Dawn Engle

Dawn Engle is the co-founder and executive director of the non-profit organization, the PeaceJam Foundation. The PeaceJam program was launched in February 1996 by co-founders Dawn Engle and Ivan Suvanjieff to provide the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates with a programmatic vehicle to use in working together to teach youth the art of peace. To date, 13 Nobel Peace Laureates, including the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Rigoberta Menchú Tum, President Oscar Arias, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Betty Williams, President José Ramos-Horta, Aung San Suu Kyi, Sir Joseph Rotblat (Emeritus), Leymah Gbowee, Jody Williams, and Shirin Ebadi, serve as members of the PeaceJam Foundation.

Engle is the co-director of multiple documentaries, including “PEACEJAM,” and co-author of the book, “PeaceJam: A Billion Simple Acts of Peace,” that was published by Penguin in 2008. She has also directed the award winning documentary films, “Mayan Renaissance" and "Children of the Light,” which were the first two films in PeaceJam's Nobel Legacy Film Series.

Engle began her career as an economist, working for the U.S. Congress in Washington, D.C. She was the youngest woman ever appointed to serve as Chief of Staff to a U.S. Senator. In 1991, she co-founded the Colorado Friends of Tibet, and in 1994, she and artist Ivan Suvanjieff began working together to create the PeaceJam program. Suvanjieff and Engle married in March 2000, with Archbishop Desmond Tutu presiding over the ceremony. Engle has received dozens of awards, and has been nominated eight times for the Nobel Peace Prize.

In November 2005, President Mikhail Gorbachev presented her and Suvanjieff with the "Man of Peace Award" for achievement in the field of Peace Education. Over the past 18 years, more than one million young people across the globe have participated in the PeaceJam program, creating almost two million projects to improve their communities and the world. In September 2008, The Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi, and six other Nobel Peace Laureates joined together to launch PeaceJam’s “One Billion Acts of Peace” campaign, calling for one billion acts of service and peace by the year 2019.