Virginia Swain, MA, President
With international experience on five continents as varied as US Peace Corps teaching in Africa and the United Nations community since 1991, Virginia Swain is the co-founder and President of the Center with expertise in global governance, the process by which humanity is evolving to political union. Virginia served as a United Nations non-governmental organization representative and citizen diplomat since 1991 and gave seminars at both the Earth and Social Summits in Brazil and Denmark in addition to assisting in the preparations for the UN Beijing Women’s Summit and the US Committee for the UN Habitat for Humanity Conference and the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. For four years, Virginia served on the Executive Committee of the Coalition for a Strong United Nations and is the former co-chair of the International Business Task Force.
Virginia founded the Institute for Global Leadership after her experience at the United Nations in New York on September 11, 2001, (www.global-leader.org) through which she has provided new leadership and development models for community, institutional, national and global challenges. She is the author of A Mantle of Roses: A Woman’s Journey Home to Peace (August 2004, XLibris).
Virginia was awarded the Peace Corps Third Goal Service Award for bringing Intercultural Understanding to Worcester and to the United Nations. She has been funded by various foundations to support her peacebuilding work in the Philippines, with Rwandans and former Yugoslavians, her participation in the Hague Appeal, the Millennium Forum and lobbying states for peace and disarmament issues. She has been active in the Global Compact, the Academic Council for the United Nations and presented at conferences such as the International Educators for Peace, the Comparative International Education Society, Global Education Associates, Global Structures Conference, Hague Appeal for Peace and the NGO Millenium Forum.
As President of CGCWL, Virginia is committed to gathering and mobilizing like-minded people in a shared vision for a sustainable peace through the doorway of the climate change crisis. Her current research and practice interest is the UN Peacebuilding Commission and the 2007-2010 Culture of Peace Initiative in Worcester, MA.
Joseph Preston Baratta, PhD, Senior Advisor
Joseph Baratta is the Co-founder and Senior Advisor of the Center with expertise in government, the structure through which humanity is evolving to political union. He has developed a scholarly approach to a federal union of states and peoples as the basis for lasting freedom, justice and world peace. He is a historian of international organization and a consultant on issues of the United Nations. He received his PhD from Boston University with a dissertation on the origins of the world government movement.
Joseph served in the United Nations community as the representative of the World Association for World Federationfrom 1985-1988. With a grant from the US Institute of Peace,Joseph has prepared four monographs on international verification, arbitration, peacekeeping, and human rights. His most recent book, The Politics of World Federation, was published by Praeger Press in June 2004. For the 50th anniversary of the UN, Joseph published an annotated bibliography on the UN system since the end of the Cold War, The United Nations System, by Clio Press in Oxford, England, and Transaction Press in New Jersey.
Joseph has taught world history and international organization at various universities in greater Boston. He is an Executive Committee member and former chair of the Coalition for a Strong United Nations of Greater Boston. Joseph was the coordinator of the conference, “Re-Forming the United Nations:Toward a Humane Global Society” (1995). He alsoco-chairedthe UN StructuralReform Task Force, and served on the International Business Task Force. Joseph is now a Professor of History and Political Science at Worcester State College.
For more information on Joseph Baratta, click here.
