Suzanne Belleci, MA
Suzanne has been teaching conflict transformation, social justice, cross-cultural communication, and management courses at SIT for 17 years. She served as SIT’s first ombudsperson, bringing groups together, facilitating dialog circles for conflict resolution, and mediating one-on-one disputes. She has also taught online global peacebuilding, conflict analysis, conflict Interventions, and restorative justice practices to international students in an SIT certificate program.
For more than 20 years, Susie has led workshops and trainings for peacebuilders in conflict and post-conflict zones in Iraq, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Israel, and Palestine. She has also led trainings for youth from Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Iraq, Jordan, and the United States. She served in the office of Senator Nick Petris, in Oakland, California, as an aide and advocate in the most economically depressed city in the wealthiest state in the union. In this role, she worked on legislation to create universal healthcare and represented the senator in the district for the 10 months each year that he was in the Capitol. Continuing her work in advocacy, Susie was the developer and director of Jardin de Maestros, a program to create pathways for students of color to become teachers in the very districts in which they were raised and have their roots. She was a teacher and trainer for years in Madrid, Spain; Dijon France; Florence, Italy; Porto and Lisbon, Portugal; Jenin, Palestine; and Pohnpei Island in the Federated States of Micronesia and was the associate director of world studies at Marlboro College. Currently, she is the director of the Greater Falls Community Justice Center in Southern Vermont.
Married to a Dane, Susie spends her summers in Denmark with her husband and young son. When not working and mothering, Susie enjoys vegetarian cooking, reading with her son, picking fresh tomatoes from her garden, swimming in the summer, and Nordic skiing in the winter.
Education
- Postgraduate Teaching Certification, University of California
- MA, SIT Graduate Institute
- BA, University of California, Berkeley