Shai Tamari is the Director of the Conflict Management Initiative at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and specializes in conflict management training. As a Professor of the Practice, he teaches both undergraduate- and graduate-level skills-based courses in negotiation and mediation under the Department of Public Policy and the Curriculum in Peace, War, and Defense. He also developed and manages the minor in Conflict Management at UNC. In addition, Shai is an Adjunct Instructor at Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, and an Adjunct Faculty at Caruso School of Law, Pepperdine University.

Shai is also the Associate Director of the Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies at UNC, where he administers a federal grant in support of Middle East studies on campus. Prior to his above appointments, between 2008 and 2010, Shai was the foreign policy adviser for Congressman James P. Moran, D, VA, at the U.S. House of Representatives and focused on issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, human rights in Iran, and parental child abduction to Japan.

Born and raised in Jerusalem, Shai served in the Israeli military between 1994 and 1997. He earned a B.A. in Journalism from the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, and a Master’s degree in Near and Middle Eastern Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London in the UK.

In 2006, Shai was awarded a Rotary Peace Fellowship and studied for a second Master’s in Global History, along with Arabic and Conflict Resolution, at UNC. While a Rotary Peace Fellow, Shai worked in the summer of 2007 with the Cooperative Housing Foundation International in Amman, Jordan. Shai is a native speaker of Hebrew, a volunteer mediator at the District Court in Durham, NC, and at the Dispute Settlement Center in Carrboro, NC.