BRENNA COOLEY

Brenna earned her BA from UC Santa Barbara in Global Studies,, studying in Spain and traveling extensively during her year abroad. Her experiences abroad and her global degree led her to become involved with global social and political issues and to join the inaugural class of the MAGIS program.

Brenna interned with OneVoice in Tel Aviv, Israel: a conflict resolution organization promoting “consensus for conflict resolution” by “mobilizing against violent extremism.” One of their projects which she helped to implement focused on amassing an unprecedented number of signatories in both Israel and the West Bank for a mandate calling for an end to the conflict. She used this experience to examine the effectiveness of peace organizations and local people’s receptiveness to them in a final project, "Collective Narratives and Civil Society Efforts towards Conflict Resolution: The Case of OneVoice."

After graduating in 2008, Brenna took a year to teach English in Seoul, South Korea. Currently she is a volunteer for International Coordinator for El Nahual, a community education center in Guatemala. El Nahual is located on the outskirts of Quetzaltenango in a sector called Pacajá.  El Nahual is a fully licensed non-profit organization, unique in that “we require the individuals who choose to study with us to donate their time to volunteer in the low-income communities we serve.”