A Television Producer Turns to a New Challenge: Promoting Peace

Nicolla Hewitt spent the last 18 years traveling the globe in her job as a television producer, covering major events including the fall of the Berlin Wall, the crash of the space shuttle Columbia, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In April, she quit the news business to narrow her focus to one issue: peace.

As president of Seeds of Peace, in New York, Ms. Hewitt seeks to ease tensions in troubled regions by bringing together young leaders ages 14 to 17 from different countries at a summer camp in Maine. There, the teenagers share perspectives and, the charity hopes, form friendships that will transcend their distrust of people they grew up viewing as enemies.

The charity follows the summer experience with regional programs and events; its goal is that some participants will eventually ascend to powerful positions in their home countries and will champion the path that leads to reconciliation and peace.

Ms. Hewitt says she was not seeking to leave broadcast journalism.

But a chance meeting with a board member of Seeds of Peace, which has focused mostly on Israeli and Palestinian teenagers, stirred up her memories of living in Tel Aviv for four years while she was at ABC. Through her travels in the Middle East, she says, she developed a deep affection for the people there and the challenges they faced in their daily lives. “It’s a part of the world that, once it gets under your skin and in your blood, you can’t get rid of it, for better or worse,” she says.

After brainstorming ideas for the group with the board member, he “called the next day and said, ‘Would you ever leave CBS and Katie Couric?’” says Ms. Hewitt. “I said, ‘Absolutely not, don’t be crazy.’ But I couldn’t get the idea out of my head.”

The mission of the group, plus the offer’s timing, she quickly came to realize, were right. “I had interviewed pretty much every leader in the area,” says Ms. Hewitt. “Here I was really free to pursue a passion, and make a change.”

Ms. Hewitt, 39, declined to state her salary. In 2004, the most recent year for which information is available, Seeds of Peace paid its president $185,000.

Ms. Hewitt does not have any nonprofit experience, but that didn’t matter to the group’s leaders. “She is clearly smart enough to understand the issues and be able to work effectively with the board,” says Richard A. Berman, a Seeds of Peace trustee and president of Manhattanville College, in Purchase, N.Y. “And having lived in the region, she has a real understanding of the difficulties but also of the benefit of a fair and just society where everyone can live prosperously.”

John Wallach, a longtime foreign editor at the Hearst Newspapers, started Seeds of Peace in 1993 after the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, in New York.

At least 3,500 young people have attended its summer camp, where they live and eat together and engage in discussions, led by adults, about the conflict and how it affects their lives. They also participate in exercises designed to build trust and other social and recreational activities.

In addition to the Middle East, campers come from India, Pakistan, the Balkans, and the United States, among other countries.

Ms. Hewitt has already made several trips overseas to drum up more support for the group among foreign leaders. While she says she can’t remember the situation between Israel and the Palestinian terrorities being bleaker, she dismisses naysayers who doubt that a group with a $6-million budget that works with teenagers will somehow nudge the two sides to engage peacefully together.

“If the mountain is really high, and nobody thinks they can climb to the top, I am always the person that wants to get to the peak of that mountain quickly,” she says. “That is what I know we can do here at Seeds of Peace.”

In an interview, Ms. Hewitt spoke about her new position:

What are your goals for Seeds of Peace?

More binational programming between Israelis and Palestinians, more board members from overseas, add more countries, build a regional center for peace in the Middle East, and have a greater role for graduates of the program. We are inheriting a society where poverty is rife and the quest for peace is even darker. But here we have these ambassadors of Seeds of Peace who can hopefully go out through community outreach programs and help make a difference by volunteering their time to talk in schools about Seeds of Peace. I also hope to appoint one graduate in each country to reach out to corporations there, and organize regional summits.

How do you feel about fund raising to accomplish your goals?

I love any check that has a lot of zeros at the end of it. I am going to pursue this like I have pursued a story, and that is not leave any contact or stone unturned.

Do you plan any internal changes?

I come from a hugely competitive, forthright background with people working long hours in probably one of the most competitive industries in the country, so that is the level of intensity I am looking to bring into this organization. This is New York City; I don’t know anyone who works 9 to 5 here. I am getting my head around whether or not to continue with that kind of atmosphere and passion, or slow down to the nonprofit world. There is a lot of competition out there for attention and we have got to be a leader of the pack.

Have there been any challenges so far?

Nineteen kids were due to fly to camp from Gaza last month, but they couldn’t leave because the borders were closed. Now these kids, what are they supposed to think, what are they supposed to feel? It’s the majority that want peace, the minority are obscuring the reality from what people really want on the ground. Our work is more urgent than ever; we cannot let the fundamentalists win, we have to let the message of peace prevail.