Louise Diamond

President and Founder of Peace-Tech

Interviewed by Julian Portilla, 2003

This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).

Q: What sort of personal qualities should someone doing this kind of work should exude?

A: I am going to talk about something that doesn't get talked about very often in the field and that is a spiritual centeredness. I have had a lot of spiritual training. I come to the work of peace from two streams. One is the spiritual streams and the other is human behavior and organizational development. My work is with people on every level of social organization; being a therapist for individuals, couples, families, then businesses, organizations, communities, and nations. Inter-group relations is a particular professional specialty of mine. By the way, people come to this field from may different streams, these just happen to be mine. I can't tell you how many experiences that I have had when being able to call on my spiritual training has made a huge difference. When I try and talk to some of my colleagues about this they are not there, they come from more of a rational place. For years we would use the words healing and reconciliation and we would be laughed at. I had an academic whose name you would recognize in the field say to me," Sounds like what you are doing is national therapy." To which I said, "Yes, what else are you trying to do?" You get a signed agreement and that is just the beginning, of course you have to work with the psychology of the people, how they are feeling, thinking, wanting, and how they are interacting.