The following are biographies of the many speakers featured at this year’s EPP Conference.  For a list of all attendees please click here.

 

Gail Bingham

Francisco Ingouville

Susan Raines

Robert Bordone

Herman Karl

Raye Rawls

Baruch Bush

Hon. Pamela Kennedy

Jonathan Reitman

Susan Carpenter

Daniel Kemmis

Ric Richardson

Tanya Denckla Cobb

Deborah Kolb

Andy Rowe

Henrietta Davis

Mary Jo Larson

Lynn Scarlett

Frank Dukes

Matthew Leighninger

Sandy Schuman

Don Edwards

Bill Lennertz

Marianella Sclavi

Michael Elliott

Michael Lesnick

Susan Senecah

Kirk Emerson

Harry Manasewich

Daniel Shapiro

Nelson Espinal-Baez

Susan Collin Marks

Susan Sherry

Patrick Field

Rose Martinez

Raymond Shonholtz

Janet Fiero

Masahiro Matsuura

Alice Shorett

John Folk-Williams

Robert McKersie

William Shutkin

John Forester

Sean Nolon

John Stephens

Archon Fung

Patrice O'Neill

Kathleen Stratton

Elena Gonzalez

Suzanne Orenstein

Lawrence Susskind

Ann Gosline

Bruce Patton

Douglas Thompson

Barbara Gray

Evan Paul

Elissa Tonkin

William Hall

Jennifer Peyser

Michael Wheeler

Gwendolyn Hallsmith

Susan Podziba

John Wofford

Mara Hernandez

Jonathan Raab

Daniel Yankelovich

Maggie Herzig

 

 

 

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS AND PANELISTS

Lynn Scarlett, Acting Secretary, U.S. Department of the Interior

 

Daniel Yankelovich, Founder and Chairman, Viewpoint Learning

Professor Yankelovich established the public opinion research firm of Yankelovich, Skelly and White, and later DYG, Inc. He also founded “The New York Times/Yankelovich Poll”, which subsequently merged with the CBS Poll. He is a director emeritus of CBS, Inc, Loral Space and Communications, Inc., Meredith Corporation, Arkla, Reliance, and US West. Yankelovich was research professor of psychology at New York University and professor of psychology on the graduate faculty at the New School for Social Research. He is also trustee emeritus of  the Kettering Foundation and Brown University.The author of ten books, including the just published “Profit With Honor” (Yale University

Press) “Coming to Public Judgment: Making Democracy Work in a Complex World” (Syracuse University Press, 1991) and “The Magic of Dialogue” (Simon and Schuster, 1999) and numerous essays. In 1995 he was awarded the prestigious Helen Dinerman Award by the World Association of Public Opinion Research (WAPOR).

 

John Forester, Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, Cornell University

 

Francisco Ingouville, International Mediator

Francisco Ingouville has worked as a mediator in Argentina, Ecuador and the USA and has worked extensively in South America, training, consulting and assisting in resolving conflicts between both individuals and countries. His goal is to promote the use of communication, negotiation frameworks, and skills to establish a "creative"climate. From his experience working in the Americas, he has concluded, among other things, that territorial instincts and lack of trust inhibit creative spirit, which is often the only tool that may save a relationship at risk. He earned his M.P.A. from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he was an Edward S. Mason Fellow and specialized in group dynamics, mediation, and negotiation.

 

Susan Collin Marks, Executive Vice President, Search for Common Ground

 

Raymond Shonholtz, President and Founder, Partners for Democratic Change

Raymond Shonholtz, J.D., is the Founder and President of Partners for Democratic Change (Partners), an international organization established in 1989 committed to building sustainable local capacity to advance civil society and a culture of change and conflict management worldwide.   Partners has established 14 national Centers in Central and Eastern Europe, South East Europe, the South Caucasus, Latin America, and the Middle East, and is one of largest global conflict management organizations working in over 35 countries.   In addition to overseeing Partners' New Center Development, Corporate Engagement Initiative and Training and Education Program, Mr. Shonholtz is on the Executive Committee of Partners for Democratic Change International, an International Association of the Partners' Centers incorporated in Brussels, Belgium. 

 

From 1976 through 1988, Mr. Shonholtz founded and served as President of the Community Board Program, one of the first community mediation initiatives in the United States that brought conflict resolution skills and processes into American neighborhoods and schools.  The Community Board model has also been introduced into dozens of other countries.

 

Mr. Shonholtz received his law degree at UC Berkeley and practiced criminal and civil law for several years before creating Community Boards.  He has an extensive background in legal practice, education, and policy, and has written extensively on the subject of mediating systems, conflict resolution models, and the positive function of conflict in democratic society.  Mr. Shonholtz is the recipient of several awards and fellowships and presently serves on the Council on Foreign Relations, the Editorial Board of Consensus, a publication of the Harvard University Program on Negotiations, and on the National Advisors Board of the Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution.

 

Gail Bingham, President, RESOLVE, Inc.

 

Kirk Emerson, Director of the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution

Kirk Emerson has been the Director of the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution (U.S. Institute) of the Morris K. Udall Foundation since its inception in 1998. In its role as an independent federal institution, the U.S. Institute promotes effective use of environmental conflict resolution and collaborative problem solving (ECR) through case assistance, training and leadership.  The U.S. Institute staff partners with other federal and state programs and draws on the expertise of more than 250 experienced ECR professionals on its national roster. Over the years, Dr. Emerson's work has focused on interagency and intergovernmental natural resource conflicts.  Most recently, she has been working on developing national ECR policy, dovetailing ECR with the objectives of the National Environmental Policy Act, and assessing ECR outcomes and cost effectiveness. Previously, Dr. Emerson coordinated the ECR program at The University of Arizona's Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, where she conducted research and directed conflict management and public involvement projects involving water resources, endangered species, and western range issues. She has taught graduate and undergraduate courses on conflict resolution and environmental law and has written on environmental mediation, land use law, and environmental policy.

 

Michael Lesnick, Founder and Senior Partner, the Meridian Institute

 

Alice Shorett, Founder and President, Triangle Associates, Inc.,

 

Susan Carpenter, Mediator, trainer and writer in private practice

 

Don Edwards, President and CEO, Don Edwards and Associates

 

Daniel Kemmis, Senior Fellow, Center for the Rocky Mountain West and former Mayor of Missoula

 

DINNER WITH A THEORIST GUESTS

Robert Bordone, Thaddeus R. Beal Lecturer on Law and Deputy Director of the Harvard Negotiation Research Project.

 

Robert A. Baruch Bush, Rains Distinguished Professor of Alternative Dispute Resolution Law at Hofstra University School of Law

 

John Folk-Williams, Managing Senior Mediator, Center for Collaborative Policy, California State University

 

Archon Fung, Associate Professor of Public Policy, The Kennedy School of Government

 

Barbara Gray, Professor of Organizational Behavior and Director, Center for Research in Conflict and Negotiation, The Pennsylvania State University

 

Daniel Kemmis, Senior Fellow, Center for the Rocky Mountain West and former Mayor of Missoula

 

Deborah Kolb, Deloitte Ellen Gabriel Professor for Women and Leadership and Faculty Affiliate, Center for Gender in Organizations, Simmons School of Management

Deborah M. Kolb is the former Executive Director of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, and is currently a Senior Fellow at the Program where she co-directs The Negotiations in the Workplace Project. Dr. Kolb is a principal in Negotiating Women, LLC., a company that provides negotiation training and consultation especially designed for women. Professor Kolb is an authority on gender issues in negotiation, and leadership, especially how women can negotiate the conditions for their own success at the same time as they contribute to the effectiveness of their organization.  Kolb has co-authored several books on this subject. Everyday Negotiation: Navigating the Hidden Agendas of Bargaining (Jossey-Bass/John Wiley, 2003) shows women (and men) how they can become more effective in their everyday negotiations by attending to the dual requirements of the shadow negotiation – advocacy for oneself and connection with others. Originally titled, The Shadow Negotiation , Harvard Business Review named it one of the ten best business books of 2000 and it received the best book award from the International Association of Conflict Management at its meetings in Paris, 2001. Her new book Her Place at the Table: A Women's Guide to Negotiating the Five Challenges of Leadership Success describes how successful women negotiate for what they need to be effective in leadership roles at all levels of an organization. Dr. Kolb publishes extensively on these topics and regularly presents her work to national and international audiences. She received her Ph.D. from MIT's Sloan School of Management, where her dissertation won the Zannetos Prize for outstanding doctoral scholarship.  She has a BA from Vassar College and an MBA from the University of Colorado

 

Robert McKersie, Professor Emeritus of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

 

Bruce Patton, Founder and Director, Vantage Partners

 

Daniel Shapiro, Associate Director of the Harvard Negotiation Project

Mr. Shapiro is co-author with Roger Fisher of Beyond Reason: Using Emotions as You Negotiate, which has been on a number of best-selling lists and won the 2005 CPR Award for Excellence in ADR (Outstanding Book Category). Dr. Shapiro teaches negotiation at Harvard Law School and in the psychiatry department at Harvard Medical School/McLean Hospital. He holds a doctorate in clinical psychology and specializes in the psychology of negotiation. He directs the International Negotiation Initiative, a Harvard-based project that develops psychologically focused strategies to reduce ethnopolitical violence. Formerly on the faculty at the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he teaches negotiation to corporate executives and diplomats, and has extensive international experience, including training Serbian Members of Parliament, Mideast negotiators, Macedonian politicians, and senior U.S. officials. During the Bosnian War, he conducted conflict management trainings in Croatia and Serbia. Through funding from the Soros Foundation, he developed a conflict management program that now reaches nearly one million people across 25 countries.

 

Michael Wheeler, Co-Director, Dispute Resolution Program, Program on Negotiation, Harvard University

 

BREAKOUT PRESENTERS

 

Tanya Denckla Cobb, Mediator and Facilitator in environmental public policy

Ms. Cobb is a Senior Associate at the Institute for Environmental Negotiation, University of Virginia.  Tanya's work involves facilitating and mediating a broad range of community and environmental issues, ranging from land use and planning, facility siting, heritage planning and preservation, and natural resource protection and watershed planning.  A seasoned trainer, she is faculty for the Virginia Natural Resources Leadership Institute and is certified by the Virginia Supreme Court to mediate circuit court cases and provide basic mediation training. She has worked in international labor rights, served as Executive Director of two non-profit organizations, and authored a book on organic gardening.

 

Cindy Cook, Founder and Principal, Adamant Accord

Cindy Cook is an environmental mediator and facilitator and the principal of Adamant Accord, Inc. Cindy graduated from Yale, teaches at Vermont Law School, is a fellow of VLS’s Land Use Institute and is Co-Chair of the Environment and Public Policy Section of the Association for Conflict Resolution.  She is currently facilitating 

several policy dialogues regarding wetlands regulation, childhood lead poisoning prevention and forest tract preservation, as well as discussions regarding a Superfund cleanup and the construction and management of on-site wastewater treatment systems. She brings warmth, intelligence and a sense of humor to her work, and has been working in the field for far longer than she cares to admit.

 

Henrietta Davis, Councilor, Cambridge City Council

 

Frank Dukes, Director, Institute for Environmental Negotiation, University of Virginia

Dr. Dukes combines the practice of designing dispute resolution and public participation processes, mediation and facilitation, strategic planning, training, and teaching, in the graduate program of the Department of Urban and Environmental Planning. He is co-founder and faculty for the Virginia Natural Resources Leadership Institute, co-founder of the Community-Based Collaboratives Research Consortium, author of Resolving Public Conflict:Transforming Community and Governance and co-author of Reaching for Higher Ground in Conflict Resolution: Tools for Powerful Groups and Communities.  Research and writing focus upon the transformative uses of conflict resolution in the community and public policy arena and democratic governance at local, state, and federal levels.

 

Michael Elliott, Associate Professor of City and Regional Planning and Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology

Michael Elliot specializes in public policy dispute resolution and environmental management. Dr. Elliot also serves as a Principal of the Southeast Negotiation Network and an associate with the Consortium on Negotiation and Conflict Resolution, where he mediates and facilitates public policy consensus building processes, designs dispute management systems, and conducts research in policy implementation and conflict management. These activities have focused on resolving disputes over solid and hazardous waste, siting and managing locally unwanted facilities, risk management policy, and growth management. Nationally, he has worked with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the National Park Service, the Army Environmental Policy Institute, the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality, and the New York Academy of Science. Internationally, he also provides dispute resolution training and process consultations for environmental management specialists from Estonia, Germany, Israel, and Kazakhstan, and land tenure specialists with the UNDP in Nicaragua. Dr. Elliott earned his Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his M.C.P. from the University of California, Berkeley.

 

Nelson Espinal-Báez, Associate MIT - Harvard Public Disputes Program at Harvard Law University

Attorney at Law, Mediator, Law Professor and Negotiation Consultant; Founder of the Law Firm N. A. Espinal Báez & Associates and Cambridge International Consulting, Llc., a negotiation and strategic decision making firm, with offices in Santo Domingo, Venezuela and Perú.  He is also founder and president of Fundación Los Seres Sol, Inc., a non-for-profit institution that works in the poor neighborhoods of the Dominican Republic, dealing with three major topics: Self-esteem, Human Values and Peace Leadership. Mr. Espinal-Báez was a mediator for the major political parties of his country in the process for writing the new Electoral Law that put an end to the political crisis of his country in 2002-2003, He is a member of the High-Level Commission of the National Dialog of the Dominican Republic. Through the firm Cambridge International Consulting, he has trained hundreds of political, social and business leaders in Peru, Bolivia, Guatemala, Ecuador, and Venezuela.

 

Patrick Field, Managing Director at Consensus Building Institute

Managing Director at Consensus Building Institute, Associate Director of the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program, and Senior Fellow, University of Montana's Public Policy Research Insttute. He has  assessed, convened and facilitated numerous complex environmental and organizational disputes, ranging from land use to air quality to water quality to habitat restoration.  He is experienced in working with multiple parties in politically and technically complex, multi-year cases. In addition to his facilitation work, Mr. Field has assisted agencies in evaluating and improving their dispute handling systems, and has helped to design and present training programs on negotiation and consensus building techniques to numerous environmental agencies and not-for-profit organizations. He is a member of the Association for Conflict Resolution and co-author of Deailng with an Angry Public.

 

Janet D. Fiero, Ph.D. Senior Associate, AmericaSpeaks

She is currently assigned to Voices and Choices, an unprecedented civic initiative that will involve tens of thousands of citizens and leaders across Northeast Ohio in creating a shared action agenda to revitalize the region’s economy.  Earlier in her career she served four years as an examiner for the Malcom Baldrige National Quality Award through the Department of Commerce. In her capacity with AmericaSpeaks, Dr. Fiero has worked on Washington, DC Citizen Summits, Colorado 100 Fiscal Policy Forum, the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission, the State of Maine Tough Choices in Healthcare, and the Greater Pittsburgh Nonprofit Summit. Dr. Fiero has a B.S. in Biochemistry, an M.B.A., and a Ph.D. in Human and Organizational Systems. She has extensive training from the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland in organizational systems and is a member of the roster of facilitators and mediators with the U.S. Institute of Environmental Conflict Resolution.

 

Elena Gonzalez, Director, Office of Collaborative Action and Dispute Resolution, Office of the Secretary of the Interior

 

Ann Gosline, Founding Partner of Gosline & Reitman

Gosline & Reitman is a mediation, facilitation, training and consulting practice – Ms. Gosline became a full-time ADR practitioner in 1984 after practicing law in the public and private sectors.  She has extensive experience in mediation and facilitation of multi-party processes concerning health care system reform and natural resource policy, including processes addressing land and water use and protection, air quality, transportation planning, fisheries, forestry and agricultural practices, and other public policy issues.  Ms. Gosline served as co-chair of SPIDR's Committee that developed Guidelines for Integrated Conflict Management Systems for organizations.  She also mediates civil disputes and is a member of the National Academy of Arbitrators.  She serves on the Board of the Public Conversations Project.  She is a frequent lecturer and trainer in conflict management and resolution and has taught ADR at the University of Maine School of Law.  Ms. Gosline received a B.A. in Asian history from Stanford University and a J.D. from Northeastern University.    

 

William Hall, Conflict Resolution Specialist, Conflict Prevention and Resolution Center, U.S. EPA

William Hall, Conflict Resolution Specialist, US EPA, has worked in EPA's
Conflict Prevention and
Resolution Center since 2000.  He is a mediator and facilitator, manages EPA's ADR case tracking and evaluation systems, and conducts training and outreach.  Mr. Hall's more than 15 years of national and international experience in dispute resolution and negotiation includes eight years developing National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System policy, providing advice to an environmental peace-building NGO in Northern Ireland, and serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  Mr. Hall is a Ph.D. candidate at George Mason University's Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, specializing in environmental conflict resolution.

 

Gwendolyn Hallsmith, Founder and Executive Director, Global Community Initiatives

Global Community Initiatives, a nonprofit organization dedicated to sustainable community development with offices in Montpelier, Vermont and Johannesburg, South Africa, has been involved in the sustainable communities movement for more than fifteen years.  Prior to founding GCI, she served as the Deputy Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, the Town Manager of Randolph, Vermont, the County Planning Director in Franklin County, MA, and as a Senior Planner for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy Resources.  For the past twelve years, she has been active in international development, and has worked on projects for the Institute for Sustainable Communities, the International City/County Management Association, the United Nations Environmental Program and the United Nations Development Program.  She is the author of The Key to Sustainable Cities: Meeting Human Needs, Transforming Community Systems (New Society Publishers), Taking Action For Sustainability (World Resources Institute), and Local Action for Sustainable Economic Renewal (America's Development Foundation), and she has extensive experience working with communities to identify ways in which they can achieve their objectives for better governance, social well-being, sustainable economic development, and a healthy environment.  Her presentations offer a systems-oriented approach to making communities more sustainable and assist community leaders in developing successful strategies for change.

 

Mara Hernandez, PhD Candidate at Sloan, MIT and Director of the Center for Civic Collaboration

Mara Hernandez specializes in negotiation and conflict resolution. She has also pioneered teaching negotiations and third party intervention in Mexico, where she sees conflict resolution and collaborative negotiation skills as central to strengthening democratic values and citizenship. She is currently Director of the Center for Civic Collaboration, an organization that facilitates multi-stakeholder dialogue and conflict resolution. She is also leading the National Multi-stakeholder Assessment on the Millennium Development Goals, an initiative convened by the UN office in Mexico. Ms. Hernandez holds a Master in Public Administration from the Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and a B.A. in Economics.

 

Maggie Herzig, Senior Associate and Co-founder of the Public Conversations Project

Maggie Herzig is co-author with Laura Chasin of PCP’s new book: Fostering Dialogue Across Divides: A Nuts and Bolts Guide from the Public Conversations Project.  Maggie has facilitated dialogues on a range of topics including abortion, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and controversies over forest management.  Much of Maggie’s work has focused on interfaith dialogue, especially on relationship building between Muslims and non-Muslims. Before 9/11/01, she co-developed a dialogue group for Turkish Muslims and Unitarian-Universalists.  Since then, she has facilitated multi-session dialogues between Jews and Muslims and between Arabs and Jews. In 2002-2003, she served as coordinator of The Islam Project- Boston for PBS’s community engagement campaign for prejudice reduction. More recently, she served as the dialogue consultant for the Faith Quilts Project, working with Clara Wainwright and other artists in and around Boston, integrating dialogue with a collaborative process of creating fifty “faith quilts,” both within and across faith communities. Maggie’s family life gives her plenty of opportunity for interfaith dialogue.  Her husband is Jewish, she was brought up Catholic and is now Unitarian-Universalist, her son and daughter-in-law are Muslim, and her daughter is a UU with Quaker leanings.

 

Herman Karl, USGS Scientist and Co-Director, MIT-USGS Science Impact Collaborative, MIT

Herman Karl explores the changing role of science, research, and scientists in contemporary society. He focuses his research on analyzing the use of scientific information and the role of scientists in collaborative approaches to natural resources and ecosystems-based management, and environmental planning and policymaking, and the institutional and societal transformations that are necessary for science to be more effectively used in the evolving models of participatory, deliberative governance and community-based ecosystem stewardship. Among his numerous publications is the book Beyond the Golden Gate---Oceanography, Geology, Biology and Environmental Issues in the Gulf of the Farallones. It has received the Association of Earth Science Editors Outstanding Publication of the Year, the USGS Shoemaker Award for Excellence, and the National Association of Government Communicators Award for Outstanding Achievement. He has served on many committees to render scientific and strategic planning advice, which include the USGS Strategic Planning Team and the Department of the Interior (DOI) 4Cs Partnership and Collaboration Action Team. 

 

Hon. Pamela Kennedy

Pamela  Kennedy has been Mayor of Kalispell, Montana since 2002. She is featured in the Film "The Fire Next Time" as a leader helping bring reconciliation to the community. She has served in a number of public positions, including the Montana Gaming Advisory Council, as well as the Kalispell Youth Advisory Council, Kalispell Police Advisory Council, Family Violence Council and the Flathead County Peer Court.

 

Mary Jo Larson

Mary Jo Larson is an international practitioner and scholar with over 15 years experience in the fields of conservation education, intercultural learning, environmental conflict management, peacebuilding and sustainable development. Her experience includes conservation and leadership programs in Afghanistan, Egypt and in West Bank/Gaza. She has served as the Director of a Gates Foundation global health and leadership program and Chief of Programming and Training for Asia Pacific Region of the Peace Corps.  Dr. Larson has authored numerous manuals on intercultural learning, flexibility in multilateral negotiations and transformative leadership. She earned her Ph.D. in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University.

 

Matthew Leighninger

Over the last twelve years, Matt Leighninger has worked with citizen involvement efforts in over 100 communities, in 40 states and two Canadian provinces; roughly 25,000 people have taken part in those projects. Most of this work was supported by the Study Circles Resource Center, of which he is a Senior Associate. Leighninger also directs Democracy Workshop, providing technical assistance to the National League of Cities, Centers for Disease Control, and the League of Women Voters. His first book, The Next Form of Democracy: How Expert Rule is Giving Way to Shared Governance – and Why Politics Will Never Be the Same, will be released in 2006 by Vanderbilt University Press.

 

Bill Lennertz, AIA, NCI Charrette Facilitator

He is a practicing New Urbanist. First as Director of the Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ) Boston office in 1986, and from 1993-2002, as a partner with Lennertz Coyle & Associates, Bill has directed over 150 community planning charrettes. As lead trainer for NCI, Bill has trained top staff from such organizations as the Environmental Protection Agency, US General Services Administration, US Department of Housing and Urban Development, Fannie Mae Foundation, Parsons Brinckerhoff, and the US Navy Facilities Architecture Branch. Bill is a co-author of The Charrette Handbook, soon to be published by the American Planning Association. He is also co-editor and essayist of Towns and Town-Making Principles, a monograph on DPZ, and a contributor to the Charter of the New Urbanism. Bill has taught at various universities including Harvard, where he received his Masters of Architecture in Urban Design.

 

Rose Martinez, Director, Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice

 

Masahiro Matsuura, Ph.D. Candidate, Environmental Policy Group, MIT

He finished his MCP at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1998, then worked for Mitsubishi Research Institute, Inc. as a policy analyst. His Ph.D. defense is scheduled for this summer.  He is interested in how consensus-building techniques can be "localized" in different parts of the world, especially in Japan, by focusing on the role of technology adaptation and organizational change. He is a founding member of PI-Forum (NGO) and Association for Consensus Building in Japan.

 

Sean Nolon, Director, Land Use Law Center, and adjunct faculty, Pace University School of Law

He trains local officials, environmentalists, and developers in land use law and consensus building techniques; provides strategic assistance to inter-municipal councils; and mediates land use disputes. He has taught a law school seminar in conflict resolution and land use law and coordinates the Land Use Conflicts Externship at Pace. He is a Director-at-Large of the Westchester Municipal Planning Federation, and Associate Director of the Westchester County Soil and Water Conservation District. He is also a certified mediator and arbitrator in Westchester County. Prior to joining the Center in 1999, Mr. Nolon litigated environmental, land use, and commercial coverage matters.

 

Patrice O'Neill, Executive Producer, The Working Group

O'Neill has produced successful national series on PBS for fifteen years.  She is co-founder of  The Working Group (www.theworkinggroup.org), a non profit media company that uses television, internet and organizing  to encourage community dialogue and civic engagement.  TWG's 1995 story of how the town of Billings, Montana, responded to a rash of hate crimes  began as a half-hour PBS special -- but has turned into a national movement.  The resulting grassroots campaign against hate and intolerance  continues in communities  to this day (www.pbs.org/niot).  "The Fire Next Time" (www.pbs.org/pov/thefirenexttime) premiered on the PBS series POV in 2005.

 

Suzanne Orenstein, Public Policy Mediator

She has been a public policy mediator and facilitator for over twenty years.  She has mediated over forty major cases, conducted more than fifty training courses, and managed rosters of mediators.  She has mediated negotiations over energy regulations, controversial facilities and land use, global warming policies, pesticide impacts, Superfund cleanups, endangered species, marine mammals, and hazardous waste regulations.  She has facilitated meetings for strategic planning, visioning, partnering, and agenda setting purposes, as well as to foster dialogue on controversial issues like dioxin policy, fishing regulations, water quality issues, and forest management planning.  She is known for ensuring productive communication among parties with disparate negotiation experiences and views, and for helping stakeholder groups understand, discuss, and make decisions about highly technical topics. Ms. Orenstein is the former Vice President of RESOLVE, a national environmental dispute resolution organization, and is currently in private practice in Massachusetts.

 

Evan Paul, Program Associate, AmericaSpeaks

He plays a leadership role in AmericaSpeaks' 21st Century Town Meeting and Civic Engagement Consulting projects. He specializes in project management and has been developing new projects on various environmental and land use issues. He joined the AmericaSpeaks team in May 2005. Since then, he has served as the assistant producer for AmericaSpeaks' role in the kickoff meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City; project manager for a national discussion on health care in the United Kingdom; and project manager for the Louisiana Recovery and Rebuilding Conference in New Orleans with the American Institute of Architects and the American Planning Association. He is developing a variety of other projects including city and regional discussions on energy policy and a citizen engagement strategy for gulf coast hurricane recovery. He has been a campaign director for Forest Ethics, an international organization that supports forest communities in the development of conservation-based economies. He earned his B.A. in Political Science at the University of Missouri, Columbia.

 

Jennifer Peyser, Facilitator, RESOLVE, Washington, DC

Ms. Peyser assists clients and stakeholders with convening, facilitation, and mediation of multi-party policy dialogues and consensus processes. She specializes in processes dealing with the highly technical scientific and regulatory questions involved in environmental policy making. Her project experience includes natural resources cases, such as fisheries and alternative energy, and public health cases such as drinking water, endocrine disruptors, and biotechnology. Ms. Peyser is also an affiliate and past project manager of the MIT-USGS Science Impact Collaborative, and a former graduate associate at the Consensus Building Institute. She earned her master's degree in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Environmental Policy Group, where she completed her thesis on joint fact finding and public involvement in natural resource management decision-making. She holds a B.S. in Environmental Science and a Bachelor of Arts in French from Iowa State University and is a Morris K. Udall Scholar for Excellence in Environmental Policy.

 

Susan Podziba, Principal and Public Policy Mediator, Susan Podziba & Associates

Ms. Podziba is known for designing processes to fit the unique characteristics of given conflicts. Since 1984, she has mediated cases involving international relations, governance, environmental disputes, land use and development decisions, transportation planning, public health, worker safety, and education policy. She has served as a visiting lecturer and lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Department of Urban Studies and Planning and a faculty associate of the Program On Negotiation at Harvard Law School. Her current and recent projects include facilitated negotiated rulemakings for the U.S. Department of Transportation on charter bus service and worker safety standards for the use of cranes in construction for the U.S. Department of Labor. Ms. Podziba has also worked with Dutch and Finnish academics and government officials to introduce consensus building and mediation tools into their land use planning processes.


Jonathan Raab, President, Raab Associates

 Dr. Raab is an experienced mediator, facilitator, consultant, and trainer. He is a national leader in applying consensus-building processes to energy, environmental, and regulatory issues. He authored a seminal book, Using Consensus Building to Improve Utility Regulation (ACEEE: Washington, D.C.) and is on both the mediation and arbitration panels for the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland Power Pool, the mediation panel of the Mid-Continent Area Power Pool, and on the dispute resolution rosters of the US Environmental Protection Agency and the US Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution. Prior to starting Raab Associates, Dr. Raab was the assistant director of the Electric Power Division at the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities. He has a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Energy and Environmental Policy, and Resource Economics), an M.S. from Stanford University's Civil Engineering Department (Infrastructure Planning and Management), and an A.B. (distinction) in Social Sciences also from Stanford. He has taught courses at the University of Oregon, Stanford, UMass (Boston) and MIT.

 

Susan Raines, Assistant Professor of Conflict Management at Kennesaw State University

Raye Rawls, Mediator, Arbitrator, Trainer

 

Jonathan W. Reitman, Founding Partner, Gosline & Reitman

Mr. Reitman is a mediation, facilitation, training and consulting practice, practiced law for 12 years before becoming a full-time ADR practitioner in 1990. He is a frequent lecturer and author on negotiation, conflict resolution and mediation. He has trained participants from 15 different countries on these topics in Bosnia (where he worked for five years in the 1990's),   Italy, Israel, and England.  For the past 5 summers he has taught Palestinian and Israeli graduate students Negotiation, Mediation and Conflict Management.  He and Alma co-taught a graduate course on "Intractable Conflicts" to students from 9 different countries as part of the Summer Peacebuilding Institute at Eastern Mennonite University. He has trained Arab and Jewish mediators in Multi-Party Mediation. He has also taught the ADR course at the University of Maine School of Law since 1996. Jonathan is former chair of International Sector of the ACR.

 

Ric Richardson, Professor of Community and Regional Planning, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

Mr. Richardson runs a practice in initiating collaborative environmental and natural resources planning and resolving land use disputes. Ric works with citizens, environmental activists, state and federal agencies and local leaders to design and carry out assisted negotiations in water, land use, and local development initiatives. He has worked with the BLM, U S Fish and Wildlife Service, the New Mexico Governor’s cabinet, municipalities and non-profit organizations to provide training in collaborative planning and consensus building strategies. Professor Richardson is a senior associate at the Consensus Building Institute, Cambridge, MA, the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program at the Harvard Law School