Brad Heckman was introduced to peacebuilding by accidently living through the Polish Revolution in 1989, where he attempted to be an English teacher for two years. Having been active in protests, demonstrations, and other stick-it-the-man activities in college, he was astonished to see how persistent nonviolent civil disobedience ultimately led to a round table dialogue, and a bloodless revolution in which a brutal authoritarian regime agreed to democratic elections. After grad school at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, he had the good fortune to be hired by PartnersGlobal CEO Ray Schonholtz, a founding father of community mediation, to establish locally-led mediation centers throughout the former Soviet Bloc, the Balkans, and Latin America. He spent his final year at PartnersGlobal working to build relations between the oppressed Romani people (commonly known as gypsies – an ethnic slur) and majority populations, shuttling between 3 countries and 9 cities, as well as working in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan on civil society initiatives. 

Following his work at PartnersGlobal, Brad became a Vice President at Safe Horizon, a leading victims’ service organization in New York City, where he led the organization’s mediation, anti-human trafficking, anti-stalking, men’s’ accountability, and domestic violence legal services. When Safe Horizon opted to trim the organization to focus on domestic violence and child abuse, Brad worked to spin the mediation program off into an independent non-profit known as the New York Peace Institute – one of the nation’s largest community mediation centers. While his focus was on the organization’s mandate to serve Brooklyn and Manhattan, he also became a noted keynote speaker, and trained abroad, including Japan, India, Panama, and the United Arab Emirates. 

In 2016, confident that New York Peace Institute could thrive without him, Brad accepted a Visiting Professorship at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs, where had been an adjunct professor for 8 years. In addition to teaching graduate level courses on peacebuilding and non-profit management, he worked in Baghdad, Iraq, training professors in innovative teaching methods, and students in peacebuilding skills – in training that brought together men and women students from tribes throughout the country (an uncommon activity at the time). 

Following the end of his Visiting Professorship, during the pandemic, Brad focused on art to promote social justice (he used art, theater, and music in his teaching and trainings for years). This included street art, daily online art, a permanent exhibition at the International Peace Museum, works on sale at the Kurt Vonnegut Museum, and an upcoming exhibit in Washington, DC. Additionally, he uses his art to fundraise for causes related to civil rights, social justice, and raise awareness of issues in Iran, Ukraine and elsewhere. 

He somewhat embarrassingly uses the title “artivist” when asked what he does. Last but not least, Brad served as a member of the NYSDRA board for several years during his tenure at New York Peace Institute.