Last week, from October 31, 2022, to November 4, 2022, the PEJ administrative team gathered in person to develop our strategic plan for the next two years. Our organization is going through an exciting growth spur, and we must adapt to bring our best selves to all the communities we serve.
Our team members traveled from South Africa, Uganda, Nigeria, the Netherlands, and Colombia to meet at our headquarters in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. For many of us, this was the first time meeting our colleagues in person. We put our ‘heads together’ during this week and came up with a clarity of purpose and goals for the next two years.
From left to right: Our wonderful facilitator and executive coach for this experience, Melissa Ann Arthur; Projects Coordinator - Gilbert Nuwagira; Operations Manager - Melissa Harry; Communications Officer - Laura Rubio Krohne; Board of Directors Representative - Rebecca Villegas; Executive Assistant - Nonkululeko Patience Buthelezi; Legal and Program Director for Ukraine Pascal Turlan; Finance Manager - Simbarashe Takundwa.
Front Row: Executive Director - Cynthia Tai; and Legal and Program Director - Akingbolahan Adeboye Adeniran.
The opportunity to meet face-to-face, in ‘real time’ and work on our collective vision for the future marks our effort to continue working as a global and multicultural organization, where our team shows up remotely in the day-to-day and travels in person when the work calls for it.
This is how we are “almost back to normal” after Covid-19. We are more committed than ever to having a fully remote and multicultural team that meets in person for training, mentoring, and connecting to maximize the impact of our work.
Other exciting news:
We won one of the Think Tech Hawaii 2022 Community Service Awards.
ThinkTech Hawaii, Inc., is a Hawaii 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation organized in 2001 and dedicated to raising public awareness and providing a platform for civic engagement by citizen journalists. PEJ partners with Think Tech on a biweekly show about Transitional Justice.
“The courageous work Project Expedite Justice has done in its investigation of war crimes, human rights violations and atrocities around the world has been of extraordinary value and importance to the global community, just as the revelations it has reported on our ThinkTech “Transitional Justice” series have been of enormous value to our viewership community.
PEJ’s work is especially important in the face of the atrocities and violence we see around the world, and we are all so proud that PEJ is based in Hawaii. We feel PEJ has lived up to the highest standards of community service to our community, to the family of nations, and to humanity. By this award, we want to express our heart-felt recognition and deep appreciation of its efforts.”
We are honored and excited to accept this award, and our Executive Director will represent PEJ by attending the hybrid event in person on December 8, 2022, in downtown Honolulu.
We have a new board member.
Luke Tucker, who started on August 30th, 2022. Luke is an American startup executive and entrepreneur. He currently serves as the VP of Marketing for cloud security startup, Lightspin. He writes on community, marketing, business, and life via his blog luketucker.com. He wrote this blog post about joining our board.