As a student at UC Berkeley, Shannon Thomas thought she was simply pursuing her interest in global politics. She majored in Peace & Conflict Studies and Middle Eastern Studies, studied Arabic, and led Berkeley’s Model UN team. But when she joined the Olive Tree Initiative (our team’s original organization before CIEL) and traveled to Israel and Palestine in 2012, something shifted.

The trip placed her in refugee camps, city halls, and living rooms — face-to-face with the human complexities of a conflict she had only studied in classrooms. “It made me want to dedicate my life to resolving conflict,” she later reflected. After that, she didn’t just stay involved — she helped launch the OTI chapter at Berkeley, turning her personal transformation into a shared space for others to experience dialogue and disruption.

After graduating summa cum laude, Shannon moved to India to work on gender-based violence prevention with Equal Community Foundation. She later returned to the U.S. to pursue a master’s in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, where she focused on international affairs and multiparty negotiation — all tools she would soon put to work in a new arena: American politics.

Drawn to the grassroots energy of democratic reform, Shannon became a speechwriter and strategist on progressive congressional campaigns. Her work was later featured in the Netflix documentary Knock Down the House, which followed women candidates challenging the political establishment. Through this work, she began thinking more deeply about how storytelling, power, and trust intersect in systems of governance.

In 2020, Shannon founded Just Media, a social enterprise that offers community-based conflict resolution, transformative justice workshops, and coalition-building support in Los Angeles. Her agency’s “pay-what-you-can” model reflects her commitment to accessibility and equity. From neighborhood mediation to global movement building, Shannon now applies the same principles that shaped her early OTI experience: humility, listening, and the belief that conflict isn’t something to fear — it’s something to work through.

From student dialogue circles to city hall organizing, Shannon’s journey is a testament to how early experiential learning can seed a lifelong commitment to empathy, equity, and justice.