Life’s Lessons on Access to Justice
In April 1976, The Pound Conference, which was named in honor of Roscoe Pound, the reforming Dean of Harvard Law School in the 1920s and 30s, was held to create a conversation about the need for reform in our judicial system. At the conference, Professor E.A. Sanders, founder of the Harvard Program on Negotiation, proposed […]
Lessons From Rwanda
Rwanda is a country of a thousand hills and beautiful mountains, endlessly terraced by farmers. Young children running everywhere, wearing brightly colored school uniforms. Women with babies strapped to their backs, balancing loads on top of their heads. It’s an impressively clean country, free of trash (plastic bags are banned from use here). A visitor […]
The color of conflict?
Black on blue. Blue on black. Blue on red. Red on blue. No, it’s not opening night at a museum of modern art, it’s a colorful reminder of how deeply divided our nation has become. Less than three weeks’ post-election, this country remains characterized by increased rhetoric, public demonstrations and incidents of intolerance and hate. […]
Hope and Inspiration in the Land of the Aztecs
This past week I was invited by my friend and colleague, Fernando Navarro, a former Weinstein International Fellow, to Mexico City to teach and lecture to mediators, attorneys and law students. The topic? How to advance the culture of commercial mediation in their legal environment. My first presentation was an early morning lecture to ANADE, […]
Mediation Competency – Giving Vitamins Instead of Aspirin
No brand reflects higher quality education than Stanford University. No region connotes innovation more than Silicon Valley. Perhaps it was fitting that when Dr. Mark Welton, Chief of Staff, Stanford Health Care, was in search of conflict resolution training, he chose to introduce a pilot project to teach mediation and leadership competency to the heads […]
EMA’s first EMpower grant recipient
Edwards Mediation Academy is pleased to announce its first EMpower grant recipient: African Peace Partners. Founded in 2013, African Peace Partners is a US-based non profit organization committed to supporting the Ihumure Peace Association in Rwanda. African Peace Partners provides training and financial resources to local mediators to support their pioneering work in healing post-genocide […]
Why Ego Management Is Key to Effective Mediation
The plane banked slowly to the left before gliding across the Potomac River and touching down at what was then Washington’s National Airport. The year was 1991, and I had recently left the practice of law to begin my second career as a full-time mediator. A short cab ride past the monument-studded Mall brought me […]
Hear about mediation in post-genocide Rwanda
As written by Emily Gould, co-director of the African Peace Partners: Construction on the Ihumure Peace Center in Rwanda will begin in August thanks to a kick off grant from the Edwards Mediation Academy. The Center is a first of its kind in that it integrates trauma recovery, dispute resolution and cooperative economic self – […]