in chemical engineering (high distinction). In 1983 he received a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an M.D. (cum laude) from Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Schnitzer completed his residency training program in general surgery at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston (1983-1988), one year performing trauma surgery in the Gaza Strip (1988-1989), and a fellowship in pediatric surgery at Children’s Hospital, Boston (1989-1991). His awards and honors include: the WPI Salisbury Prize Award in chemical engineering, the Von L. Meyer and Sydney Farber Awards from Children’s Hospital Boston, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security FEMA Under Secretary’s Award, the Office of the Secretary of Defense Award for Outstanding Achievement, the MITRE President’s Award, the WashingtonExec Pinnacle Awards 2020 Healthcare Industry Executive of the Year, and the 2023 FCW Fed100 Award.

He is married to Sara Roy, and they live in Boston, MA with their daughters Annie and Jess.

Alfonso Enriquez

Alfonso is a technologist with a passion for innovation. His collegiate journey at Tufts University was notably marked by his involvement with the Institute for Global Leadership (IGL) and BUILD: Guatemala. These experiences deeply ingrained in him the transformative power of entrepreneurship and cooperative development, shaping his professional ethos.

One of the most cherished moments from his time in Guatemala was not solely the collective progress but also the lighter, human interactions—such as the humorous attempts at teaching children the Spanish pronunciation of "Google."

Alfonso's academic endeavors extended beyond the classroom, with research focused on the economic development and social entrepreneurship in Mexican rural communities and Cuba, underscoring his commitment to sustainable change. It was during his time with EPIIC that his interest in computer science began to crystallize, especially at the nexus of ethics and artificial intelligence in warfare.

After graduation and a significant period in the non-profit sector, Alfonso underwent a profound career transformation. He harnessed his entrepreneurial drive within the tech industry, founding Beam—a startup designed to revolutionize the telemedicine landscape by enabling doctors to launch their digital practices.

As a software engineer at Justworks, Alfonso is currently streamlining the process for small businesses to manage international workforces. His role is a harmonious blend of his belief in technology as a catalyst for good, promoting growth and opportunity.

Looking to the future, Alfonso is not only planning a life with his fiancée, Alexandra Flores-Quilty, but also a career trajectory where he can leverage the leadership lessons from the IGL. He aspires to be a responsible leader in the tech industry, guiding innovation while ensuring that technology acts as a conduit for positive societal transformation.

Alexandra Flores-Quilty

Alexandra Flores-Quilty is a political organizer, strategist, and trainer devoted to social justice and movement building. Currently, she serves as the Campaign Director for Free Speech For People, a national non-profit non-partisan organization dedicated to defending our Constitution and strengthening our democracy. Through their cutting-edge legal advocacy, public education, and organizing work, their work focuses on challenging big money in politics, confronting corruption in government, fighting for free and fair elections, and advancing a new jurisprudence grounded in the promises of political equality and democratic self-government.

Ms. Flores-Quilty spent the first part of her career working on education justice. She served as Chair of the Oregon Student Association (OSA) where she was a part of winning instate tuition for undocumented Oregonians and developing OSA’s electoral program that broke records around the country in voter registration and turnout. Later she served as the elected President of the US Student Association (USSA) where she worked with Senator Bernie Sanders’s office to introduce federal legislation for free higher education and organized the 2015 Million Student March. Ms. Flores-Quilty was a co-founder of #AllofUs, which built political power behind progressive candidates. She then served as the Executive Director of By the People, a pro-democracy grassroots campaign that organized to impeach Donald Trump. Ms. Flores-Quilty is a Lead Trainer at the Momentum Training Institute where she has trained and supported social movements in the US and around the world.

Alexandra was not a member of the Insitute of Global Leadership (IGL) but has been invited into the community through her partner, an A13 IGL alum, Alfonso Enriquez-Castro. Alexandra and Alfonso currently live in Brooklyn with their frisky dog, Chacho. 

Walker Dieckmann

Walker Dieckmann is startup executive with a passion for building and leading high-performing teams to achieve extraordinary results. He is presently a Senior Director of Operations for Next Gen Fulfillment at Instacart, leading a team focused on supply chain innovation. Walker joined Instacart in 2014 as employee #42, and over the past decade has been privileged to play a role in building and scaling the Operations organization; developing and executing playbooks that are used across the business today; and working with teams across the country to deliver exceptional experiences to shoppers, customers, and partners.

Outside of his day job, Walker enjoys sharing transferable learnings from his career with startups and nonprofits. He serves as an advisor to Sella, a marketplace for secondhand items, and Ujamaa Africa, an NGO with a mission to eliminate gender-based violence in Africa.

Walker is a native of Northampton, Massachusetts and a graduate of Emerson college. Prior to Instacart he did stints in radio (Emerson’s beloved WERS Boston) and Hollywood (the Gersh Agency), and held multiple roles at Mopro, a startup helping SMBs build their business online.  He is a perpetually aspiring musician and an erstwhile athlete. He lives in Fairfield, CT with his fiancée Emalee and their son Oliver. 

Leslie Puth

Leslie Puth has spent her professional career in financial services, first in the investment banking sector and more recently working in the field of financial inclusion. She has also been deeply involved with various community-based and arts organizations in New York City.

Leslie worked for eleven years in trading and sales for several global financial institutions; the last several years were spent managing the NY-based sales desk at a French investment bank. By the early 90’s, Leslie and husband David had been living in Brooklyn for several years, where they were raising their two young children. At this point, Leslie decided to leave the banking sector and actively engage with several non-profit organizations in Brooklyn. This allowed her to spend more time with David and their growing family of three children, and to focus on issues about which she cared passionately, including poverty alleviation, education for all, and public parks.

She spent over 15 years working in this sector as an active volunteer with several organizations in various capacities, including as a fundraiser and board member. In 2008, with a new home base in Boston thanks to David’s professional career and their youngest child in high school, Leslie decided to explore earning a master’s degree at the Fletcher School. This was driven by her desire to pivot to a 3rd career and focus on microfinance and financial inclusion. She floated this idea to Sherman, who was highly encouraging and introduced her to the Dean of the Fletcher School, Stephen Bosworth. The rest is history, as they say! Leslie earned her degree at Fletcher in 2011 and worked for over eight years as a Senior Director at Accion, a global non-profit that advances financial inclusion. She also joined Fletcher’s board of advisors in 2012 and currently serves as chair of that board. Leslie has also stayed very connected to her love of art and her love for Brooklyn, having served since 2008 on the Brooklyn Museum Board of Trustee and as a founding member of AllinBklyn, a giving circle that provides funding to small nonprofits in Brooklyn.

Leslie holds a Master’s degree in development economics from the Fletcher School, an MBA from NYU Stern School, and a BA in economics and French from Wellesley College.

Denise Drower Swidey

Denise Drower Swidey is a television producer, food stylist, cooking instructor and food writer. She earned a James Beard nomination for her latest project, “The Food Flirts with the Brass Sisters,” which airs on PBS in primetime. Denise received an Emmy nomination as culinary producer of PBS's Simply Ming, and worked on the show for a dozen years. She has served as culinary producer for other TV projects, including PBS's Project Smoke with Steven Raichlen, and A Moveable Feast with America’s Favorite Chefs. Denise received her B.A. from Tufts University (majoring in International Relations and Spanish) and an A.O.S. from the Culinary Institute of America. At Tufts, she somehow missed out on the EPIIC experience, but made up for it by working at the ExCollege, and thus with Sherman the year after she graduated.

Denise got her start in TV food styling working for various Food Network shows. She is a contributing writer for The Boston Globe's food pages and travel section and has served as an on-air chef, industry consultant, and a recipe-tester for The New York Times Magazine and other publications. She and her husband have three daughters (who now wish they’d taken her up on her offer of cooking lessons). She is currently teaching a popular course on food media at Tufts University. 

Michael Paris

Mike is a founder and the managing partner of Nystrom Beckman & Paris, LLP, a leading Boston-based litigation boutique.  Since its inception nearly twenty years ago, NBP has been on the cutting edge of complex litigation throughout the country. Whether it is unravelling complex financial frauds, conducting intricate investigations, trying high profile cases, or litigating cases of first impression, NBP provides top notch representation often against the largest firms in the country.

Mike is a seasoned trial lawyer with over three decades of experience litigating virtually all types of matters from antitrust to white collar criminal defense.  He had represented business, institutions and individuals in complex financial fraud recovery efforts, shareholder derivative actions, employment litigation, investment banking and hedge fund disputes, complex tort matters, and white-collar criminal investigations. These cases often involve unique legal issues, complex statutes, and unchartered claims. Mike has argued before the United States Court of Appeals, the Delaware Supreme Court, and various other appellate courts.  In addition to his trial work, Mike regularly counsels senior management on litigation avoidance, compliance and internal investigations, business strategies and employment issues.

• Lead counsel to the largest group of victims in one of the nation’s largest Ponzi schemes, recovering $50 million for clients. 

• Trial counsel in connection with a multi-million-dollar scheme involving pre-IPO shares of Facebook, which was featured on the television show, American Greed. 

• Litigated an eight-figure insurance coverage dispute against one of the nation’s largest insurance carriers.  

• Lead counsel for a New England based defense contractor in a multi-year Department of Justice investigation relating to violations of the Arms Export Control Act, resulting in no criminal charges against the Company.

• Won a “bet the company” commercial dispute for a financial services company after a multi-day arbitration.

• Successfully represented boutique investment banks in numerous litigations concerning breach of investment banking agreements and recovering millions of dollars for clients.

• Co-lead counsel in a shareholder derivative suit alleging breach of fiduciary duty against fund manager, resulting in a stipulated judgment in excess of $20 million.

• Successfully defended a Massachusetts state agency against claims for violating the U.S. base closure laws.

• Persuaded the Delaware Supreme Court to reinstate a $500,000,000 claim that had been dismissed prior to NBP’s retention. 

• Won seven-figure settlements on behalf of a major vendor in the retail industry in connection with breach of supply agreements by two national retailers.

• Successfully defended major cell-tower company in a widely publicized real estate dispute.  

• Lead trial counsel for enterprise software company in theft of trade secret case resulting in permanent injunction against former employee from working for competition or using proprietary information. 

• Trial counsel for the world’s former number three ranked tennis player, in a jury trial of first impression that garnered international media attention involving allegations that a contaminated multivitamin caused a positive steroid test.  

• Successfully defended the MBTA, the commuter rail, and Amtrak in numerous catastrophic accident cases.

Mike’s white collar defense experience also includes defending companies in connection with two of New England’s largest health care investigations, the nation’s first investigation of “asset search companies,” and advising companies on issues relating to the Transportation Security Administration, Homeland Security, and the Trading with the Enemy Act. He has also represented numerous banks in connection with grand jury subpoena issues, successfully defended the CEO of a federal credit union in a bank bribery case, a manufacturer in a criminal antitrust action, and has represented numerous individuals and corporations in grand jury investigations involving Medicare fraud, academia research improprieties, the Big Dig, tax evasion and fraud matters.  In addition, Mike has significant health care fraud litigation experience, defending qui tam and False Claims Act cases.  

Mike has also represented families of victims of some of Massachusetts’ most notorious crimes, including as lead trial counsel in an action brought against the American Automobile Association in a case of first impression regarding the duty of AAA to provide emergency road services and AAA’s advertising practices; the family of one of Boston’s most notorious murders this century, in a case against the owner of the gun from whom the assailant took the murder weapon, and numerous victims of Ponzi schemes and other financial frauds.  

Mike has served on the boards of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, The Volunteer Lawyers Project, and The Brown Rudnick Charitable Foundation, a subsidiary of the Brown Rudnick Center for Public Interest, which Mike conceived and founded while a partner there. His public service work earned him the prestigious “Adams Pro Bono Publico Award” from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Mike currently serves on the board of the Maimonides School, where he chairs the Investment Committee. He is an avid Boston sports fan and spent a decade coaching Little League Baseball and Softball. Mike also serves as a judge of the Massachusetts Bar Association’s Mock Trial Program. He has been recognized as a “Super Lawyer,” is listed in Outstanding Lawyers of America, and has been “AV” rated by Martindale Hubbell for nearly 20 years.  

A 1990 graduate of Northeastern University School of Law, Mike received a B.S. in political science, magna cum laude, from American University.  Prior to founding Nystrom Beckman & Paris LLP, Mike was a partner at the international law firm of Brown Rudnick LLP, where he practiced civil and criminal litigation.

Ilhan Avcioglu

Ilhan Avcioglu is a teacher and advocate of civics and human rights education currently residing in Andover, Massachusetts.  

Ilhan was born in Chicago, Illinois and traveled to the Middle East many times early in life. This led to an interest in international politics and American University, earning a degree in International Studies. After a brief time in the field of law, he returned to the east coast for graduate school and attended Northeastern and Tufts Universities where he began taking classes with Sherman at the Experimental College (The Underworld of U.S. Foreign Policy and History of the Middle East).  He also was a part of the EPIIC International Symposiums at Tufts University of 1991 (Confronting Political and Social Evil).  Following graduation, he returned to Chicago to begin his teaching career, at both the high school and college levels. 

Ilhan has advocated for a more prominent role for civics education at the public school level. He believes that citizens must be aware and knowledgeable about their government in order to successfully participate. He was part of a Chicago Public Schools group that collected data and provided it to the Illinois State legislature which in 2015 passed a law requiring public schools to provide at least a semester of civics education. 

Since returning to Massachusetts in 2017, he has been actively promoting civics education and ethnic studies, both at Andover High School and in Boston Public Schools where he was a part of a Civics Teacher Leader Cohort with Facing History and Ourselves.

Beth Silverman Kotis

Beth Silverman Kotis has spent more than three decades living and working in countries around the world (nine in total) as part of a Foreign Service family. Her work spans more than 30 years leading major communications efforts and international programs in government and the private sector, founding an organization, as well as participating in volunteer non-profit work and serving on the board of two international schools.

Now living full-time in the U.S., Beth currently works for the Massachusetts Judiciary as Senior Communications Manager in the Executive Office of the Trial Court. In this role, she leads internal and public-facing communications efforts for the Trial Court’s 6,400 judges and employees. She’s proud of her efforts directing a major branding initiative that reinforces and promotes the mission of the Court and builds public trust and confidence in the court system; developing a social media strategy that led to the launch of the Court’s presence on social media; and co-chairing the court’s signature judicial outreach program, National Judicial Outreach Month, to educate students and communities across the Commonwealth about the importance of the courts in upholding the Rule of Law.

Prior to this, Beth held various positions at U.S. Consulates and Embassies in Montreal, New Delhi, London, and Budapest. She was the Community Liaison Officer at the U.S. Consulate in Montreal; spent time as Assistant to the Minister Counselor for Political Affairs at Embassy New Delhi; was Special Assistant for Olympic Coordination at Embassy London in the run up to and during the London 2012 Olympics; and was Special Assistant to the Ambassador and Deputy Chief of Mission at Embassy Budapest (2007-2010).

While living in India from 2013-2015, Beth helped build a large-scale volunteer movement demanding action on air pollution, creating one of the first grassroots websites on this issue at the time. She worked with a team to recruit leading scientists, policy advocates, and others to join our NGO as co-founders and board members.

Earlier in her career, Beth worked as a consultant for the Financial Services Volunteer Corps, Chemonics International, and the Global Business Policy Council, global management consulting firm Kearney’s strategic think tank.

Beth proudly participated in Sherman’s second EPIIC Colloquium and Symposium “The Future of the West Bank and Gaza,” and believes the issues and topics discussed more than 36 years ago (in 1987) remain as crucial and topical as ever.

Beth has a BA in International Relations from Tufts and a Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. Beth is married to Samuel Kotis and they have two children, Sarah, a 2017 Tufts grad, and Ben, who has many talents but did not go to Tufts.

Samuel Kotis

Samuel Kotis is currently the chief groundskeeper, cook, cleaner, and dog walker at his and his wife Beth’s bucolic and architecturally interesting mid-century home in the back woods of Wellfleet, MA. Among Sam’s recent accomplishments have been chain-sawing upwards of 20 felled trees into logs suitable for splitting into firewood (and then splitting said logs into firewood for the family hearth), providing general oversight to a long overdue 6-month home renovation project, and providing invigorating daily beach walks to their endlessly energetic 1-1/2 year-old Hungarian Vizsla.

Prior to his current responsibilities, Sam was a career Foreign Service Officer with the US Department of State and served at diplomatic posts around the world including Jakarta, Singapore, Washington DC, Tunis, Amman, the US Mission to the UN in New York, Budapest, Baghdad, London, New Delhi and the US Mission to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in Montreal. Sam was the recipient of a number of awards during his diplomatic career, including the Department of State’s 2015 Frank E. Loy Award for Environmental Diplomacy and the American Foreign Service Association’s 2015 William R. Rivkin Award for Constructive Dissent, both for his work in India fostering bilateral cooperation to combat air pollution.  Following his career at the State Department, Sam was the Associate Vice President for Global Energy at the Environmental Defense Fund, responsible for developing and implementing EDF’s international strategies for cutting oil and gas methane emissions and advancing the global transition to clean, low carbon energy future.

Sam has a BA in Political Science from the University of Chicago and a Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. He and Beth are the proud parents of their (now adult) children Sarah (who is successfully navigating a career related to social media that her father doesn’t fully understand) and Ben (an accomplished furniture maker who’s spatial reasoning skills make his father quite envious).

Maria Figueroa Kupcu

Maria is a senior advisor to boards and executive teams on strategic communications, stakeholder engagement, crisis and reputation. She draws on decades of experience reconciling public, private, investor and NGO positions in the arenas of environmental sustainability, climate risk and social impact.

Through her work, Maria helps clients to define and communicate ambitious leadership programs -- and to transform the decision-making, organizational culture and operational structures that enable these programs to succeed.

Her work has included: PepsiCo’s ambitious global Performance with Purpose effort, led by former CEO Indra K. Nooyi; Bloomberg Philanthropy’s pioneering work in climate finance and decarbonization ambition; the PwC-initiated CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion and many more.

Previously, Maria was a Partner at Brunswick Group, a global critical issues and financial situations advisory firm. Over 15 years, she helped establish and grow Brunswick’s Business & Society practice and launched four related offers: ESG, Diversity Equity and Inclusion, Foundations and Nonprofits and Stakeholder Engagement. For six years, she was concurrently head of Brunswick’s New York office, the second largest in the global network. In this role, she led a team of over 200 client-facing and business services professionals and held numerous roles in the firm’s senior management team, including as founding co-chair of the U.S. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee and as head of the New York Office’s Incident Management Response Team through the Covid-19 pandemic. As a senior global client relationship manager, Maria helped guide the firm’s approach to scaling client relationship management best practices. She is an avid mentor and an active teacher of her profession.

Maria began her career at the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) contributing what became the Sustainable Development Goals. During this time, she used her grassroots organizing skills to mobilize Youth for Habitat II -- a global youth coalition that influenced international policy on youth economic development and entrepreneurship. The group continues today.

She is an experienced opinion researcher, learning the craft as Director of International Political and Corporate Campaigns for Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates (PSB). Here, she supported presidential and parliamentary races in the U.S., Ukraine, South Korea, and Zimbabwe. She has worked extensively with leaders to craft research-driven winning messages and strategies that build public support.

Maria graduated from the Harvard Kennedy School and Tufts University, where she was Chair of the Board of the Institute for Global Leadership from 2019-2022 and a board member since 2012. She also serves on the board of the Turkish Philanthropy Fund. In 2002, Maria and her husband founded Double Knot, the premier gallery of tribal carpets and textiles in New York City. She is the mother of two teens and loves to travel, cook and research her family history through its varied multi-cultural roots that include Italian, Filippino and Polish heritage.

Mary Kurey

Prior to starting my corporate career, I attended the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and a minor in French. In 1984, I spent a year studying in Paris (Sorbonne) and have been a life-long Francophile. My career was spent with the same firm, under a variety of different names (Hewitt Associates, Aon-Hewitt and Alight).

I worked in Employee Benefits & HR Business Outsourcing providing consulting and management support to several global S&P 500 clients. I lead teams to set up and deliver systems and administration services for 401(k) retirement plans and later payroll services, corporate health plans, and compensation plans.

Throughout my career, I gravitated to the role of (and was assigned to clients as the) “problem solver.”. I was akin to Winston Wolfe (played by Harvey Keitel) in the movie Pulp Fiction. As “the cleaner,” I gathered the facts, collaborated with my team, and got the plan in motion. And, in the process, cleaned up the mess. Client relationships and employee relations get ugly when an implementation or a paycheck error isn’t quickly addressed and fixed.

I met my husband of 24 years, Peter, on a bicycle club ride in 1996. It was a Halloween ride that started on Shades of Death Road in New Jersey. (This is not a joke.) We started dating and realized that we both loved bicycling as well as cross-country skiing. We took up fly fishing together, which has taken us on many adventures, like fishing with an indigenous family on the tundra in northern Alaska, steelhead fishing in British Columbia and trout fishing in Montana. The rest, as they say, is history.

After over 30 years with my nose to the corporate grindstone, my nose was getting worn out as well as my enthusiasm for corporate life. Peter was feeling the same way, and we decided it was time to concentrate on doing what we loved most: Nordic skiing, bicycling, fly fishing, gardening and birding. We left suburbia in New Jersey and moved to Bozeman, Montana. It was like being thrown into the deep end of the pool in freezing water—in a good, invigorating way. Bozeman is an outdoor paradise as well as being a university town (Montana State University). Bozeman ticked off all of our outdoor boxes as well as being a cultural center for southwest Montana—really! While I enjoyed my career working in data and logic (and still do), what does it mean if you can’t connect it meaningfully to culture and how we live or want to live? I’m grateful for my lengthy career with the same firm and our retired life in Bozeman.

Walcott Prize Winner - MOSAB ABU TOHA

THIS YEAR’S WINNER:

Arrowsmith Press, in conjunction with Boston Playwrights’ Theatre and The Walcott Festival in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, are delighted to announce that the winner of the third annual Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry is Mosab Abu Tohafor Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear published by City Lights. The winner was selected by author Canisia Lubrin from a short list of twelve finalists.

About Abu Toha’s work, Lubrin writes:
Here is a book which revels at an impossible pitch, the potent will to live heart-first in confrontation with life under brutal siege. Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear is a supertonic glossary of sorrows so extreme it bends the brace of language into fortifying, never-naïve, elegy. Toha’s meticulous, and often brief, lines thread his own breathing witness into a poetry of mighty resolve, insisting poetry itself be worthy of a Palestinian lament. Toha insists on these songs, holding each by their own powerful weight and bond, into this rippling of a future out beyond the page. This is a work of great restraint and abundant attention presented as always waiting in the routine arrangements of the day-to-day. Such grace and understanding, daring because necessary, necessary because how powerful it is to hear a voice cut so sharply through today. So haunting, so searing, and above all, so lit by Mosab Abu Toha’s vibrant—what else to call it?—love.   

Author Bio
Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet, scholar, and librarian who was born in Gaza and has spent his life there. He is the founder of the Edward Said Library, Gaza’s first English-language library. Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear is his debut book of poems. The collection won an American Book Award, a 2022 Palestine Book Award and was named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry.

In 2019-2020, Abu Toha was a Visiting Poet in the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard University. Abu Toha is a columnist for Arrowsmith Journal, and his writings from Gaza have also appeared in The Nation and Literary Hub. His poems have been published in Poetry, The Nation, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Poetry Daily, and the New York Review of Books, among others.

Abu Toha will receive a $2,000 cash prize. Established in 2019, the annual prize is for a book in English or English translation by a living poet writing in any language who is not a US citizen (green card holders welcome) published in the previous calendar year.

To learn more about this book or to purchase it, visit: https://citylights.com/general-poetry/things-you-may-find-hidden-in-my-ear/

Submissions for the 2023 Walcott Prize are now open. To learn more, visit:
https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/walcott

Solidarity: a path to liberation -- Combatants for Peace

Watch the Recording 

Moderator, A'ida Shibli, began the conversation by inviting us to think of our time together as a "ceremony." Through deep listening, silence, and searching, we found comfort, connection, and direction. Moderator, Stephen Apkon, discussed how each time Palestinians and Israelis choose to stand together, especially in times of intense trauma, it is a heroic and sacred act. He reflected, "[Through CfP] I've learned the importance of nonviolence in the work to end the occupation, and I've learned the importance of not dehumanizing anyone because when we do, we dehumanize ourselves." 

It was humbling and powerful to hear from CfP's Palestinian and Israeli activists about their commitment to interdependence.

CfP Israeli Co-Founder, Avner, shared, "We must be open to all of this suffering, to the pain of all people, and be able to hold it...This very sensitivity to human life is our engine and our generator. This very sensitivity has extended our sense of self...To bomb 'them' is to bomb Souli and Rana, and it is to bomb myself..." 

CfP Palestinian Co-Founder, Souli, encouraged us to hold fast to our values, not simply during times of comfort, but in the face of immense challenges and great suffering. When reflecting on "another way", Souli shared, "I feel this voice is really loud now and I feel this can offer an alternative to other people - rather than the voice of darkness or the voice of us vs. them."

Many of you have asked for CfP's recent statement and the poems read during the meeting. Please find links below:

CfP's recent call to actionMahmoud Darwish PoemLeah Goldberg PoemAs a bonus, Stephen Apkon, Director and Producer of "Disturbing the Peace" has generously offered free access to the film. 

Support Combatants for Peace

Combatants for Peace invites us to reject dualistic thinking and choose a third way - a path of safety, dignity, and liberty for all who live on the land. Thank you for your incredible solidarity and support during this time. We will move forward together - holding fast to our values and shared humanity. 

Podcast - Can Violent Extremists Leave Their Past?

Guest host Michael Niconchuk looks for answers with experts Juncal Fernandez-Garayzabal and Noah Tucker.

Violent extremism is growing globally. It doesn’t know religion or creed. Where once it was confined to specific ideology or identity groups, at least in public discourse and discussion, now it appears across societies, across cultures and across borders. Violent extremist ideologies and actions are becoming part of the global fabric.

Why do people get involved in this type of violence? How can they disengage? Can violent extremists be helped to reenter society integrated in healthy, socially positive, empowered ways to engage as productive and peaceful citizens?

In this episode of New Thinking for a New World, guest host Michael Niconchuk looks for answers. Mike, a Tällberg Foundation board member, serves on the Advisory Board of the Counter Extremism Project and is a program manager at the Wend Collective. His guests are Juncal Fernandez-Garayzabal, development and program manager at the Counter Extremism Project, and Noah Tucker,program associate at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs Central Asia Program.

Can violent extremists once again become productive citizens? Can you imagine someone with that history living next door to you? Let us know what you think by commenting below

Listen to the episode here or find the New Thinking for a New World podcast on a platform of your choice (Apple podcast, Spotify, Google podcast, Youtube, etc

ABOUT OUR GUESTS

Juncal Fernandez-Garayzabal, Ph.D., is Counter Extremism Project’s (CEP) Development and Program Manager, but she is also one of the co-founders of Parallel Networks, a 501C3 non-profit organization set up to combat polarization, hate and extremism in the United States. Juncal has gained professional experience researching conflicts, forced migrations, organized crime and security. Her research has developed through collaboration in projects with institutions like Georgetown University, the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies and UNICEF Madrid. She also gained hands-on experience in peacebuilding while in Latin America and Africa, where she provided psychosocial support to internally displaced populations and other victims of extremism and violence in post-conflict settings. Since 2019 she has been working to build the capacity of several countries, including the United States, the Republic of the Maldives, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan to effectively rehabilitate and reintegrate individuals returning from conflict areas and those convicted for extremism-related offenses.

Noah Tucker is a program associate at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs Central Asia Program. He was previously Executive Editor for the Not in Our Name film and television series, the first region-wide project designed to prevent violent extremism in Central Asia through community dialogues in areas most directly affected by recruiting to Syria. Noah has worked as a consultant on multiple collaborative projects for government, academic and international organizations to identify the way social and religious groups affect political and security outcomes in Central Asia and Afghanistan. Recent publications include “Uzbek Women in the Syrian Conflict: First-Person Narratives and Gendered Perspectives on Mobilization and De-Mobilization.” Noah has worked on Central Asian issues since 2002—specializing in religion, national identity, ethnic conflict and social media—and received an MA from Harvard in Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies in 2008 and is currently a recipient of the Handa Studentship at the Handa Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews (Scotland). He has spent some six years living and working in in the region, primarily in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and works in Russian and Uzbek. He most recently conducted fieldwork and training to support reintegration efforts for returnees from the Syrian conflict in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in October 2023.

ABOUT OUR GUEST HOST

Michael Niconchuk is a researcher and practitioner at the intersection of psychological trauma recovery, migration, and violence prevention. Trained in security studies, international relations, and social cognition, Michael has worked for more than a decade in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Balkans to support local capacities to offer evidence-based care for persons affected by violent conflict, extremism, and displacement, including extensive work on innovative community programs and policy to support the healing and wholeness of folks affected by the Syrian conflict as well as the return and rehabilitation of the families of foreign terrorist fighters in the Middle East. He is the author of The Field Guide for Barefoot Psychology and numerous publications on mental health, identity-based violence, and migration.

Ryan Svetanoff

Ryan Svetanoff is a Chemical Technician for the Chemistry Undergraduate Preparations Laboratory at Purdue University. In this role, he collaborates with professors, course coordinators, and head teaching assistants to provide impactful educational experiences for more than 5,000 students every year. Ryan provides services to not only ensure current teaching objectives are met in the laboratory setting, but also to allow instructors to have the freedom to develop new experiments to further grow their courses. Ryan oversees more than 100 teaching assistants every year, serving as a role model for them exemplified by the recognition he received with the Professional Achievement Award from the Purdue College of Science in just two years of his early career. Ryan received his BS in Chemistry from Purdue University on a full ride through the Lilly Endowment Community Scholarship, MS in Management, cum laude, from the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, and a MS in Kinesiology from Indiana University.

Ryan also had a role in the Pugwash ecosystem where he was the President of the Purdue University chapter during his undergraduate studies. Through this involvement is how he and his sister Rachel met Sherman, keeping in touch today.

Michael Linick

Michael Linick is a Senior Defense and Political Science Researcher at The RAND Corporation, and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown. A retired Army Colonel, with 30 years as an Infantry and Force Management officer, Michael’s research focuses on finding ways for the Army to function more effectively and efficiently, on Active Component/Reserve Component integration, on personnel policy, and on how to best tailor the Army to meet current and emerging strategic challenges. He has worked with the Offices of the Secretary of Defense on a variety of personnel policy issues, on developing new ways to measure strategic readiness, and by providing advice and counsel to the Iraqi Ministry of Defense on how to restructure their department to better meet Iraqi security needs. From 2017-2020 he directed The RAND Army Research Division’s Personnel, Training, and Health research portfolio. Michael teaches graduate courses in “Strategy, Policy, and Military Operations” and in “Insurgency and Counterinsurgency” in Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service’s Security Studies Program.

Michael has extensive experience with wargames, as a hobbyist, as a Soldier, and at RAND.Michael was one of the lead designers for a game called “Hedgemony: A Game of Strategic Choices”, RAND’s first ever policy game published for sale to the general public. This game, which was designed to support development of the 2018 National Security Strategy, exposes players to the difficulty of balancing a constrained budget with the demands of a wide variety of world crises, and the need to look to both near term and long term readiness; balancing the size, readiness, posture, and modernization of the force to achieve strategic goals. He has been part of the design team supporting the first ever policy level gaming for the U.S. Coast Guard, and for several tactical and operational games used to better understand combat between modern armies.

During his military career, Michael served in a variety of Infantry positions in Korea, Germany, Kosovo, and across the United States. As a Force Management officer, Michael was the Chief of Force Management for both the senior ground headquarters of Operation Enduring Freedom (CFLCC, 2001-2) and the senior headquarters for Operation Iraqi Freedom (MNF-I/USF-I, 2009-10). He developed and wrote the Army’s first equipping strategy in 2008, and coordinated the Total Army Analysis process for the Army from 2010-2013.

Michael is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Cruz (BA in Politics, 1983), Georgetown University (MA in National Security Studies, 1996), Catholic University (MA and PhD. Candidacy in World Politics, 2005) and the Army War College (MA in Security Studies, 2006), as well as a wide variety of military schools. He was a co-founder of Georgetown’s National Security Studies Quarterly (now known as the Security Studies Review), and its first Senior Editor. His military awards and decorations include the Legion of Merit and the Bronze Star.

Debra Linick

Debbie Linick’s federal government and non-profit service spans four decades of work in international diplomacy and federal resource management as well as non-profit advocacy, fundraising, and strategic leadership.

Debbie started her career within the Department of Defense as a Presidential Management Fellow (previously “PMI”). She served as an agreements negotiator for the U.S. Army in Europe (USAREUR) and contingency operations budget director for Operation Enduring Freedom supporting the mission in Afghanistan during 2001-2002. At the United Nations she represented the U.S. position in the working group for contingency operation reimbursement models. Her federal government service culminated in an assignment with the U.S. Department of State, overseeing non-proliferation assistance programs in the Former Soviet Union (FSU). Her government service included projects and travels in Moldova, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Russia, Kosovo, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Haiti, the United Nations, and other deployed environments.

Debbie’s non-profit work includes advocacy, fundraising, strategic leadership, and community relations for a variety of groups with local, national, and international focus. She served for a decade lobbying on behalf of the Jewish community in D.C. and Virginia and overseeing their community relations with interfaith partners, the media, schools, and law enforcement. Debbie chairs a Development Committee for the Educators’ Institute of Human Rights, “Where the world’s teachers partner to end hate,” and co-chairs legislative and regulatory work for the Refugee Physicians’ Advocacy Committee.

She leads partnership and fundraising efforts for Specialisterne North America (SPNA) and Specialisterne Global (SPG) which help expand employment opportunities for neurodiverse individuals. Outside of her day jobs and volunteering, Debbie started “Pictures with Prose,” a digital storytelling and portrait photography service inspired by her work and volunteering with Holocaust and cancer survivors, blended and new immigrant families, as well as many other everyday heroes.

Debbie is a former Dean's Scholar from Georgetown University's School of Business, where she earned her M.B.A. in 1993 and a graduate of Tufts University where she graduated magna cum laude with a major in International Relations and proudly participated in Sherman’s 2 nd Symposium, Foreign Policy Imperatives for the Next Presidency” in 1988. Debbie earned Phi Beta Theta honors for her Associates Degree in Photography in 2015. 

Debbie lives in Springfield with her husband Michael. Their many children, biological, adopted, steps and exchanges, are launched around the world. They report their parents as being terrible “empty nesters” as they continue to follow the tradition of Abraham and Sarah in keeping their tent open on all sides to guests for varying stays.

Jessica Berlin

Jessica Berlin is a foreign policy analyst, founder of CoStruct, and Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at the pan-African fintech company Bridge Technologies. She previously lived and worked in Afghanistan, China, Myanmar, Rwanda, the UK, including with the US Senate, US Department of Defense, and the German development agency. Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Jessica has emerged as a prominent German foreign policy commentator. Her analyses have been featured by DW News, BBC, CNN, the Washington Post, Al Jazeera English, ZDF, ARD, France 24, Tagesspiegel, NZZ, Bild, et al.

The first half of Jessica's cross-cutting career was spent working with government agencies, think tanks, and NGOs on security, foreign policy, and economic development. Following these formative experiences she decided to pave her own way, founding the strategy consultancy CoStruct to build bridges between the public and private sector to scale sustainable business and technology solutions in developing and emerging markets. Over the past 9 years as founder and managing director of CoStruct, Jessica has advised government agencies, foundations, tech companies, and investment funds in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, and was co-founder of the MakerNet digital distributed manufacturing alliance.

In the lead up to and aftermath of the 2021 fall of Kabul to the Taliban, Jessica paused her CoStruct work to voluntarily assist evacuation efforts for her friends, former colleagues, and other Afghans who had worked with international organizations. This crisis was closely followed by Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in winter 2022, during which Jessica again voluntarily mobilized evacuation and crisis response efforts. Since spring 2022, Jessica put her normal work on hold to devote herself full time to supporting Ukrainian victory efforts. Her work for Ukraine was profiled by the German paper Berliner Zeitung.

A frequent public speaker, her TEDx on the transatlantic democratic crisis has been described as "one of the most powerful and inspiring TED talks.” She holds an MSc in Political Economy of Emerging Markets from King’s College London and a BA in International Relations from Tufts. At Tufts Jessica was a freshman member of the 2004-2005 EPIIC Colloquium and engaged member of the IGL community. She went to South Africa for a symposium on international conflict resolution and the UAE for a women's rights conference; organized and led a five-student team independent research project to Rwanda; was a member of NIMEP; and co-founded the Tufts Collaborative on Africa, a student group focused on African politics.

The View from My Window in Gaza by Mosab Abu Toha

Illustration by Jan Robert Dünnweller

It is Thursday, October 12th, and half sheets of paper are falling from the sky in Beit Lahia, the city in northern Gaza where my family’s house is. Each sheet is printed with an Israeli military emblem, along with a warning: stay away from Hamas military sites and militants, and leave your homes immediately.

When I go downstairs, I find my parents and siblings packing their bags. Local schools, many of them run by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, are already crowded with displaced families. But my uncle has called my mother to say that we can stay with his wife’s family in Jabalia camp, the largest of Gaza’s refugee settlements and home to tens of thousands of people.

My wife, sister-in-law, mother, sisters, and children travel to the camp by car. My older brother, brother-in-law, and I ride our bicycles. On the road, we see dozens of families, walking with whatever they can carry. Israel will soon tell more than a million residents of northern Gaza to evacuate immediately, an order that the U.N. calls “impossible.”

That night, around 8:30, a blast lights up the apartment where we have taken refuge. Dust fills every corner of the room. I hear screams as loud as the explosion. I go outside, but I can hardly walk because the lanes are filled with stone and rebar. My brother-in-law’s car, about fifty metres away, is on fire. Nearby, a house is burning. On the second floor, which no longer has any walls, I can see an injured woman hanging over the edge of the building, holding a motionless child.

The houses in Jabalia are so small that the street becomes your living room. You hear what your neighbors talk about, smell what they cook. Many lanes are less than a metre wide. After two days in the camp, on Saturday morning, my family has no bread to eat. Israel has cut Gaza’s access to electricity, food, water, fuel, and medicine. I look for bakeries, but hundreds of people are queuing outside each one. I remember that, two days before the escalation, we bought some pita. It is sitting in my fridge in Beit Lahia.

I decide to return home, but not to tell my wife or mother, because they would tell me not to go. The bike ride takes me ten minutes. The only people in the street are walking in the opposite direction, carrying clothes and blankets and food. It is frightening not to see any local children playing marbles or football. This is not my neighborhood, I think to myself.

On the main street leading to my house, I find the first of many shocking scenes. A shop where I used to take my children, to buy juice and biscuits, is in shambles. The freezer, which used to hold ice cream, is now filled with rubble. I smell explosives, and maybe flesh.

I ride faster. I turn left, toward my house.

Iwas born in Al-Shati refugee camp, which is one of the eight camps in the Gaza Strip. In 2000, just as the second Palestinian uprising started, my father decided to move us to Beit Lahia. When we arrived at our new house, there were no windows and the floor had no tiles. The water pipes in the kitchen and bathroom were exposed.

In 2010, my father took out a loan to buy the land next door. With my mother, he planted fruit trees—guava, lemon, orange, peach, and mango—and vegetables. As a hobby, he started raising hens, ducks, rabbits, and pigeons in the garden.

After I got married in 2015, I built my apartment on top of theirs. My wife and I could see the border with Israel out our bedroom window. My children could see our neighbor’s olive and lemon trees.

In 2021, when I returned from a fellowship in the United States, my parents generously refreshed my apartment, buying new plates, glasses, rugs, and a desk. They had shelves installed for all the books I brought back. They also had the ceiling painted with a pattern that I love. In the center is a big brown-and-yellow star, and around it are little triangles, circles, and a rainbow. The shapes and colors seem to embrace and coexist with one another, like strangers who share the same floor of a building. The moment I saw it, I knew how much love my parents had for me.

I expect to be the only person on my street, but as I approach my building, I am surprised to find my neighbor Jaleel. He has a cigarette in one hand and a watering can in the other. As he waters his strawberry plants, he tells me that his wife and sister-in-law are inside, doing laundry, filling water bottles, and stuffing food into plastic bags. His family is sheltering in a school. It has no clean water and the toilets are dirty, but they have no other options.

I am relieved to find my building still standing. I walk up the stairs to my third-floor apartment, stopping first in the kitchen. The fridge and freezer doors are open, just as we left them. There has been so little electricity that everything perishable has started to rot. But the bread is holding up.

I go into my library, where I normally work on my poems, stories, and essays. I have spent hours here, reading writers like Kahlil Gibran, Naomi Shihab Nye, Mary Karr, and Mahmoud Darwish. Everything is coated in dust. Some of my books have fallen off the shelves. A window is broken. I take some candy out of my desk drawer, for the kids.

Finally, I go into the living room. As always, the windows are open. I wish I could close them, especially on freezing winter days. The shock wave that follows explosions, however, would shatter the glass—and who now has the money to repair windows in Gaza? The curtains, which blow madly toward me during bombings, flutter in the breeze.

I sit on the couch and stare up at the colorful shapes on my ceiling. They still shine with fresh paint. Three lamps dangle down at me—two that are connected to the electrical grid, and a third that runs on battery power, for when the electricity goes out. None of them are working now.

Afternoon comes with an unusual heat. Outside, instead of the usual sounds of motorbikes and ice-cream trucks, I hear the whirring of drones. There are no students coming home from school, no cars taking families to the beach, no birds chirping in our garden trees. I hear ambulances and fire trucks, news on the radio, and sporadic blasts, which sometimes become incessant. All mingle in a strange new soundtrack.

A fly seems to be stuck in my living room. There is not much point in shooing it, but I open the window all the way, pulling the curtains aside. Then, suddenly, an explosion shoves me back. It shakes the earth, the house, my heart. Books tumble from my shelves.

I grab my phone and take some pictures. Two bombs have landed about fifty metres from each other, perhaps two kilometres away from where I am standing. Have they hit a farm, a tree, a home, a family? It is not only the explosions that kill us but also the smashing of houses that used to protect us from the elements.

Birds soar into the sky; one falls before rising. Maybe a stone has landed on its back. Who will dress its wounds? We barely have doctors for people.

I return to the couch. Notifications on my phone share breaking news: “Two big explosions in Beit Lahia. More details soon.” I wonder what has happened to the fly. Perhaps it was a warning to both of us: don’t move.

One idea in particular haunts me, and I cannot push it away. Will I, too, become a statistic on the news? I imagine myself dying while hearing my own name on the radio.

I remember a day in 2020, when my wife and I experienced a snowstorm in Syracuse, New York. People came out of their houses, wondering aloud whether the electricity had failed. I think of how my wife and I smiled. I told her, “If they were to live in Gaza, they would spend most of their time outside their houses, wondering.”

I’m still looking at the ceiling. No flies anymore. I make some tea but forget to sip it. Now dust from the two explosions is settling on the couches, rug, and table. I close the windows a little, leaving some space for air.

I have forgotten to mention the dogs barking. I don’t usually hear them, but since the Israeli attacks have escalated, they have been making noise. At night, they seem to cry.

The ceiling appears to be staring at me. I shut my eyes. When I open them, the big star, the circles and triangles, and the rainbow have not moved. The way they cling to the ceiling reminds me of a baby on its mother’s breast. For a moment, I wish that I were a baby.

I hear another blast but don’t see any smoke. Panic runs through me. When you can’t see the explosion, you feel like you’re blind. I think of the refugee camp where I left my family, imagining my seven-year-old daughter, Yaffa. She never asks me, “Daddy, who’s bombing us?” Instead, she cries and tells me, “Daddy, it’s a bomb! I’m scared. I want to hide.”

I call my wife, Maram. She tells me that everyone is “fine.” Our kids “are watching videos on YouTube,” she says. That’s the only thing that can distract them from the explosions.

From the kitchen, I fetch twelve eggs, some beef and chicken, and the bread. I don’t take any pots or pans, for fear that Israeli drone operators would mistake them for guns or rockets. I take an extra charger from the library. Before I can leave, I notice the pile of books on my desk. It seems to be waiting for me to take one, to carry it to the garden for an afternoon of reading among the fruit trees. How I wish that I could drink some lemonade or guava juice now.

More notifications are lighting up my phone. Sometimes I decide not to check the news. We are part of it, I think to myself.

I catch my breath on the couch one more time. I cannot take my eyes off the ceiling. I imagine it falling in on me, just as so many homes have fallen in on so many families in the past seven days, killing them in the rubble of their own rooms. What will kill me? The little triangles? A piece of rainbow? The brown-and-yellow star?

Then I ride back to Jabalia camp, feeling the eyes of bystanders on my plastic bags of food. I can see from the way they look at me that they, too, would like to return to their homes and fetch what they need.

As I approach “our” house, I wind through streets that are strewn with stones and shrapnel. I ride slowly and carefully, hoping that my tire won’t burst under the weight that I’m carrying. Families are walking around, and children are playing hopscotch in the lanes. I can only imagine their panic at the sound of a tire popping.