Meet the Team
Lisa Dietrich
CEO
Lisa Dietrich is the CEO of the peacebuilding charity, Community Relations in Schools (CRIS) that has been operating since 1984. Lisa has worked at CRIS since 2002, after her studies at Ulster University, having achieved a Master’s degree in Communication, PR and Advertising.
Awarded in 2022 with an OBE for her services to peace education and community reconciliation, Lisa is committed to efforts that counter the ‘separated’ nature of the education system in Northern Ireland and engender greater participation in peace building work at the grass roots level by utilising schools as focal points for transformation.
Lisa believes it is essential to present narratives that counter polarisation and that share good news stories that inspire hope and celebrate diversity and our common humanity.
Lisa is a mediator and has further studies in business management and intercultural facilitation in divided societies. Her experience also includes developing the capacity of non-profit organisations and supporting their sustainability.
Other loves include being a Mummy, taking walks in mountains with her dog Stella, and dreams of getting back into painting – all of which help create the necessary balance in life.
Dr. Emily Stanton
Director of Programmes
Emily joined CRIS as Programme Manager in October 2020 having worked within the peacebuilding field both in Northern and internationally for over twenty years. Emily was awarded a doctorate in International Conflict and Peacebuilding with INCORE from Ulster University in 2018.
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Her professional practice includes research, teaching, and training in peace and conflict studies, education, mediation, trauma and resiliency, and community relations. She is also experienced in conducting community-based monitoring and evaluation on topics of peacebuilding and social cohesion. Emily has two children and lives in East Belfast with her husband and cat.
Gerard Hughes
Senior Practitioner Growing GRACE
Gerard joined the CRIS team in December 2019, working across various project strands. More recently, his focus for work has been focussed largely on whole-school commuinity collaborative partnerships - working closely with both the MFT and NEST partnerships, through CRIS's Growing GRACE initiative.
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Previous work includes experience of delivering youth work, community relations work, and collaborative partnership work. He has spent his career to date engaged in the education sector under various guises – from volunteering at local community sports and arts events, to organising large-scale creative industry events in partnership with young people and creative industry agencies. Through this experience, Gerard has developed a strong interest in and passion for peace education and community relations initiatives.
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Gerard has personal interests in travel, football & other sports, food, culture and books. He grew up in North Belfast and studied at undergraduate level at QUB, and at postgraduate level at UUJ.
Elizabeth Castillo
Finance and Administration Manager
Elizabeth is an accountant from Colombia who has been living in Belfast since 2014. She first joined CRIS as a part-time Administrative Assistant in July 2015. Elizabeth has vast experience in working with different types of public corporations and private companies ranging from services trade, electricity, horizontal property managers, and health. This is her first time working within a charitable organisation.
We asked Elizabeth what she thought of her time at CRIS so far and here is what she had to say; “I love working for CRIS because I can share new ideas and have refreshed the administrative management and accounting systems. I love working for a charity that does work to support the breaking down of stereotypes and divisions.”
Devin Drake
Good Relations Practitioner
After seven years as an English Literature teacher in Nashville, TN, Devin moved to Belfast to get her MA in Conflict Transformation and Social Justice from Queen's University Belfast. She joined the CRIS Associate team in September 2024 and co-facilitated on a variety of programmes. She joined the staff full time in May 2025 and works primarily on service delivery, fundraising, and business engagement for the organisation. She enjoys combining her passion for education-based peacebuilding with other skills such as event planning and building symbiotic relationships between charities and businesses.
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When she isn't working, Devin loves hiking around the island, traveling, and cooking new recipes.
Stefania Gualberti
Associate
Stefania has been an associate with CRIS since November 2019. She is a trainer, facilitator, and mediator. She has a degree and a Masters in Peace Studies (University of Pisa, Italy). She moved to Belfast in 2008 and has been involved in the peacebuilding and community relations sectors in different roles since then. She is passionate about nonviolence, conflict transformation, diversity and migration, and language.
Gordon McDade
Associate
Gordon has been an Associate with CRIS since 2021. He recognises the vital importance of creating creative contexts within the separated Northern Ireland education systems and empowering local school communities to engage in adventurous peacebuilding exploits. Gordon believes passionately that peacebuilding begins with personal encounter, relationships, seeing through the eyes of others and stepping positively into a new space for the co-creation of a better future. Building peace is doing small things in the everyday by everyone for the whole community.
Gordon works as an executive coach, mentor, mediator, trainer and facilitator with a wide variety of organisations and groups. He also works as a community chaplain in North and West Belfast and is chair of a thriving foodbank in the East of the city.
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Gordon enjoys reading biographies, engaging in his own creative writing in prose and poetry and playing guitar.
Hedley Abernethy
Associate
Dr. Hedley Abernethy grew up In Belfast during the height of the Troubles. A trained youth worker, he has worked with church and para-church youth organisations in Northern Ireland developing and promoting peacebuilding programmes. In 2006, Hedley graduated with an MA in Conflict Transformation from Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia, before going on to work with Catholic Relief Services at its headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland as a Peacebuilding Education Officer. On his return to Belfast, he worked with WAVE Trauma Centre, an organisation supporting victims of the violence in and about Northern Ireland. From WAVE he went on to work with the Corrymeela Community developing their history and heritage education programmes. In 2022 he graduated with a PhD from Ulster University after completing a study of reparations for victims of the political conflict. Hedley now works for Kate Nicholl, an Alliance Party MLA for South Belfast and is a Belfast City councillor for the Ormiston DEA in East Belfast. He is also a board member of Healing Through Remembering.