Maya Soetoro-Ng educated at University of Hawaiʻi
Maya Kasandra Soetoro-Ng (née Soetoro; ; born August 15, 1970) is an Indonesian-born American academic, who is a faculty specialist at the Spark M. Matsunaga Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution, based in the College of Social Sciences at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She is also a consultant for the Obama Foundation, working to develop the Asia-Pacific Leaders Program. Formerly a high school history teacher, Soetoro-Ng is the maternal half-sister of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States.Career
Soetoro-Ng is currently a faculty specialist for the Spark M. Matsunaga Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution, which is based in the College of Social Sciences at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, as well as a consultant for the Obama Foundation's Leaders Program: Asia-Pacific. Dr. Soetoro-Ng teaches courses on: Peace Education; the History of Peace Movements; and Leadership for Social Change.  She also oversees externships for undergraduates who are majoring or minoring in Peace Studies and coordinates the institute's community and global service learning programs.
Soetoro-Ng was an assistant professor at the Institute for Teacher Education at the University of Hawai'i College of Education and continues to do some consulting work, promoting international exchange and understanding, in partnership with the East West Center.  She authored a children's book, Ladder to the Moon, that was inspired by her mother and her daughter, Suhaila; it was published in 2011. She is working on a book about peace education and a young adult novel entitled Yellowood.Soetoro-Ng was a high school history teacher at La Pietra: Hawaii School for Girls and the Education Laboratory School, both in Honolulu, Hawaii.  She previously taught and developed curriculum at The Learning Project, an alternative public middle school in New York City, from 1996 to 2000.In 2009, Soetoro-Ng helped bring her mother's dissertation to publication in the form of the book Surviving against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia. She wrote a foreword to the book and participated in its launch at the American Anthropological Association annual meeting.
In 2019, Soetoro-Ng, along with Todd Shuster and Jennifer Gates cofounded The Peace Studio: a non-profit organization whose mission is to support, train and unite the next generation of artists, journalists and storytellers to inspire people everywhere to become active peacebuilders.Research
Soetoro-Ng's doctoral research at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa focused on Multicultural and International Education. She examined the use of narrative to develop more complex understandings of identity in multicultural classrooms. She promoted the learning of Social Studies—history and current events—from multiple perspectives. She has developed and implemented peace education curricula in public high schools and for K-12 teachers in Colleges of Education.  With partner Kerrie Urosevich, she founded the nonprofit Ceeds of Peace (ceedsofpeace.org), which connects families, community leaders and educators in a 360 degree approach to raise and educate peacebuilding leaders. With environmental law professor Maxine Burkett, she co-founded the nonprofit, Institute for Climate and Peace (www.climateandpeace.org) which works for climate justice at the intersection of climate change and positive peacebuilding.
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