Peggy Smith has over four decades of teaching experience and is at the forefront of bringing empathic thinking and communicating to her region in the Northeastern U.S. She was a teacher in public and alternative schools for 32 years before devoting her full-time energies to this endeavor. She offers trainings in a wide variety of venues. She has posted online a Courageous Communication curriculum developed over five years with men coming out of incarceration.

Peggy is a co-founder of the Maine NVC Network and leads their monthly newsletter team. Peggy has done international NVC work through Seeds of Peace International Camp, working with educators from the Middle East and South Asia both in Maine and in the region.

A student of Mindfulness since 1991, Peggy has been ordained as a teacher by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. She has a passion for helping everyone develop their innate capacity for empathy by integrating mindfulness into how we think and communicate.  Peggy enjoys designing and implementing programs that support empathic thinking and communicating as part of systemic culture change.

During her 32 years as a teacher in elementary and middle schools, Peggy worked with a number of conflict resolution approaches. With Nonviolent Communication, she was excited by both its simplicity and its profound power to quickly help people re-connect to their compassionate inner-self.