Libby Hoffman

Libby Hoffman is the founder and president of Catalyst for Peace (CFP), where she creates space for those most impacted by violence and war to lead in building peace and restoring social wholeness. For 15 years, she has focused her work in Sierra Leone, as co-founder, funder, and program partner of Fambul Tok (family talk), leading postwar reconciliation rooted in local culture and tradition. CFP’s programs were instrumental in facilitating Sierra Leone’s post-Ebola response and have since become the foundation of a national policy framework for people- and community-led planning and development. Her work is a global model for transformative partnerships for peace and development. Hoffman produced the award-winning documentary film Fambul Tok and co-authored a companion book by the same title. A former academic, she was the first female political science professor at Principia College and holds degrees from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and Williams College. The mother of three grown children, she divides her time between southern Maine and Washington, DC.

The Answers Are There: Building Peace from the Inside Out

Non-Fiction

Our world desperately needs new ways to support community transformation. In The Answers Are There, Libby Hoffman shows us what is possible when outside aid animates local leadership and recognizes and honors community wisdom, priorities, and resources. This book shares stories of individual and communal transformation in Sierra Leone, where the culture of community was nearly destroyed by civil war. But the unique approach of Fambul Tok (“family talk”)—anchoring reconciliation in indigenous traditions of communal truth-telling, apology, and forgiveness—restored that culture and unleashed a powerful resource for national healing. Fambul Tok’s core conviction—that ordinary people have the creativity, capacity, and determination to transform their communities according to their own needs and desires—changed a country, and with it, international peace and development.