Careers in Conflict Transformation and professional peaceworking: Spinning it up from thin air

It is possible, in some cases, to simply invent a career and lean in with your whole heart and make it so. 

For example, in the early 1980s I was approached by a local peace activist in the far north of Wisconsin to start an actual paid organization. She and I and one other woman started it in Hayward, Wisconsin and called it Waging Peace. Jeanne was Education, Madge was Office Manager and Public Speaker, and I was Liaison and Trainer to local peace groups across northern Wisconsin, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and northeastern Minnesota. We funded ourselves by a combination of direct mail appeals and small grants. We paid ourselves minimum wage. For each of us, it was simply a time in life where we had some financial obligations but not so overwhelming that we couldn't live on minimum wage and we were all driven to work full-time for peace and justice. In my case, I eventually became a full-time resister, going to prison for a direct disarmament action, but following that with using my Peace and Conflict Studies degree to get hired as an adjunct Peace and Conflict Studies professor, which ultimately led to a full-time professor appointment. This is a highly unusual career path, but it's my reality. Others have created something from apparent nothing and have thus been able to devote themselves to the work that fed their passion.