Christine Ahn
Christine Ahn is the Founder and Executive Director of Women Cross DMZ, a global movement of women mobilizing to end the Korean War, reunite families, and ensure women’s leadership in peace building. In 2015, she led 30 international women peacemakers from 15 countries across the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) from North Korea to South Korea. They walked with 10,000 Korean women on both sides of the DMZ and held women’s peace symposia in Pyongyang and Seoul where they discussed the impact of the unresolved war on women’s lives.
In March 2019, Women Cross DMZ launched a global campaign, Korea Peace Now! Women Mobilizing to End the War, with a coalition of women’s organizations, including the Nobel Women’s Initiative, Korean Women’s Movement for Peace, and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. In 2018, the coalition was among 17 organizations (from 1,200 worldwide) selected for the prestigious Radical Hope Fund of the NoVo Foundation. Since 2014, Ahn has helped leverage over $3 million from over 1,000 donations for Korea peace and women’s leadership in peacebuilding.
She is the co-founder of the Korea Peace Network, Korea Policy Institute, Global Campaign to Save Jeju Island, Korean Americans for Fair Trade, and National Campaign to End the Korean War. Christine has organized peace and humanitarian aid delegations to North and South Korea, and has addressed the U.S. Congress, United Nations, Canadian Parliament, and the Republic of Korea National Commission on Human Rights and the ROK National Assembly.
Ahn has worked with several prominent women’s and social justice organizations, including as the Senior Research and Policy Director at the Global Fund for Women, the International Peace and Solidarity Director at the Women of Color Resource Center, and the Economic and Social Human Rights Program Coordinator at the Institute for Food and Development Policy. She has also worked with the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development, Grassroots Global Justice, and the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.
Christine’s writings have appeared in The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, CNN, The Washington Post, The Nation, The Hill, Fortune Magazine, TIME, South China Morning Post, Newsweek and The National Interest. She has appeared on Al Jazeera, Anderson Cooper 360, BBC, CNN, Democracy Now!, NBC Today Show, NPR, MSNBC, Voice of America, and the Samantha Bee Show Full Frontal.
Ahn has spoken at major national and international conferences such as at the Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates, Ploughshares Fund, World Beyond War, and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. She has delivered keynotes at major universities, including Stanford University, Harvard University, Wellesley College, Scripps College, and the University of California (Berkeley, Irvine, Davis, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara), University of Michigan and University of Toronto.
Christine has been awarded the Twink Frey Visiting Social Justice Activist by the University of Michigan, the Rising Peacemaker Award by the Agape Foundation, Social Justice Leader Award by the Wallace and Alexander Gerbode Foundation, and Progressive Women’s Voices Award by the Women’s Media Center. She has received numerous fellowships, including the Kellogg and Ford Foundations. Christine has a Master’s in Foreign Policy from Georgetown University and a certificate in Ecological Horticulture from University of California, Santa Cruz.
