Chaplain Clementina Chéry is the Founder, President & CEO of the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute in Boston, Massachusetts. The Peace Institute is a center of healing, teaching, and learning for families and communities impacted by murder, trauma, grief, and loss. Chaplain Chéry and her family founded the Peace Institute in 1994 after her 15-year-young son Louis D. Brown was murdered in the crossfire of a shootout. 

Chaplain Chéry has developed the best practices in the field of homicide response. Her professional goal is to transform society’s response to homicide so that all families are treated with dignity and compassion, regardless of the circumstances. Her spiritual goal is to become a Minister of God’s Peace that is rooted in love, unity, faith, hope, courage, justice, and forgiveness. 

Chaplain Chéry has extensive experience training public health professionals, law enforcement officials, and faith leaders to better serve families impacted by murder. She has trained members of the Miami Police Department Homicide Unit to respond equitably and effectively to homicide, and convened the first-ever Homicide Response Briefing in Massachusetts for over 100 law enforcement officials from across the state. She has also led trainings for the Massachusetts Office of Victim Assistance.

She has also trained doctors, social workers, psychologists, street workers, and other providers at city and state agencies, hospitals, and community-based organizations. 

Her groundbreaking publications for families of murder victims and the providers who serve them include “Always in My Heart: A Workbook for Grieving Children” (2011) and the Survivors Burial and Resource Guide (2013). The Survivors Burial and Resource Guide offers step-by-step guidance to families of murder victims. Chaplain Chéry is also coauthor of an article entitled “Homicide Survivors: Research and Practice Implications,” which was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine in 2005.  

In 2023, she launched The Peace Principle, a podcast where she leads conversations on ways to heal our wounded hearts. 

Chaplain Chéry received an honorary Doctorate of Ministry from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts and was ordained as a senior chaplain with the International Fellowship of Chaplain, Inc. in 2012. 

Her greatest accomplishments are being the mother of Louis, Alexandra and Allen, and the grandmother of Alexander, Adriel, and Amani.