Bryan and Stephanie Carey

PEACEBUILDERS, CONSULTANTS & ACCOMPANIERS | BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA

In 2016 Bryan and Stephanie moved to the Balkan region, where they have been learning alongside and supporting the work of Muslim, Catholic, and Orthodox peacebuilders. Currently, their residency in Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina (BiH) is sponsored by a local Protestant Church so they can support local peacebuilding organizations as representatives of the Protestant community and help local Christians get involved in peacebuilding work.

Bryan is a peacebuilding consultant, conflict transformation trainer, and Director of International Peacebuilding for Peace Catalyst International. Bryan and his family have lived in Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina since 2017, where they have been learning alongside and supporting the work of Muslim, Catholic, and Orthodox peacebuilders. Bryan also hosts workshops, conducts training, and teaches about peace-oriented theology, peacebuilding practices, and how Christian groups can get involved in community peacebuilding. He regularly organizes learning experiences for international and regional Balkan participants that cultivate understanding and empathy for the narratives of other groups, ultimately with the aim to deepen relational connections that allow for collaborative work. As part of his work with Peace Catalyst, he also helps coordinate the Christian Peacebuilding Network, an ethnically, geographically, and organizationally diverse community of Christian peacebuilding practitioners looking to contribute to the growing Christian peacebuilding movement. 

Stephanie is Peace Catalyst's Grants Manager and leads the organization's monitoring and evaluation processes. Locally, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, she works with the local organization Udruženje Nit organizing educational opportunities and supporting the work of local peacebuilders. She also contributes to grant-dependent monitoring and evaluation needs for various peace projects in BiH.

Since 2006 Bryan has been drawn to cross-cultural relationships and has enjoyed inviting friends and acquaintances to interact with and learn from the experiences of those who are different from them. He has worked in various capacities alongside pastors in Peru and Zambia, Muslim refugees and members of the homeless community in the United States, and Bosnian Muslim, Catholic and Orthodox peacebuilders in BiH. In his graduate level work at Candler School of Theology at Emory University, he studied justice, peacebuilding, and conflict transformation, examining the ambiguity of religious faith and how Christians and people of faith might contribute to a just peace. Since 2010 Stephanie has supported churches and nonprofit organizations with grant writing, communications, project design & management, and monitoring & evaluation work in the United States, Zambia, Cambodia and the Balkans. She has an undergraduate degree in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering and English from Vanderbilt University and an M.Div. from Candler School of Theology with a focus on religious formation.

Bryan and Stephanie have two beautiful children (Jack, 7 and Ella, 4) and a husky puppy named Charlie. They are an active part of the local Protestant community in Sarajevo.

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