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About the Speakers
Robin Amadei, J.D. owns Common Ground Mediation Center, LLC, based in Boulder, Colorado, which has been providing mediation, facilitation, training and conflict coaching services for individuals, organizations and governmental agencies nationwide since 1991. Her mediation practice is focused in the employment, family, education and business areas. Robin mediates and facilitates meetings for the Department of Education (since 1992) in the special education area. Additionally, Robin is an Adjunct Professor at Denver University (since 1994), teaching classes in the areas of negotiation, mediation (basic and advanced), agreement writing, conflict management, and train-the-trainer. Robin is also a published author and frequent speaker in the areas of mediation, the use of ADR in organizations and team building. She is certified in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), and provides workshops for organizations based upon this instrument. Also, Robin provides workplace assessment services for organizations and is a senior executive assessor for the Western Management Development Center. Since 1996, Robin has been a contract trainer for the United States Department of Agriculture’s Graduate School, training government employees in the areas of employment mediation, advanced mediation, conflict management, effective communication, and negotiation. Further, she has conducted many mediation trainings for public and private organizations.
Judge Leland Anderson has served as a Jefferson County District Court Judge for nine years handling a mixed docket of criminal, civil and domestic cases. Prior to that he worked as a civil trial attorney and served as a Deputy District Attorney in Denver, Colorado. In private practice he served as President of the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association. In 1993 he was awarded the distinguished “Trial Lawyer of the Year” award in San Francisco by the Trial Lawyers for Public Justice. This was in recognition of six years of pro bono legal service he performed as lead counsel on behalf of over two dozen persons killed or injured when a seven-ton boulder smashed into the side of a tour bus on Colorado’s Berthoud Pass. While he has been on the bench, Judge Anderson has served as President of the Colorado District Judges Association. He is Chairperson of the Colorado Supreme Court Standing Committee on Juries. Judge Anderson assisted Justice Rebecca Kourlis of the Colorado Supreme Court in spear-heading significant jury reform measures in Colorado Courts. Judge Anderson has also served as Chairperson of the Colorado Bar Association Professionalism Committee. He authors “Off the Record, ” a column in the Colorado Lawyer devoted to exploring the “soul of the law” and the “soul of the lawyer.” He graduated number one (Honor Man) in his platoon in Marine Corps Boot Camp, receiving thereafter two meritorious promotions. He has qualified as an expert shot in the Marine Corps scoring 20 bulls-eyes on a target 500 meters away without the use of a scope. Judge Anderson asserts, however, that many great warriors have never served a day in the military but possess supreme warrior-like discipline, focus and courage in how they go about the normal days of their lives. Many of their battles have been fought quietly but fiercely in the dark interior of the soul. Judge Anderson honors such warriors wherever he may find them. Next to people, Judge Anderson’s personal interests include photography, woodworking and climbing the deep slot canyons of Utah and Arizona. His wife is a psychotherapist. His son attends Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Business School. His daughter is an actress in Los Angeles. Judge Anderson drives a second-hand Ford F-250 pickup truck with 160,000 miles on it, has never used an ATM machine, and prefers to drink cheap black coffee wherever available.
Nan Waller Burnett, MA is a dynamic facilitator and has passion for the evolving field of transformative conflict engagement and peace building. A highly respected faculty member at Regis University in the Jesuit educational system, she has developed several training programs and is experienced in her abilities to communicate in a position of leadership and as a safety and emergency response professional in a public environment. She has developed, created and delivered numerous workshops on conflict resolution, negotiations, communication skills, workplace ADR and related mediation topics, such as group dynamics and leadership. She has facilitated 13 retreats for professionals. A reflective and transformative practitioner of ADR, Nan has attained Advanced Practitioner status on the state and national organization level. Nan has been involved in all aspects of alternative dispute resolution including the design of dispute resolution programs and systems for all levels of government and in international venues. Additionally, she has extensive experience in crisis management, emergency response and Critical Incident Debriefing, PTSD psychotherapy, fact-finding, mediation, arbitration and training. She has 15 years experience in group facilitation and course development in undergraduate, graduate and professional venues. With experience as a contract mediator for a variety of federal and state governmental agencies, she has handled over a thousand of cases in both the public and private sectors involving complex fact patterns with numerous interrelated issues. She received REDRESS training for the US Postal Service in 1998; is an approved mediation provider for EEOC from the inception of that agency’s ADR program in February 1999, as well as issues under the Americans with Disabilities Act and charges of retaliation. Nan specializes in high conflict post decree mediation.
Kenneth Cloke JD, LLM, PhD is Director of the Center for Dispute Resolution and a mediator, arbitrator, consultant and trainer, specializing in resolving complex multi-party conflicts, including community, grievance and workplace disputes, organizational and school conflicts, sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuits, and public policy disputes, and in designing conflict resolution systems for organizations. He is a nationally recognized speaker and leader in the field of conflict resolution, and a published author of many journal articles and several books, including Mediation: Revenge and the Magic of Forgiveness and Mediating Dangerously: The Frontiers of Conflict Resolution. His consulting and training practice includes organizational change, leadership, team building and strategic planning. He is a co-author with Joan Goldsmith of Thank God It's Monday! 14 Values We Need to Humanize The Way We Work, Resolving Conflicts at Work: A Complete Guide for Everyone on the Job, Resolving Personal and Organizational Conflict: Stories of Transformation and Forgiveness; The End of Management and the Rise of Organizational Democracy, and The Art of Waking People Up: Cultivating Awareness and Authenticity at Work . His latest book, Journeys into the Heart of Conflict will be published in 2005. He received a B.A. from the University of California ; a J.D. from U.C.'s Boalt Law School ; a Ph.D. from UCLA; an LLM from UCLA Law School ; and has done post-doctoral work at Yale Law School . He is a graduate of the National Judicial College in Reno , Nevada . His university teaching includes law, mediation, history and other social sciences at a number of colleges and universities including Southwestern University School of Law, Pepperdine University School of Law, Antioch University, Occidental College , USC and UCLA.
Bert Dempsey, Esq. has been licensed to practice law in Colorado since 1983. From that time until 1991 he worked primarily with personal injury cases. Following his own divorce in 1991 Bert began to accept dissolution of marriage cases. Certified in mediation in 1996 he began his mediation practice. Since then he has focused on the non-adversarial resolution of divorce cases. He attended the first Collaborative Law training in Colorado in 2001 and since that time has worked in both mediated and collaborative cases. A member of Rocky Mountain Collaborative Divorce Professionals; Bert, along with other professionals, have begun The Collaborative Divorce Professionals of Boulder, a group including psychologists, attorneys, financial consultants, child & family experts and other professionals in Boulder County.
Joe Epstein, Esq. Creative, insightful and dynamic, Joe Epstein brings over 30 years of experience, high energy and a proactive approach to mediation. Having heard over 3000 ADR cases, Joe is regularly asked to handle complex cases requiring his unique communication skills, his analytical insight, intuitive style, and perseverance. A Fellow and Secretary/Treasurer of the International Academy of Mediators, Joe Epstein has enjoyed a distinguished career as an attorney, a legal educator, and as a mediator. Joe utilizes special people skills and a willingness to be daring in order to skillfully bring parties to closure. The unique people skills and the precise analytical skills he brought to his litigation practice are among the skills he brings to his full time ADR practice. Joe utilizes a proactive ADR style and individualized case design. He has even been known to use a Native American “Talking Stick”. While pragmatic and closure conscious, Joe will seize transformative opportunities. His talent has recently been recognized by his peers who rated him as one of Colorado’s top attorneys.(Colorado SuperLawyer 2006 and Best Lawyers in America.) Joe has authored numerous articles and given numerous speeches on mediation, professional liability, trial tactics, evidence and disabilities law. Joe focuses his regional practice on catastrophic injuries, product liability and professional liability cases. He is also asked to mediate employment, construction defect, insurance bad faith, securities fraud, and complex commercial cases. Joe has facilitated mediation programs for groups such as the Arizona Bar Association, the Arizona Trial Lawyers Association, the Colorado Bar Association, the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association, the Colorado Defense Lawyers Association, the Wyoming Trial Lawyers Association, the Wyoming Defense Lawyers Association, the Utah Trial Lawyers Association, the American Trucking Association and the International Academy of Mediators.
Terri Harrington, Esq. is a shareholder in the firm of Harrington Brewster and Clein P.C., which has been in existence for over 15 years. After 25 years as a litigator, Terri now limits her practice to mediation, collaborative law and unbundled legal services. Terri is past president of the Colorado Collaborative Law Professionals, Past President of the Rocky Mountain Collaborative Law Professionals, a member of the Academy of Colorado Collaborative Professionals, the International Academy of Collaborative Practice , and the Colorado Council of Mediators. She has studied conflict resolution, and non-adversarial communication since 1997. Terri is a contributing author of Collaborative Law, A New Model for Dispute Resolution, and has published many articles about collaborative law. Terri has been a guest speaker at the law schools at the University of Denver and the University of Colorado, conducted numerous trainings in collaborative practice, and is a lecturer for local CLE programs.
John Paul Lederach, PhD. , Professor of International Peacebuilding at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Widely known for his pioneering work on conflict transformation, Lederach is involved in conciliation work in Colombia, the Philippines, Nepal and Tajikistan, plus countries in East and West Africa. He has helped design and conduct training programs in 25 countries across five continents.
He is the author of The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (Oxford University Press, 2005), The Journey Toward Reconciliation (Herald Press, 1999), Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (USIP, 1997), and Preparing for Peace: Confliction Transformation Across Cultures (Syracuse University Press 1995).
Joseph P. McMahon, Jr., Esq. Joe McMahon works in facilitation, conflict transformation and dispute resolution, and has degrees in law and engineering. As a mediator, his focus is to facilitate the movement processes that focus on the parties not the mediator or lawyers. As a facilitator, Joe seeks to use collaborative processes to assist stakeholders in defining, and then achieving, their desired outcomes. His approach to dispute resolution is explained at his website www.jpmcmahon.com Joe’s efforts in international facilitation or program work (Asia, Africa and Latin America) are described at www.inter-mediation.org .
Alexis Namasté is a full time mediator, facilitator and consultant since 1986. Growing up as an Army brat, her early life was shaped by the 17 houses lived in by age 21, to the exotic lands, cultures, people and events. She has studied Eastern philosophies, Native American and other earth centered spiritual practices as well as traveling to Peru to study with Incan shamans. She use Reiki, meditation and intuitive counseling in all of her work and often use tarot cards, energetic healing processes, ritual and ceremony. She adopts what works for her from her studies and make s them her own as she seek s more tools. Mediation is a healing art, and mediators typically walk in between worlds which is their gift, thus it is now time to recognize and integrate those aspects – the earthly and the spiritual
Sally K. Ortner JD is an experienced attorney and mediator. She received a B. S. in Psychology and J. D. from the University of Iowa, graduating with high honors in 1979. Since becoming a trained mediator in 1983, Sally has mediated a wide variety of civil cases including contract, personal injury, intentional tort, real estate, and business conflicts. Sally also mediates interpersonal issues in divorce, probate, special education and workplace situations. She has conducted mediation trainings and given presentations on mediation throughout Colorado. She is a Guidelines Member of the Colorado Council of Mediators, a member of the Association for Conflict Resolution and the Colorado and American Bar Associations. Sally is a former Chair of the Colorado Bar Association Alternative Dispute Resolution Section and of the Committees which established the Guidelines for Mediator Education and Training and voluntary statewide standards of conduct for Colorado mediators.
Kristin J. Thompson, M. A.,Applied Communication, is the owner of Communication for Life, a mediation and dispute resolution education practice in Denver. Her mediation practice encompasses a wide range of conflicts, including employment (EEO complaints), family, community, developmentally disabled, and civil (contract) cases. Kristin mediates on contract for the State of Colorado Office of Dispute Resolution, working with parents who have never been married to come up with a viable parenting plan, couples who are dissolving their marriages and truancy cases for middle school children. She also contracts with the United States Postal Service, mediating EEO complaints, and is a trained mediator for the State of Colorado Developmental Disabilities Services Mediation Program. Kristin also continues to volunteer her services at Jefferson County Mediation Services, where she has mediated more than 200 neighborhoods, contract, landlord-tenant, family, victim-offender and other conflicts. Kristin has been practicing and teaching Marshall Rosenberg’s non-violent communication model and principles for several years. Kristin received her B.A. in Communication in 1996 from the University of Colorado at Denver, a Certificate in Advanced Studies in Alternative Dispute Resolution in November of 2000, and her M.A. in Applied Communication in May 2002 from the University of Denver. Contact information: (720) 217-2398; ktconflict@comcast.net
Herman Weaver, PhD. Herm Weaver is the Conference Minister for the Mountains States Mennonite Conference. Prior work includes 13 years at Eastern Mennonite University as Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology and he continues to be involved in teaching and training events. In addition, he is a singer/songwriter who has been telling stories with his music to a wide range of audiences for several decades. His research efforts have been aimed primarily at examining the role of the creative arts in the experience of reconciliation. He is co-founder, along with John Paul Lederach, of Dream the Light, a grassroots effort aimed at fostering language learning among high school students as a way of breaking down barriers. He holds an M.S.Ed. from The University of Akron and a Ph.D. from The Union Institute and University.
Lili
Zohar J.D., LL.M., PhD (F/K/A/ Lillian Lehrburger)
is an attorney/mediator who since 1995 has practiced family, civil,
and community mediation in Denver Colorado in private practice and
for organizations including The Colorado Judicial Office of Dispute
Resolution, The United States Post Office, The EEOC, and Associations
of Realtors for the Denver Metro Area. She has been an instructor of
business ethics, mediation, facilitation and negotiation at Regis
University, University of Colorado in Denver and the Phoenix
University. |