Brenna Powell is a third year PhD candidate in the Government and Social Policy program at Harvard.  Her research is focused on understanding how ethnic power-sharing works, in post-conflict transitions and in the incorporation of excluded ethnic and racial minorities.  Before coming to Harvard she worked for 4 years at the Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation.  She was involved in a long term project that partnered academic researchers with grassroots practitioners in Northern Ireland working on conflict resolution and peace-building.  During this time she also taught a conflict resolution course at the National Hispanic University in San Jose, CA.  She received her AB from Stanford in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, with a minor in Political Science.  She's from Seattle, Washington.