With colleagues José Roman Carrera and Oscar Rojas in the community-managed forest concession of the Maya Biosphere Reserve, Guatemala.

My current exploration of grief transmutation practices is the outcome of decades of work for international human rights and environmental organizations. As the editor of Amnesty International magazine, I commissioned, edited, and wrote articles about systemic human rights abuses in the United States and around the world, as well as the courageous people who risked their lives to stop them. These stories revealed the generational reverberations of historical atrocities, and how they fuel continuing cycles of violence.

After observing how so many of the world’s most terrible human rights crises are fueled by conflicts over natural resources, I joined the Rainforest Alliance, where I led an international team of storytellers. We collaborated with colleagues around world working to reduce the devastating impacts of commodity crop systems imposed by European colonists across the Global South. Many people I interviewed spoke of the destruction of the land they belong to, as well as their traditional ways of life. Their han was unmistakable, as was the jeong that nourishes their continuing resistance.

recent work: ritualizing healing, releasing trauma

Shot by filmmaker Yoon Ra and co-edited by Yoon Ra & Jungwon Kim 

In July 2023, I worked with Women Cross DMZ to produce an event supporting diaspora healing from the generational trauma of the Korean War. Featuring ritual performance artist Dohee Lee, novelist Joseph Han, and HA:N UMC pastor Sulkiro Song, Unbind Your Heart was part of a historic convening organized by Women Cross DMZ in coalition with several anti-war groups. More than 250 people people converged in Washington, D.C., on the 70th anniversary of the armistice to contest the U.S. state narrative about its “Forgotten War” in Korea and build momentum for a formal peace agreement through scholarship, advocacy, and public protest. The event created new ground for experimentation with centuries-old Korean traditions, including a participatory gopuri based on a shamanic ritual for untangling the knots of our ancestors’ suffering.

magazine: Amnesty INternational

As the editor of Amnesty International quarterly from 2004 - 2011, I commissioned and edited work by award-winning journalists and documentary photographers about genocides and climate conflicts, natural resource exploitation, transitional justice, femicide, and U.S. human rights abuses related to its "War on Terror."