Who We Are

We are a small staff, a large volunteer team and amazing crew of independent trainers.

Rev. Dr. Andrea Ayvazian, Director

The Rev. Dr. Andrea Ayvazian is a veteran of nearly every peace and social change movement since the 1960s, when she was radicalized at Oberlin College during the Vietnam War. Following several years of teaching at Hampshire College and the Smith College Social for Social Work, Andrea went to Divinity School and became an  ordained pastor in the United Church of Christ, later serving as Dean of Religious Life at Mount Holyoke College for ten years. She then went on to revitalize the Haydenville Congregational Church in Western Massachusetts. Andrea is currently on the Ministerial Team at Alden Baptist Church in Springfield, MA.  Andrea is long-time war tax resister, a nonviolence and peacekeeper trainer, an anti-racism educator, a frequent speaker on strategies for effective movement building, and she writes a monthly column on the intersection of faith, culture and politics for the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton, MA. She created the Sojourner Truth School for Social Change Leadership in 2017 after Trump took office and she felt the need to response with some visionary and positive action. Andrea’s papers, chronicling over four decades of movement activism, have been collected and archived at the Smith College Women’s History Archive as part of their permanent collection. She holds degrees from Oberlin College, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University, the Graduate School of the Union Institute, and Yale Divinity School.  

Email: revandrea@comcast.net

Leadership Team

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Staff/Volunteers

Board of Directors

Advisory Board