Our Honorees

Kim Bell

Transportation Coordinator

A native of Pennsylvania, Kim Bell began her career after college with a regional bank in credit and lending, and then as a technical writer and finance officer.  While completing her master’s degree, she then turned toward a career in the United States Air Force.  She began her many assignments as a weather observer, and then as the unit Equal Employment Officer where she trained members and conducted investigations on racial and gender discrimination and sexual harassment.  She then took an assignment at a higher headquarters as the disaster preparedness officer, training members on the use of nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare equipment in global deployed environments.  When 9-11 occurred, the focus of that assignment rapidly evolved into what is now known as Homeland Security.  This long-term assignment had local, state, and national intensity where she developed and handled many different aspects of operations, training, and planning for many homeland contingencies here at home.  Toward the middle-to-end of her career, she went back to school, attending law school at night, graduating cum laude.  Concurrently throughout her career, Kim was asked to be the Transportation Coordinator for a small nonprofit, then known as the Children’s Friendship Project of Northern Ireland in the mid-1990’s.  She has been serving in this position as the nonprofit grew, changed, and evolved into the present Creating Friendships for Peace.  She has been bringing her knowledge of global homeland security, her operations and logistics talent, and her overall leadership experience to our organization for over the past 30 years.

Thomas McCarthy

Director

Tom McCarthy has been an Investment and Financial Advisor for 33 years. Prior to that he was a co-founder and Associate Director of a national non-profit organization of youth service programs for 13 years. He has served as a CFP Coordinator for over 30 years, beginning with the Children’s Friendship Project for Northern Ireland, where he also served as Vice-President for two years. A member of many Boards of Directors of non-profit organizations over the years, he currently serves on the Board of “Bikes for the World”, “Project PLASE” (PLASE = People Lacking Adequate Shelter and Employment), and “Project Change” (a youth development and leadership program). An active Rotarian, he is Chairman of the Maryland Rotary endowment for Gallaudet University.

Warren Muir, PhD, CStJ

Chairman Emeritus

Warren Muir is one of the founders, a five-year host, chairman, and executive director of the Cyprus Friendship Program (CFP), which has expanded and been renamed Creating Friendships for Peace. Before that, he served as fifteen-year host, chairman, and president of the Children’s Friendship Project for Northern Ireland, upon which CFP has been based. Warren is a Ph.D. chemist with post-doctoral studies in Epidemiology/Public Health at The Johns Hopkins University. He spent 42 years in the nation’s capital working on the interface of science and public policy in several capacities. For ten years, he served as a senior staff member in the Executive Office of the President, Council on Environmental Quality in the Nixon and Ford Administrations and as the first director of the USEPA Office of Toxic Substances in the Carter Administration. After that, he founded and led the Hampshire Research Institute, an independent environmental research and data analysis firm, for 18 years while serving on the faculty of The Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. His last 14 years in Washington were served as Executive Director of the Division of Earth and Life Studies at the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine/National Research Council. H.R.H. Queen Elizabeth honored Warren in 1988 with the title of Officer Brother and in 1994 with the title of Commander in the Order of St. John. Warren currently serves as a member of the Town of Wolfeboro, NH’s Conservation Commission and its Wolfeboro Waters Committee and is on New Hampshire Public Radio’s Community Advisory Board.

John McKinney, MSc, OBE

Director Emeritus

Since John retired from the Northern Ireland Public Service in 2004, he has been engaged as an International Business and Management Consultant and Advisor with NI-CO [Northern Ireland cooperating overseas]. NI-CO is a not for profit, a public body dedicated to the pursuit of building efficient, accountable and sustainable public service institutions capable of managing donor aid effectively and implementing positive change. John, a three times graduate from the Ulster University, including a spell at the Federal Executive Institute in Virginia, is a committed Community Person. His career spans 30 years in Local Government. He held positions as CEO in two Local Authorities the last being in Omagh during the worst atrocity in the N.I troubles when on the 15^th August 1998 thirty-one people lost their lives in a terrorist car bomb. For his efforts and support to the Community and in giving rebirth to Omagh, he was honoured by her Majesty the Queen and received the OBE in the year 2,000.  John then moved away from Local Government to set up the New Multi-million euro Special European Peace Programme that flowed from the Good Friday Peace Agreement. During this time in the Peace Programme, the famous Warren Muir, then President, recruited him to join the N. I.  Children Friendship Programme [CFP] where they stayed together until it came to a natural end when Peace took hold.  John and Warren then met up again when John started work in Cyprus, and Warren had an idea for the Cyprus Peace Project.  He travelled to Cyprus, and that was the start of our current Cyprus Programme; another step towards Peace.

Betsy Small Campbell

Immediate Past Executive Director

Betsy Small is the former Executive Director of Creating Friendships for Peace, an organization she joined in 2006. She served in multiple roles —as host family, conflict-resolution workshop leader, NH on-tap counselor and family liaison, and US Cyprus Director—before becoming Executive Director. In this leadership position, she launched CFP’s first program during an active conflict in the Middle East and integrated trauma-informed practices into the organization’s teen and volunteer host-family model. Betsy brought broad experience as a special educator, counseling psychologist, and violence prevention researcher at Duke University’s Sanford Institute and holds master’s degrees from Columbia Teachers College and North Carolina Central University. As former Executive Director of War Child USA, she has supported divided and marginalized youth, their families and communities, including immigrant survivors of violence in the US and abroad. She is the author of Before Before: A Story of Discovery and Loss in Sierra Leone (University of Michigan Press, Law, Meaning and Violence series), which blends ethnography and memoir to challenge Western narratives of a nation still recovering from civil conflict.

Tamra Haas

Executive Director

Tammy Haas lives in Whitehouse, Texas with her husband, Vern, and their two mini Aussies. She is semi‑retired from American Family Insurance, following a long and successful career in the banking industry as a Commercial Lender. A committed Rotarian for more than 24 years, Tammy has served in numerous leadership roles and currently serves as her District’s International Peace Director. She is an active member of the South Tyler Rotary Club and was selected and trained as a Rotary Positive Peace Activator, supporting peacebuilding efforts across the Middle East and Northern Africa. Tammy’s connection to CFP began in 2012 through her Rotary Club in Washington State, when she and Vern hosted a pair of girls from Cyprus. That experience sparked a deep and lasting commitment to the program. The couple later served as Area Coordinators for Northern Oregon and Southwest Washington from 2016 to 2018. Tammy went on to serve as Executive Director from 2019 to 2022 and as Administrative Coordinator in 2023 and 2024. During her tenure as Executive Director, Tammy played a key role in expanding CFP’s reach and impact, particularly in Cyprus and throughout the Middle East, with significant growth in Israel. Her leadership, dedication, and passion for youth peacebuilding continue to strengthen the program’s mission and long‑term vision.

Simge Kahvecioglu

Cypriot Lead Coordinator

Simge Kahvecioglu is CFP’s Turkish Cypriot Principal Coordinator and has been involved in the Cyprus Friendship Programme since 2010. She has been active in bicommunal organizations since returning to Cyprus after receiving her education. She has been a member of “Cypriot Women in Dialogue” (2004-2008), a coordinator in the Multinational Winpeace Youth camps (2004-2009), and a Board member of the NGO “KAYAD” (Association of Women to Support Life) (2001-2007). In 2016, Simge and Sotia Adamidou, CFP’s Greek Cypriot Principal Coordinator, received a prestigious Stelios Foundation award for their bicommunal work through CFP. That same year, Simge was selected by President Akinci and continues to serve on the Bicommunal Technical Committee on Education, which was established to review existing practices of education in both sides of Cyprus, to undertake new relevant research on how education can contribute to develop a peace culture, to promote contact and co-operation between students, educators and educational organizations from the two communities and to recommend best policy options that will allow co-ordination between the two educational systems. Simge has been teaching mathematics at Turk Maarif College since 2000. She received a BS in Mathematics from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey and a MS in Optimasation from the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom.

Çise Sakalli

Coordinator

I was born in Nicosia in North Cyprus. Growing up in the last divided capital of Europe, I had always been curious to meet the people on the “other” side of the divide and I started getting involved in bicommunial activities at the age of 15. My first experience was with a group called Youth Encounters for Peace (YEP) facilitated by teachers who then became the founder coordinators of Cyprus Friendship Programme in 2009. I graduated from Turkish Maarif College in Nicosia in 2001 and continued my higher education with a Fulbright scholarship at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. I graduated in 2005 and with a double major in English and International Relations. I returned to Cyprus upon graduation and started work as an English teacher. I have worked at several private and state schools since then. In the meantime I have obtained a post graduate diploma from Nottingham University in Applied Lingustics and English Language Teaching. I am often busy with in service and training programs in my field and I also undertake work for the Ministry of Education in benchmarking English Language teaching in North Cyprus with CEFR standards. However my hopes for peace on the island and interest in conflict resolution have never diminished and I have been a coordinator for the Cyprus Friendship Programme since its founding year 2009.

Rebecca Stirn

Alumni Relations Coordinator

Becky Stirn brings to CFP executive business experience and extensive volunteer service. She has served on the Boards of Trustees for educational, environmental, medical and historical preservation institutions. Her career has focused on strategic planning, financial management and marketing for medical device companies as well as consumer retail companies. After senior leadership positions at Collage Aesthetics, CooperVision, CEMAX and running her own consulting practice, she co-founded Aesthetic Sciences Corp. and served on its Board of Directors and as President and CFO. She chaired the Nominating/Governance Committee and served on the Audit and Executive Compensation Committees as a member of the Safeway Board of Directors. Currently, she advises entrepreneurial startups in innovative software fields. In addition to her CFP volunteer roles, she is a member of the board of a local nonprofit and on the Board of Governors at Wilmer Eye Institute (Johns Hopkins). Becky was first introduced to CFP in 2015 by a founder of the Cyprus Friendship Program. Her previous experience as a foreign exchange student through the American Field Service (AFS) and strong interest in peacebuilding through teenagers led her to open the San Francisco Bay Area as a new CFP hosting area. She now also works on strengthening CFP’s alumni program and investigating the role of US teens to aid in the peacebuilding process. Becky is a graduate of Stanford Graduate School of Business and of Smith College (economics).

Linda Ziglar, OStJ

Chair

Linda joined the CFP Board in 2011 upon her retirement and has served as Chair from 2015 through 2026. Her prior work experience includes Vice President of Finance at the American Frozen Food Institute (AFFI) for 8 years and 25 years with LKL Consultants, a technology services firm which she founded and operated. Her client list included Fortune 100 companies, non-profit organizations and law firms of all sizes. She has developed software applications for the financial and banking industries and designed, installed and maintained local and wide area networks for the legal and educational sectors. She also provided statistical and numerical analysis services for legal defense groups involved in complex class action lawsuits and expert witness testimony with respect to the methodologies used. Before starting her own business, Linda worked for the Institute for Defense Analysis writing scientific computer programs and analyzing and developing investment and support cost methodologies for the military. Linda graduated summa cum laude from the George Washington University with a degree in mathematics and has served on the boards of many non-profit and community organizations including her church, her sons’ school, as well as cultural, social, and international organizations. She and her husband, Jim, have three sons and daughters-in-law and nine grandchildren.