Our Staff

Jacob Flowers — Executive Director
jacob@midsouthpeace.org
Jacob grew up in Memphis, TN, and graduated from White Station High School in 1999. In the fall of that year, Jacob moved to Worcester, MA, to attend Clark University. He graduated in 2003 with a degree in International Development and Social Change and a concentration in Peace Studies. During the summer of 2003, Jacob worked as the Field Manager of Canvass Operations for the Fund for Public Interest Research in Western Massachusetts. He became an intern at Traprock Peace Center in Deerfield, MA, early the next year—coordinating local activities for the Wheels of Justice Tour, the largest peace education campaign in the United States. In June 2004, he moved back to Memphis and took the job as Executive Director of the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center. At the end of that very same year, he traveled to the Middle East as part of a peace delegation and as a nonviolent witness to the occupation of Palestine. In addition to his responsibilities at the MSPJC, Jacob serves as Chair of the Gandhi-King Conference on Peacemaking and on the Steering Committee of the Gerard Vanderhaar Symposium. He also serves as a board member for two organizations—Grassroots Leadership and Turning Point Partners.

Allison Glass — Training Director
allison@midsouthpeace.org
In the late 1990s as an undergraduate at Christian Brothers University,  Allison obtained an internship at the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center working with the Peaceful Living and Learning Program. While there, she taught nonviolent education at various elementary schools. Allison obtained a bachelor's degree in Peace Studies from the University of Colorado in Boulder in 2003. She also worked for the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center in their Nonviolence Collective for two years. After moving back to Memphis, Allison began to work at the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center as coordinator of the Mid-South’s largest conference on non-violence—the Gandhi-King Conference on Peacemaking. She also develops and coordinates G.O.T. Power! as the Training Director for the MSPJC.

Gio Lopez — Operations Director
gio@midsouthpeace.org
Gio is a native Peruvian but spent her adolescence in Costa Rica. She graduated in Costa Rica with a degree in Theatre and a focus in Theatre for Development, in which plays are performed to build awareness about critical topics mostly within a political or developmental context. She moved to the U.S. in 2005 and the very next year founded the Bilingual Theatre group Cazateatro in Memphis. From 2009 to 2010, Gio had a weekly radio show on Radio Ambiente, a local Hispanic radio station. Her program, called Mujer de Valor, focused on the development of women. Gio is also the founding member of the Latino organization Comunidades Unidas en Una Voz, a member of the Steering Committee of the first Latino Cultural Center, Centro Cultural Latino de Memphis, and a volunteer theatre teacher. Gio has been working at the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center as Operations Director since 2009.

Brad Watkins — Organizing Director
brad@midsouthpeace.org
Brad is a native Memphian and a graduate of Memphis Catholic High and the University of Memphis.  He has been active in the community throughout his life, culminating in his involvement in the 2004 presidential campaign for Howard Dean. This in turn led to his efforts to turn the local Democratic party back toward its progressive base; from 2005 to 2006 he sat on the Executive Committee of the Shelby County Democratic Party. He was a long-time volunteer with the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center when he worked on the Memphis Living Wage Campaign, the Coalition Against Private Prisons and the campaign to end the war in Iraq. Watkins is now convinced that true positive social change can only come from the community itself and that the progressive movement must be committed to the task of organizing with those who are directly affected by injustice. In 2008 Watkins was accepted into the D.C.-based Center for Community Change's GenChange program as a fellow and oversaw CCC and MSPJC GOTV efforts in four low-income, low voter turnout communities of color in the 2008 local elections. Watkins joined the staff of the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center in December of 2008 and since then has overseen the Center's programs and campaign efforts on homelessness, blight, foreclosure, the Neighborhood Alliance, criminal justice reform and electoral organizing.

Our Board

Emily Fulmer — Chair
Tennessee Health Care Campaign

Jason Baker — Secretary
Germantown UMC

David Ciscel — Treasurer
Memphis Friends

Randy Alexander
ADAPT/Memphis Center for Independent Living

Arshad Ameen
Muslims in Memphis

Cristina Condori
Comunidades Unidas con Una Voz

Paul Crum
Pax Christi Memphis

Jose Davila
Christian Brothers University

Carolyn Head
Southwest Tennessee Community College

Onie G. Johns
Caritas Village

Jason Smith
Food not Bombs