Kim Dixon is an experienced professional in strategy, program development/mgmt and organizational change management for corporations and NGOs. After 25 years in corporate America and Internet startups, she felt honored to serve in the Peace Corps in the country of Georgia (2014-2016) as a community economic development volunteer. She returned to its capital, Tbilisi, to support strategic planning for its first Hospice and other NGOs, including the Eurasia Partnership Foundation.   Returning to the US she joined Midtown Raleigh Rotary club. Kim has served on several Boards including National Association of Women Business Owners, Ronald McDonald House, St. Raphael's Church in Raleigh, NC, and Vail Racquet Club and Mountain Resort. She is currently the President Partnering for Peace: Friends of Peace Corps and Rotary. She enjoys NC, Colorado and Georgia (country of) hiking, swimming, skiing and spending time with her husband and three adult children. 

Charlie served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Vanuatu from 2006 – 2008 as a business enterprise volunteer.  He has been active in Returned Peace Corps Volunteers of Colorado as a member of the Welcome Wagon Committee for the past six years.  As a Rotarian he has served as the club president, international service chair and club foundation president for the Denver LoDo Rotary club.  Within Rotary he has worked with other RPCV Rotarian to promote the signing of the partnership agreement between Peace Corps and Rotary International.  Within that project he currently serves as the Outreach Chair for Partnering for Peace: Friend of Peace Corps and Rotary, an NPCA affiliate group.  In his neighborhood, Charlie serves on three committees being a co-lead on the Golden Triangle Creative District Improvement committee.  Charlie retired from the Downtown Denver Partnership in 2018 where he worked in operations for the Downtown Denver Business Improvement District and the 14^th St. General Improvement.  In that role he was the subject matter expert for growing trees in a downtown urban setting and called the “wizard of watts” in working with 16^th St. Mall vendors to ensure that their electrical needs could be met.

RPCV DOMINICAN REPUBLIC (1974 - 1975); ROTARY CLUB OF CASA GRANDE DAYBREAK, AZ

Steve Werner is an international development consultant after a 25 year career working with large NGOs, such as CARE, Habitat for Humanity, Water For People, and the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect. His major focus is capacity building, program development and evaluation, fundraising planning, and board development. He served in Peace Corps – Korea as a two-year volunteer from 1976 – 1978 and Peace Corps Response – Georgia from 2016 – 2017. He has served in Rotary, through the Rotary Club of Denver Southeast, since 1989 and still serves at the club, District and International levels as a Water and Sanitation specialist. He has served in Leadership San Antonio, the Kellogg National Leadership Program, and the Salzburg Seminar. He is a past board chair of the National Peace Corps Association. Steve along with other Denver area Rotarians helped to develop the partnership between Peace Corps and Rotary and he is the charter president of Partnering for Peace: Friends of Peace Corps and Rotary. He has three grown children and four grandchildren.

Richard 'Dick' Pyle has been an active Rotarian for 41 years in the club's of Alma, Michigan, Austin, Texas, St. Lucia, B.W.I and since 2003 the D.C. Rotary Club.   He has served in a variety of leadership roles including, International Services Director, Newsletter Editor, Program Director, and President.  He has a Ph.D in Counseling Psychology from the University of Florida.  His work experience includes academia and the Peace Corps.  In academia he has worked as a Counseling Center Director and Dean of Students.  In the Peace Corps he has served as a Volunteer, Training Center Director, Country Director and Agency Psychologist.   He is a multiple Paul Harris Fellow.  

As a RPCV of Paraguay ('06-'10) and Panama ('17), Carin has been involved with Partnering for Peace since 2010. Carin serves on the P4P communications committee, supporting P4P social media and internship program. She is based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States where she works as Learning and Development Manager with City Year Milwaukee.

Chantelle's background is in public policy, community relations, and project management. Chantelle is a return US Peace Corps Volunteer (Paraguay), and a Rotary International Peace Fellow (University of Queensland, Australia). She has previously been involved with Mediators Beyond Borders International as chair of the Los Angeles Chapter; and as a graduate student, spent time with the United Nations Development Program in the South Pacific as part of her research. Chantelle is currently the co-chair of International Service for the Rotary e-Club of World Peace (District 5330).

Wick Rowland, Ph.D. is Dean & Professor Emeritus of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Colorado Boulder and President & CEO Emeritus of PBS12 (formerly Colorado Public Television, KBDI), in Denver.

Wick served in the Peace Corps in Jamaica 1966-69, and is currently a member of the Niwot Rotary club in Colorado and formerly of the Denver and Boulder clubs and is a multiple Paul Harris Fellow.  

He was part of the group of Denver-area Rotarians who developed the idea of the Partnership between Peace Corps and Rotary and the formation of Partnering for Peace. 

Wick is a widely published scholar in media studies, with particular research and teaching emphases on communications policy and public media.

At CU he led the transformation of a small journalism school into a nationally competitive series of professional and academic programs in media and communications research.

Wick’s parallel career in public media began as the first research director for the then new PBS and later as its director of long-range planning, as a member of public radio advisory boards and then as chair of the board and CEO of PBS12. 

He holds degrees from Stanford and the Universities of Pennsylvania and Illinois, and has traveled widely and conducted research and lectured in over a dozen countries.  He also has been a Fulbright scholar, serving in Ethiopia as an advisor to the government and lecturing at several universities.

He lives in Niwot with his spouse Susan Tannenbaum and their two cats, and is an avid skier, bicyclist, swimmer, and sailor. He teaches basic keelboat sailing and has logged over 26,000 offshore yacht chartering and delivery miles.

Bill Miller worked with the Kentucky Legislative Research Commission (LRC), which is the bipartisan staff-arm for the Kentucky General Assembly, from 1977-1999 primarily as a Federal/International Relations Specialist and Assistant Public Information Officer. Upon retirement, he established Miller and Associates Federal and International Relations Media Consultants.

A native of Louisville, Kentucky, Mr. Miller holds a Masters of Science of Social Work from the University of Louisville's Kent School of Social Work and a Masters of Public Administration from Kentucky State University.

Miller developed an interest in international issues and the UN when he served as a US Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic. His first year, he worked as a community developer in a remote rural area; his second year he was Professor of Social Work at the Madre y Maestra University in Santiago, the country’s second largest city.

Miller is the founder/CEO/moderator of "Global Connections Television," which does most of its tapings at the United Nations in New York. To view some GCTV programs, go to www.globalconnectionstelevision.com/video-gallery. Global Connections Television, which is privately-funded and independently-produced, reaches over 70-million potential viewers each week worldwide. GCTV is provided at no cost as a public service to help people better understand international issues and how they impact their lives.

Bill helped develop “Rotary Day at the United Nations,” a program to strengthen the unique partnership between Rotary International and the United Nations

He was President of the Frankfort Rotary Club (2000-01) and was the Rotary District 6710 Governor (2003-2004). He was appointed as a Rotary Alternate Representative to the United Nations (2007-10). He has served for several years as the District 6710 International Committee Chair. In 2009, Bill was President D.K. Lee's Representative to District 6580's District Conference.

Bill Miller served as Chairperson of the United Nations Association of the United States of America's (UNA-USA) Council of Chapters and Division Presidents, which consists of UNA-USA's 175 chapters and 23,000 members, from 1988-91. In 1994, he won the UNA-USA’s prestigious Arnold Goodman Award for Outstanding Leadership.

Mr. Miller, an international relations specialist, has written numerous articles on the United Nations for newspapers, such as the Lexington-Herald Leader and the Washington International <www.washingtoninternational.com>

In 2006, Bill Miller launched a unique course titled “The United Nations: Public Administration in the International Arena” in the Graduate School of Public Administration at Kentucky State University (KSU). This was the first international public administration course focusing specifically on the UN developed in any school of public administration in the US.

Bill Miller has been actively involved in Toastmasters International since 1998. He has served as Southern Division Governor and Vice-President for Public Relations and Membership in the Frankfort Capital City Toastmasters’ Club. He achieved the highest Toastmaster Honor of being a Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM).

Bill is a member of various professional associations, such the National Press Club, UN Correspondents Association, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Radio, Television Digital News Association (RTDNA), the American Society for Public Administration and the Phi Kappa Phi Honors Society.

Miller is fluent in Spanish, semi-fluent in French, and has studied German, Portuguese, Russian and Japanese.

Bill Miller has lived in and/or visited over 100 countries.

Mr. Miller and his wife, Paula, who is a retired language arts teacher, live in the historic district of South Frankfort in the Kentucky state capital.

SUMMARY

After serving in the Peace Corps (almost) right out of college, Erica joined Rotary just a few years later and is now the Rotary-Peace Corps Partnership Liaison for District 7610. She embraces projects that spread peace and has started a District 7610 Rotary-Peace Corps Partnership Alliance Committee, still in its very early stages of development, to engage other groups in the quest for peace. With 12 years of experience in the community and international development fields as a volunteer (including Peace Corps service and several community-based organizations, including Rotary), Erica is excited to further advance her knowledge and experience to serve the global Partnering for Peace community.

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Erica has a MA in Global Affairs (concentration: Global Culture & Society) from George Mason University and a BA in Political Science (concentration: International Relations) from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her field experience in Armenia (2007-2009) while she served in the Peace Corps opened her eyes to environmental and gender challenges in Armenia, located within the Caucasus Region of Eastern Europe. Upon her return to the United States, she was inspired to help those in need at home. Erica began volunteering with local 501(c)(3) nonprofits that perform human services, namely HandsOn Greater Richmond (now called HandsOn RVA), Carpenter’s Shelter, and PRS, Inc. She’s been recognized for these humanitarian efforts in the following ways: she was awarded the 2012 Fairfax County Human Rights Commission’s Human Rights Award and was nominated as a Finalist for the March of Dimes’ 2017 Heroines of Washington Award.  

To continue serving the global community, she joined Rotary in 2012. Joining Rotary was an educational moment for her, as she felt that she was joining Peace Corps all over again, the similarities are many. This was affirmed in 2014, when then-PC Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet and then-Rotary President Ron Burton signed a Memorandum of Understanding joining Peace Corps and Rotary into partnership on service projects, both global and within the United States. She brings leadership experience and dedication within Rotary with her service as President of Falls Church Rotary for two years, July 2016-June 2018. She has served in other roles on Falls Church Rotary’s Board of Directors, namely as the Future Vision Chair, Youth Service Director, and Community Service Director. Her leadership continues today within the Northern Virginia Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, an affiliate group of the National Peace Corps Association, where she has served on the Board as Community Service Director for the last nine years, from September 2012-present.

Global service is where her passion lies. Leveraging her network within the extended Peace Corps community and global network of Rotarians, she has taken full advantage of opportunities for global service projects, or “mini Peace Corps projects,” as she likes to call them. These experiences have led to further global connections that have developed into real partnerships abroad. Below is a descriptive list of select global projects and her roles within.

• Caribbean Partnership Program in Trinidad & Tobago: This is a global forum, convening project leaders together from hundreds of Rotary clubs in the Caribbean and Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States. With a service cadre representing Falls Church Rotary, Erica attended as the Future Vision Chair. She identified projects in the Caribbean that her club could partner with. She made some lasting connections from this meeting. 

• “We Care to Share” Free Clinic in Chantal, Haiti: This clinic is free to patients for one week in January and many underserved Haitians waited until this week to visit the clinic. The volunteer physicians from Rotary and other organizations saw more than 1,000 patients that week. Erica assisted the clinic in the pharmacy as volunteer pharmacists dispensed the medicine to patients.

• Camp Sizanani (part of Global Camps Africa) in South Africa: This camp, started by a fellow Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, brings youth together in a camp setting. The youth are at great risk of contracting HIV/AIDS and who have often been abused. Local and international camp counselors lead sessions, including life skills, nutrition, arts and crafts, swimming, and theatre. Erica served as an International Camp Counselor and facilitated sessions on nutrition. She was also a Cabin Co-Leader for girls aged 12 and 13. This experience was rewarding on many levels. She has been invited to serve again at the Camp. 

• Power Classes for Women in Zimbabwe: This is a woman-led organization that provides leadership classes for women interested in starting their own community-based organizations and social enterprises. Classes include effective civic leadership, marketing, designing advocacy campaigns, fundraising, and resource mobilization. Erica has consulted on best practices for organizational grant writing and fundraising. She has been invited to review a draft strategic plan for the organization. She has also been invited to visit the training center in Zimbabwe and plans to do so in the near future.

• Refugee Camp in Lesvos, Greece: This initiative brings members of the Peace Corps Community and others interested in assisting refugees to work with nongovernmental organizations on the ground at major refugee hubs in Greece. Erica served at the Moira Refugee Camp on the Greek island of Lesvos. Project durations range from 10 days to three months. She applied with a Norwegian NGO, A Drop in the Ocean, and upon acceptance, traveled to Lesvos, Greece, for this fieldwork. From January 6-16, 2020, she worked with refugees from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Somalia, West Africa, and other countries. Specifically, Erica helped the mental wellbeing of unaccompanied minors by playing games and puzzles with them at Moria Camp’s Safe Zone for younger children and both Sections A and B for older children. She also interacted with adult refugees outside the Camp in the Drop Center in Moria Village, which is about a 30-minute walk from the Camp. There, Erica assisted with activities and classes, such as painting and English classes, as well as social activities for both women and men. The women, especially, needed a safe place to spend time away from the Camp at a time of day when they could walk between the Camp and the Village during the day. They could bring their children or they could ask volunteers to keep an eye on their children while they relaxed in a comfortable space. For the men, it was a safe place away from violence and long lines for food and donations in the Camp. For both groups, there were sewing machines available for tailors to repair their clothing and other materials.

Ed Pettitt is a Ph.D. student in the Urban Planning and Environmental Policy program at Texas Southern University. His areas of research are: parks and greenspace equity, urban heat island effect, tactical urbanism, and global health and development planning. He received his B.S. degree in Human Biology, Health, and Society from Cornell University in 2006 and his M.P.H. degree in Healthcare Management with a concentration in Global Health from The University of Texas School of Public Health in 2016. Mr. Pettitt served as a Community Capacity Builder with the U.S. Peace Corps in Botswana and worked as a Senior Project Coordinator with Baylor College of Medicine Pediatric AIDS Initiative at Texas Children's Hospital. He has also worked as a consultant for the World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), John Snow International (JSI), and Family Health International (FHI). Locally, Mr. Pettitt has served as a technical advisor for The Trust for Public Lands’ Park-Smart Precinct 1 program, through which he helped develop a decision support tool on parks and social determinants of health; the City of Houston’s Complete Communities initiative, through which he chairs a work group on Parks and Neighborhood Character; the Health Equity Collective, through which he helped to develop a Community Voice strategy for community engagement; and Nature and Eclectic Outdoors’ Healthy Outdoor Communities project, through which he is currently helping to implement a grant from the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health to promote equitable access to urban greenspace as an intervention to mitigate health disparities. Mr. Pettitt is actively involved with the Third Ward neighborhood, a frontline environmental and climate justice community, where he has successfully spearheaded initiatives to build a tactical urbanism chess park, convert a city-owned illegal dumpsite into a pocket park, and install safety and wayfinding signage along a rails-to-trails conversion called the Columbia Tap Hike and Bike Trail. Mr. Pettitt serves on the U.S. Department of State IREX Community Solutions Program (CSP) Partner Advisory Board (PAB) and is a member of the Equity in a Clean Energy Economy (ECEE) Collaborative, Emancipation Economic Development Council (EEDC), Project Row Houses (PRH), and Third Ward is Home Civic Club. Mr. Pettitt is a member and director of the Rotary Club of Houston Skyline, Rotaract Chair for Rotary District 5890, and member of the Environmental Sustainability Rotary Action Group (ESRAG), RPCVs for Environmental Action, and Partnering for Peace. He has been recognized as a Rotary International Paul Harris Fellow and an Albert Schweitzer Fellowship Fellow for Life.

Cal Mann is a Volunteer Leader for Peace Corps North Macedonia, a Rotarian, an industrial designer and a former Apple Creative.  His Peace Corps assignment is focused on developing effective relationships between Peace Corps North Macedonia and select partners including the Association of Rotary Clubs. In his 15 years with Rotary, he worked with high school youth on community service projects and youth leadership development. 

Dr. Kevin Denny served in the Peace Corps in Malawi from 1964-66. Following his service, he earned a masters in Anthropology, followed by a Masters is Public Health. From 1971-74 he served as a consultant to the Afghan, Ministry of Health,designing programs to improve the delivery of health services to rural populations. In 1980 he graduated from medical school and trained in Psychiatry, focusing on the mental health needs of children and adolescents.

Like many RPCVs, he has a long-standing interest in helping those in his country of service, who provided him so much. In 1991, when the care of children who had lost their parents in the AIDs pandemic became a crisis, with a remarkable Malawian clinical officer, Chakunja Sibale, founded the Malawi Children’s Village, a community-based program to support the health, educational and psychological needs of orphans. Every year, for the last 30 years, MCVaddresses the continuum of needs of over 2000 orphans living in thirty-seven villages in southern Malawi.  Dr. Denny was the recipient of the prestigious Sargent Shriver Distinguished Service Award in 2003, in recognition of founding MCV,with the support of Peace Corps Volunteer who served in Malawi over the last sixty years.

Dr. Denny, a long-time Rotarian has who has been the recipient of matching grants, has fostered support for programs in Africa within his own club and has evaluated matching grants in the field.