Lindsay McClain Opiyo
GFP USA Executive Director
Lindsay is the Development and Partnerships Director and US Representative at Generations For Peace, heading GFP’s US office in Washington, DC. Her role is to develop and represent GFP in the USA through fundraising, outreach and advocacy; and to lead global fundraising efforts through traditional and innovative business and partnership development approaches. This ensures that Generations For Peace has the resources and relationships to continue its long-term peacebuilding work around the world.
Originally from Nashville in the United States, Lindsay has lived and worked abroad for much of the last 12 years, including with GFP in Jordan and Uganda since 2016. She became GFP’s first-ever US-based staff member in June 2019, playing a central role in GFP opening an office in the heart of the peacebuilding community in the US Capital. Prior to joining Generations For Peace, she held a number of programming, research and communications positions with reputable peacebuilding organisations, including the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in Cape Town, South Africa, and the Justice and Reconciliation Project in Gulu, Uganda. Her expertise includes the role of the arts in peacebuilding, and victim-centered transitional justice. Lindsay has worked closely with victims and survivors of conflict in Uganda to advocate for sustainable peace through justice, reconciliation and redress.
Lindsay holds a Master’s degree from the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She has authored a number of publications on peacebuilding and dealing with legacies of violent conflict. Most recently, she led researches on the reparative justice needs of children born of conflict sexual violence and engaging men in gender justice. She is a founding member of Music for Peace, and a board member of the Everyday Peace Indicators Project.
In her spare time, Lindsay enjoys wrangling her young son through parks and museums across the DMV.