Karen Doubilet serves as the Global Executive Director of PeacePlayers International, an organization that uses basketball to unite and educate children from divided communities. In this role, Karen oversees operations in five international sites: the Middle East, Cyprus, Northern Ireland, and the United States, managing an annual budget of more than $6M. Global programs, including the PeacePlayers Friendship Games, Leadership Academy, and SPIN (Sport for Peace Innovation Network) connect youth participants from around the world, creating a movement of young leaders who are using sport to create a more peaceful and equitable world.
Prior to being named Global Executive Director of PeacePlayers International in October 2019, Karen Doubilet spent 13 years serving as the Managing Director of PeacePlayers Middle East. As the Middle East Managing Director, Karen led programs that reached some 30,000 Palestinian and Israeli individuals, with 70% female representation; she managed more than $14 million of funding from large institutional donors; led curricula development; oversaw one of the only randomized control trial research study in the field of sport and inter-group relations; and spearheaded the first academically-accredited professional certification course in Coaching for Conflict Transformation (in cooperation with Wingate Academic Institute, Israel’s leading Physical Education University).
Karen is an expert in inter-group relations, possessing vast academic and field experience in the areas of cross-cultural facilitation, Arab-Jewish relations, and in particular, in the development and evaluation of integration programs. Prior to joining PeacePlayers, Karen worked for several peace-building organizations, including Peace Child Israel, War Child Holland, and the Peres Center for Peace, where she conducted impact evaluations on the organization’s sports initiatives.
Karen holds a Master’s degree from Bar Ilan University’s program on Conflict Management and Negotiating, where she also completed her PhD course work and conducted research on the impact of inter-group encounters in the intractable conflict setting. Karen is a certified mediator and Arbinger Institute Facilitator and has published several articles and book chapters.
She grew up in Toronto, Canada, and since 1997 has lived in Tel Aviv, Israel, where she currently resides with her husband and two children.