Coalition for Peace Action Announces Election of New Board Chair

The Princeton-based Coalition for Peace Action (CFPA) Board of Directors has unanimously elected Jeffrey Laurenti of Trenton to be its new Board Chair as of September 1. He replaces Irene Etkin Goldman of Ewing, who was Board Chair from January, 2004 until August, 2024. Ms. Goldman will continue as a Board member with the title of Chair Emerita.

Jeffrey Laurenti, a resident of Trenton’s Chambersburg neighborhood and native of New Jersey’s capital city, served as executive director of policy studies at the United Nations Association of the United States (UNA-USA) and as director of foreign policy programs at The Century Foundation. Before entering the U.N. arena, he served as executive director of the New Jersey Senate majority.

He has advised presidential campaigns on international organization issues, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and was his party’s nominee for Congress (NJ-4) in 1986. He has been a speaker at a number of CFPA programs over the years, most recently at the 45th Annual Commemoration of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 5, 2024 in Princeton.

Locally, he is a public member and the board secretary of New Jersey’s Capital City Redevelopment Corporation; Sacred Heart Church’s representative on the board of the Kingsbury nonprofit housing corporation and its secretary; an instructor at El Centro in English as a Second Language for recent immigrants to Trenton; and a member of Trenton Cycling Revolution. A graduate of Trenton Central High School, he earned his A.B. at Harvard College, magna cum laude; and his M.P.A. at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

“We are excited to have such a deeply informed and experienced leader in the nonprofit and political realms as our new Board Chair. CFPA faces profound challenges such as major wars in Ukraine-Russia and the Middle East; a new nuclear arms race emerging between the US, Russia, and China; and the pandemic of gun violence in the US--now the leading cause of death for those 21 and under. Jeff Laurenti will be a major asset to CFPA addressing those,” said the Rev. Robert Moore, CFPA Executive Director since 1981.

“Mobilizing citizens for peace, when influential voices suggest the quickest and best solutions come through overwhelming force, has never been easy,” said Laurenti. “Yet against all odds it has notched major successes and overcome powerful lobbies, starting with the partial nuclear test ban President Kennedy negotiated in 1963, through the nuclear rollbacks of the Reagan-Bush years, to the deep nuclear cuts of Obama’s time. Many of those gains are now in jeopardy.

“I have admired and assisted the work of the Coalition ever since it was a key leader in passing the statewide Nuclear Weapons Freeze referendum in 1982,” Laurenti added. “I am deeply honored to have been asked to help lead CFPA in a new time of peril, and hope to help inspire a new generation to embrace the urgency of this cause.”

CFPA was founded in 1980, and its three priority mission goals are the Global Abolition of Nuclear Weapons, a Peace Economy, and a Halt to Weapons Trafficking. Those wanting more information on CFPA are encouraged to visit peacecoalition.org.