Erin Thompson
Erin Thompson is Executive Director of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, where he leads the Institute’s work to strengthen its institutional capacity and deepen its impact.
With a background in accounting, organizational leadership, facilitation, and restorative practices, Erin helps groups communicate candidly, develop a more constructive relationship with conflict, and identify through-lines between people who may initially understand themselves as opponents. Rather than seeking to eliminate disagreement, his approach emphasizes curiosity, clarity, accountability, and sustained engagement across meaningful differences.
Erin is especially interested in the relationship between how people understand themselves and the world around them, how those understandings shape behavior and institutions, and how individuals and groups can strengthen their agency—their capacity to understand the conditions shaping them and act intentionally, whether navigating those conditions or working to change them. At the Gandhi Institute, this includes exploring how the foundations of nonviolence can inform present-day leadership, conflict transformation, organizational culture, and systems change.
Erin grew up in Rochester’s Conkey Avenue “Crescent” neighborhood and later earned a B.S. in Accounting from SUNY Brockport. His appreciation for restorative practices began personally, through participation in a restorative justice process following a burglary, before becoming part of his professional practice.
Outside his organizational work, Erin is a multidisciplinary creator whose interests include music production, photography, acting, documentary filmmaking, and stand-up comedy—different forms through which he continues to explore how people make meaning and understand one another.
