Suggested questions

1When did “peacebuilding” stop feeling like a distant, post-war concept to you—and start feeling like something a city like Houston actually needs day-to-day?

2You’ve been in places when public life suddenly turned volatile—what do you remember noticing first in those moments, before the headlines caught up?

3When you think about “civic peace,” what’s a small, ordinary situation—on a street, in a home, in a neighborhood—where you can tell peace is either holding… or starting to crack?

4In work that spans personal safety and national security, what’s a misconception about peace that keeps showing up—especially among people who think their community is “fine”?

5You’ve talked about working with communities and institutions together—what’s the hardest part of getting those two worlds in the same room without it turning into blame-and-defensiveness?

6You’ve been candid about surviving domestic abuse—what did “building peace with yourself” look like in real life, not as an idea but as a week-to-week practice?

7When people debate violence against women and children, the conversation often gets abstract fast—what’s something you’ve learned that makes the reality impossible to keep abstract?

8Digital safety can sound technical until it gets personal—what’s the moment you realized this isn’t just an IT issue, it’s a human-security issue?

9Trade, ports, trafficking, counterfeit medicine—these can feel like separate problems. When you zoom out, what’s the connecting thread that makes you call it “socio-economic peace”?

10You study conflict in spaces like the South China Sea and even the “global commons”—when cooperation is fragile, what’s one early sign that a region is sliding toward danger rather than de-escalation?