Meet The LPC Team
Executive Director & Co-Founder
Emily Cook
Emily Cook is a peacebuilder, educator, social worker, and scholar-practitioner whose work bridges research and community practice to strengthen relationships among people, place, and future generations. As Co-Founder and Executive Director of Legacies Peace Center, she leads initiatives that integrate food, wellness, environmental stewardship, leadership development, and peacebuilding to cultivate resilient communities.
Emily holds a Master of Social Work from the University of Georgia and is a Ph.D. candidate in International Conflict Management, Peacebuilding, and Development at Kennesaw State University. Her research explores Indigenous women's peacebuilding, matriarchal systems of governance, environmental sustainability, and the ways Indigenous knowledge can inform more relational approaches to peacebuilding and community development. She is the co-author of the peer-reviewed article Environmental and Collective Rights: Differences between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous NGOs Involved with the United Nations Human Rights Council, published in the International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, which explains how Indigenous organizations advance distinct perspectives on environmental and collective rights within international human rights institutions.
Throughout her career, Emily has worked across social work, nonprofit leadership, higher education, international education, and international development. She has supported at-risk youth, survivors of domestic violence, and communities experiencing generational poverty, while also designing community-based programs that expand access to education, leadership, and supportive services. These experiences continue to shape her commitment to relational care, justice, and sustainable community development.
For more than nine years, Emily directed a nationally recognized education program, mentoring student leaders, developing innovative educational initiatives, and leading one of the country's largest peer-learning programs. Her leadership earned international recognition for excellence in higher education, including awards for outstanding supervision and program innovation. She has also taught undergraduate leadership and social work courses, designed graduate-level peace education curriculum, and is certified in restorative justice, conflict management, and yoga instruction.
Previously, Emily served as Associate Director of the Afro-Amerindian Research and Cultural Center, where she supported research, educational programming, and international partnerships that amplified the voices, histories, and knowledge systems of Afro-Indigenous communities throughout the Americas. She also served as Managing Editor of the Journal of Peacebuilding and Development and has held leadership roles within international higher education organizations that advance collaborative learning and professional development.
Through Legacies Peace Center, Emily brings her research into practice by developing programs grounded in reciprocity, relational responsibility, environmental stewardship, and women's leadership. Her work explores how Indigenous matriarchal values can inform contemporary peacebuilding by strengthening relationships among individuals, communities, and Mother Earth. Guided by the belief that peacebuilding begins within individuals, grows through relationships, and expands through leadership, she is commited to helping communities build lasting systems of wellbeing across generations.
Director of Advancement & Co-Founder
Anne Chance
Dr. Anne M. Chance is a peacebuilding practitioner, researcher, and program designer specializing in community resilience, cultural heritage, and trauma-informed restorative practices. She brings a multidisciplinary background spanning public history, conflict analysis, program evaluation, and community development.
Dr. Chance previously served as Director of Solution Labs with TRENDS Global where she designed integrated, cross-sector programs addressing structural and cultural drivers of conflict through inclusive, community-engaged methodologies. Her work emphasizes facilitated dialogue, conflict transformation, and the use of qualitative and quantitative research to address complex social challenges.
She has contributed to curriculum development for academic institutions, including trauma-informde restorative practices programming at Kennesaw State University, and has supported public history, preservation initiatives, historic redevelopment projects and cultural programming. Her experience also includes program evaluation with partners across education, helathcare, and community response systems, as well as editorial leadership as Managing Editor of the Journal of Peacebuilding and Development.
Dr. Chance holds a Ph.D. with research focused on structural violence, during which she developed the Chance Matrix, a framework for analyzing inequities using large-scale international datasets. Her current research advances Conflict Transformative Design, an emerging framework that integrates peacebuilding principles into planning, design, and community development processes.
As Co-Founder and Director of Advancement for Legacies Peace Center, Dr. Chance helps advance a model of practice that supports communities as co-creators of sustainable solutions. Her work emphasizes women's leadership, the preservation of cultural knowledge, and the cultivation of resilient, inclusive systems that strengthen communities through collaboration, shared learning, and long-term peacebuilding.
Board of Directors
Lina Tuschling
Lina Tuschling is a monitoring and evaluation specialist whose career has been shaped by a commitment to humanitarian action, community development, and peacebuilding. Her work spans both international and domestic contexts, giving her a broad perspective on how communities navigate displacement, conflict, recovery, and long-term change.
Lina currently works in refugee resettlement and previously contributed to community development and peacebuilding initiatives in Liberia and Afghanistan. She holds a master's degree in Peace Research and Security Policy from the University of Hamburg in Germany and a Ph.D. in International Conflict Management from Kennesaw State University.
Her experience in monitoring and evaluation brings an additional dimension to her peacebuilding work: understanding not only what communities and organizations hope to accomplish, but how they can meaningfully assess impact, learn from experience, and strengthen programs over time.
As a member of Legacies Peace Center's Board of Directors, Lina brings expertise in humanitarian peacebuilding, refugee resettlement, international community development, and monitoring and evaluation. Her perspective helps LPC connect its locally rooted work to broader peacebuilding practice while strengthening the organization's capacity to evaluate impact, learn from the communities it serves, and develop sustainable programming.
Karla Ramirez
Karla Ramirez is a psychologist trained at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, a Licensed Master of Social Work (LMSW), and co-founder of Energy Works ATL. She provides individual and family therapy to adolescents and adults across metro Atlanta and surrounding communities, bringing together mental health, education, culture, and community-based approaches to healing.
As an immigrant, Karla is deeply commited to supporting Georgia's growing migrant population and other communities whose experiences and needs are not always adequately represented within traditional systems of care. Her work integrates trauma-informed and culturally responsive practices through psychosomatic methodologies, offering both direct therapeutic services and group interventions. Beyond individual care, Karla is passionate about systemic change and healing-centered, community-led approaches that strengthen social connection and long-term well-being.
As a member of the Legacies Peace Center Board of Directors, Karla brings expertise in mental health, trauma-informed care, culturally responsive practice, and work alongside immigrant and migrant communities. Her perspective strengthens LPC's understanding of peacebuilding as both an individual and collective process - one that recognizes the relationship between healing, belonging, culture, and social connection.
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Betsy Nagy
Betsy Nagy brings together extensive experience in mental health, holistic wellness, and community-centered care. She holds a bachelor's degree from The Ohio State University and master's degrees in Business and Counseling Psychology. She is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC), and E-RYT 500 with Yoga Alliance, a certified Yoga Therapist, and an Ayurveda Wellness Coach.
Alongside 25 years of experience in the financial sector, Betsy has spent much of her life studying and practicing approaches that support whole-person well-being. Her healing philosophy recognizes the interconnectedness of mind, body, and spirit and the importance of honoring the full complexity of each person's lived experience. She believes wellness begins with acknowledging and respecting all that we are and all that life's journey has given us, creating space for greater balance, self-acceptance, and growth.
Betsy is also the owner of Mindful Leaps LLC and a key partner in the development of Legacies Peace Center's Dahlonega Yoga Collective, an initiative of Sacred Ground Wellness: Embodied Peace Collective. Through this partnership, she helps create accessible, community-centered opportunities for movement, mindfulness, connection, and well-being.
As a member of the Legacies Peace Center Board of Directors, Betsy brings a distinctive combination of mental health expertise, holistic wellness practice, business experience, and an embodied understanding of healing. Her perspective strengthens LPC's commitment to peacebuilding that begins within individuals and grows through healthier, more connected communities.
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Cathia A. Moon
Cathia'A. Moon (she/her/ella) is a conflict management scholar, criminologist, and data analyst whose work centers on questions of power, inclusion, prevention, and the experiences of marginalized communities. A native of Southwest Atlanta, Georgia, she brings an interdisciplinary perspective to understanding how instituions and communities respond to conflict, inequality, and public safety.
Cathia holds bachelor's and master's degrees in Criminal Justice and Criminology from Valdosta State University, a master's degree in Conflict Management from Kennesaw State University, and a Graduate Certificate in Geographic Information Science from Northwest Missouri State University. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in International Conflict Management at Kennesaw State University. Her doctoral research critically examines how resilience and empowerment are constructed within community-based processes, particularly those involving marginalized communities. Her work consisders whose voices are included in decision-making, how power operates within participatory spaces, and how approaches intended to foster empowerment can sometimes obscure or reproduce existing inequalities.
Cathia also brings more than a decade of professional experience in crime and intelligence analysis and currently serves as a Crime Data Analyst at the University of New Mexico. Across her professional work, she has developed expertise in data analysis, prevention, information gathering, and identifying patterns within complex systems.
As a member of the Legacies Peace Center Board of Directors, Cathia brings particular strengths in conflict management, research and data analysis, prevention, and understanding how power and inequality shape the experiences of marginalized communities. Her critical systems perspective strengthens LPC's commitment to locally led peacebuilding that centers meaningful participation, examines structural inequities, and creates space for communities too often excluded from decision-making.