2007-2008

Jose Maria “Chema” Argueta
Mr. Argueta is the Executive Director of the Institute for Central American Strategic Studies and is the former (and first civilian) National Security Adviser of Guatemala and the former Guatemalan Ambassador to Japan and Peru. In Guatemala, Mr. Argueta oversaw and calibrated the ongoing Guatemalan Peace Process and managed relations with the US, European Union, Taiwan, and other Central American countries during his tenure in government. As Guatemalan Ambassador to Peru, he was among the hostages taken at the Japanese Embassy in late 1996 by the Tupac Amaru guerillas. He was among the lead negotiators that helped gain freedom for the hundreds of hostages that were captured for over 12 6 days in the Japanese Embassy. Mr. Argueta, a board member of the Project on Justice in Times of Transition, participated in the IGL’s 2007 forum on “Iraq: Moving Forward.”

Marcy Murninghan
IGL INSPIRE Fellow; Founder and President, The Lighthouse Investment Group (CSR); professor at Harvard Divinity School and Babson College; former president of the Social Investment Services Division of Mitchell Investment Management Company, Inc.; published “Power & Principles: Leaders in Media and Finance Reflect on the Ethical Framework of Their Work,” “Corporate Civic Responsibility and the Ownership Agenda: Investing in the Civic Good,” and “Flower Power: Lucile Belen and the Politics of Integrity” in the New England Journal of Public Policy, among other works.

Gregg Nakano
IGL INSPIRE Fellow and advisor to the ALLIES program, is a former Marine Infantry Officer who fought in the Gulf War and studied in Iran and China after leaving the military. A DART (Disaster Assistance Response Team) expert, he is a graduate of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and now works for the Military Liaison Unit at the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, part of the US Agency for International Development.

Padraig O’Malley
Mr. O’Malley is the John Joseph Moakley Distinguished Professor of Peace and Reconciliation at the University of Massachusetts/Boston and a distinguished chronicler of conflict and peace in Northern Ireland and South Africa. The Dublin-born O’Malley was founder and editor of UMass BostonMcCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies’ New England Journal of Public Policy for more than 20 years and has authored many books, among them the award-winning Uncivil Wars: Ireland Today, Biting at the Grave, and Shades of Difference: Mac Maharaj and the Struggle for South Africa. Former president Nelson Mandela has written a 10,000-word forward to the book. In 2005, Mr. O’Malley founded the “Heart of Hope” web site, which contains transcripts of 3,000 interviews that he conducted between 1989 and 2003 in South Africa. A cooperative effort between UMass Boston, the University of the Western Cape, and Robben Island Museum, the website provides an on-line catalogue of Mr. O’Malley’s oral history project. The recordings and other website materials were also placed on CD-ROM and distributed to every school and library in South Africa. Mr. O’Malley, a long time friend of the Institute, participated in the very first EPIIC International Symposium in 1986 on “International Terrorism” and has been the director of the Iraq Project, a joint effort between the IGL, University of Massachusetts/Boston, and the Conflict Management Initiative in Helsinki, Finland.

Benjamin Pogrund
Benjamin Pogrund was born in South Africa and was deputy editor of the Rand Daily Mail in Johannesburg. He is the author of books on Robert Sobukwe, Nelson Mandela and the press under apartheid. He has lived in Israel for more than ten years and is founder of Yakar’s Centre for Social Concern in Jerusalem, which encourages dialogue across political and ethnic lines. He is the author of War of Words: Memoirs of a South African Journalist, Nelson Mandela: Leader Against Apartheid, and Sobukwe and Apartheid. He is the coeditor of Shared Histories: A Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue. Mr. Pogrund has been a participant in a number of IGL initiatives.