Headshot of Mr. Madhawa Palihapitiya

Madhawa Palihapitiya heads the research and evaluation unit of the Massachusetts Office of Public Collaboration (MOPC) at the McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He also conducts fundraising and organizational development for the office and is a lecturer in the Conflict Resolution Program.

Mr. Palihapitiya has over seventeen years of experience in the conflict resolution field, with significant work in the areas of violence prevention, program design, and program evaluation.  He has been with MOPC since 2007. Mr. Palihapitiya oversees research on all major MOPC mediation, collaborative governance, and deliberative democracy programs, projects, and initiatives. Prior to working at MOPC, Mr. Palihapitiya was the director of programs at the Foundation for Co-Existence in Sri Lanka where he engaged in high-risk mediation and violent conflict prevention efforts, including co-creating a state-of-the-art Conflict Early Warning and Early Response System for Sri Lanka.