Article in UMass Boston Alumni Magazine Celebrates 20th Anniversary

The UMass Boston Magazine [summer 2007] features a story on the Dispute Resolution program in honor of its 20th anniversary. The story quoted extensively from an interview with founder and director David Matz and mentioned the accomplishments of several of our alumni: Jeannie Adams [MA 2004]; Camilo Azcarate [MA 1999]; and Jon Braley [MA 2000].

To see the full article click here.

 

Newest Alumni

2007 Masters Recipients [left to right]

Julia Dyck, Oleksiy [Alex] Burchevskyy, John Sarrouf, Sue Ellen Beers, Jerry Fletcher,

Jim Gallagher, Katie Schroeder

 

2007 Certificate Recipients [left to right]

Jan O'Keefe, Maureen Pelton, Shauna Manning, Sean Denniston, Manouchka Jacques,

Caroline Bays, Sarah Welch

 

 

Alumni Profiles

Joshua Gordon

Joshua Gordon recently accepted the position of Senior Associate of Assessment, Coaching, and Training at the Consensus Building Institute in Cambridge. It is a role that will use his experience as a mediator and organizational developer and leverages his  education in dispute resolution, psychology, and law.

The Consensus Building Institute (CBI) is a not-for-profit originally founded by Professor Lawrence Susskind out of the Harvard-MIT Program on Negotiation. Joshua’s role will primarily be focused on assisting corporate clients with enhancing their capacity to build creative, value-added, negotiations to further their inter and intra organizational challenges.

The Consensus Building Institute (CBI) improves the way leaders use negotiations to make organizational decisions, achieve agreements, and manage multiparty conflicts and planning efforts. They use proven principles, processes, and techniques that improve group decision-making on complex public and organizational issues. Their substantive experience and innovative strategies are used to assist clients worldwide in three core areas:

• Facilitate public collaboration

• Strengthen organizations

• Build knowledge

Whether managing important public issues, building organizational capacity, or expanding knowledge, CBI helps their clients make better decisions and get things done.

 

Felix Unogwu

Felix Unogwu [Certificate 2005] has been appointed Children and Youth Specialist by Search for Common Ground in Washington DC.

Search for Common Ground (SFCG) is an international non-profit organization that promotes peaceful resolution of conflict. With headquarters in Washington, DC, and a European office in Brussels, Belgium, SFCG's mission is to transform how individuals, organizations and governments deal with conflict - away from adversarial approaches and toward cooperative solutions. SFCG seeks to help conflicting parties understand their differences and act on their commonalities.

With a total of approximately 350 staff worldwide, SFCG implements projects from 28 offices in 17 countries. SFCG's programs are in Africa, Asia, Europe, Middle East, and the United States.

As the Children and Youth Specialist, Felix helps manage global scale projects and provides technical and fundraising assistance for programs, networking and liaising with the international community.

 

Stephen Frenkel

Stephen Frenkel is the Director of Negotiation Programs at Mediation Works Incorporated. In this role, Stephen oversees MWI's Negotiation Training programs and consulting services in the corporate, institutional and non-profit sectors. Stephen's expertise is in helping clients achieve optimal results through collaborative negotiation. He has worked with global clients including Analog Devices, ING Bank, Capital One, Citrix, NeighborWorks America, Indian Professionals Network (IPN) and the Risk Management Association to diagnose negotiation challenges in the workplace and to create and deliver custom tailored negotiation training workshops and modules around the world. Stephen has also worked with several national dispute resolution organizations to redesign their internal processes and build their strategic alliance network of partners and government agencies. He has experience mediating and coordinating contract and civil disputes.

In 2005, Stephen completed the design of a conflict resolution system for a technical training organization and he presented on advanced negotiation topics for the Graduate Programs in Dispute Resolution at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where he earned his Masters degree. In 2007, Stephen delivered the Keynote Address to participants at the National Black Law Student's Association's first annual International Negotiations Competition. He was also interviewed and featured in Chief Learning Officer Magazine’s “Executive Briefings,” in which he provided information about the benefits of the collaborative negotiation process for CLO’s across the nation.

Stephen has recently been involved in a collaborative effort between MWI and Analog Devices, Inc. on the development and implementation of a world-wide negotiation skill building initiative. After spending the previous seven months designing a custom 2-day Negotiation Skills Workshop, complete with ADI specific role plays, case examples, and internal process components, MWI began world-wide role out in May, 2007 (with an initial workshop in Tokyo, Japan in January, 2007). This first round of implementation began in Munich, Germany and continued in Paris, Boston, and San Jose, California. Additional workshops are currently being planned for Boston, Tokyo and China (Shanghai and Taipei).

 

Colin Rule

Colin Rule is Director of Online Dispute Resolution for eBay. He has worked in the dispute resolution field for more than a decade as a mediator, trainer, and consultant. He is currently Co-Chair of the Online Dispute Resolution Committee of the American Bar Association's Dispute Resolution Section, and he serves on the Steering Committee of the Better Business Bureau's Internet program, BBBOnline. Colin co-founded Online Resolution, one of the first online dispute resolution (ODR) providers, in 1999 and served as its CEO (2000) and President. In 2002 Colin co-founded the Online Public Disputes Project, which applied ODR to multiparty, public disputes. Previously, Colin was General Manager of Mediate.com, the largest online resource for the dispute resolution field. Colin also worked for several years with the National Institute for Dispute Resolution in Washington, D.C. and the Consensus Building Institute in Cambridge, MA.

Colin has presented and trained throughout Europe and North America for organizations including the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the Department of State, the International Chamber of Commerce, and the CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution. He has also lectured and taught at UMass-Amherst, Stanford, MIT, Southern Methodist University, the University of Ottawa, and Brandeis University.

Colin is the author of Online Dispute Resolution for Business, published by Jossey-Bass in September 2002. He has contributed more than 40 articles to prestigious ADR publications such as Consensus, The Fourth R, ACR News, and Peace Review. He authors the online conflict resolution column in ACResolution Magazine and contributes to odr.info, a news resource chronicling developments in the ODR field.

Colin has been a contributing blogger at ODR News Blog , part of the web site for the Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst . Recently Colin began publishing a blog of his own hosted at Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society. Colin's blog offers perspective and commentary on conflict resolution, civil discourse, politics, international relations, and, yes, technology and the Internet.

Colin holds a Master's degree from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in conflict resolution and technology, a B. A. in Peace Studies from Haverford College, and he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Eritrea from 1995-1997. He earned a Certificate in Dispute Resolution for UMASS Boston in 1999.

 

Helen Barrington

DATELINE: Amherst, Mass.; August 28, 2006

88.5 FM WFCR, NPR News and Music for Western New England, announced today that Helen Barrington has been named Program Director for the station, effective immediately.

Said General Manager Martin Miller, "Helen brings 17 years of experience in public radio to 88.5 FM WFCR in both news and music programming. She understands and embraces the station's need for an 'activist' Program Director, one who will interact with the community, and strengthen our renewed focus on localism. Helen has a proven track record of excellence, achieving and exceeding goals set before her in other positions. She is a valuable addition to our staff as we enter our 45th year of broadcasting to western New England."

Helen comes to 88.5 FM WFCR from her current position as a producer for PRI's nationally-distributed program, "The World," at WGBH in Boston. She was additionally a producer of the PRI program "Sound & Spirit,” also from PRI and WGBH. In all, she held a number of positions at WGBH going back to 1998, including a production credit for the "Live from Tanglewood" broadcasts. For the WFMT Radio Network, she put together a 2-hour special called "Dvorak in America" and a 25-part series on the 12th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Between 1994 and 1998, Helen lived in the Netherlands, working for the English language service of Radio Netherlands.

Helen augments this exceptional experience in the world of public broadcasting with a recently completed Masters Degree in Conflict Resolution from UMass Boston. She looks forward to integrating her skills as a mediator into her career in radio. At 88.5 FM WFCR, one of her roles will be to act as a liaison with the larger listening community. Martin Miller remarked on how Helen's areas of expertise will "add materially to the extraordinary breadth of abilities and interests among 88.5 FM WFCR's staff."

 

Camilo Azcarate

Camilo Azcarate has been the Ombuds Officer for Princeton University since 2003. Before his current position he was a faculty member and Director of the Conflict Resolution Institute at FGCU where he also worked with the Ombuds Office. Previously he was the Government Programs Coordinator for the Massachusetts Office of Dispute Resolution (MODR). His dispute resolution practice includes mediation, facilitation, conflict management systems design and Ombudsing. Camilo has presented, trained, lectured and taught in Latin America and the US including Princeton, Harvard, Clark, FIU, ICESI and UV. He has published articles on the Journal of Peace and Conflict Resolution, the Association for Conflict Resolution Magazine and the IOA Newsletter in the areas of international conflict, identity-based conflict, cross-cultural issues in mediation and conflict in the workplace.

Camilo is a member of the International Ombudsman Association (IOA) and is a former affiliate of the Program on International Conflict Analysis and Resolution (PICAR) at Harvard. He holds a Juris Doctor from Universidad Javeriana, a Masters in Corporate and Labor Law, both the Certificate and Masters in Dispute Resolution from the University of Massachusetts and an EEO Certificate from Cornell University. He has received several awards for his work in dispute resolution, including the Don Paulson Award for Excellence in Dispute Resolution from UMass and the Outstanding Achievement in Dispute Resolution.

 

Belle Abaya

Belle Abaya established The Conflict Resolution Group Foundation, a non-profit, non-stock organization, whose focus is the use of mediation in judicial reform, and consequently trained the most number of mediators and ran consistently successful mediation programs in the Philippines. She catalyzed stakeholders to draft and work for the passage in a record 18 months the Alternative Dispute Resolution Act, which framed the country's mediation policy and updated the antiquated Arbitration Law. With the support of USAID and The Asia Foundation, Belle Abaya instituted the National Center for Mediation in 8 key cities nationwide by catalyzing a covenant among the nine largest business organizations, who committed to push the development and use of mediation. She was appointed by the President of the Philippines as one of 5 Government negotiators in the peace process with the National Democratic Front to address the country's decades-long conflict with communist rebels. Her foundation supports community based peace initiatives by teaching new methods of dialogue, and continues to be at the forefront of mediation applications in the workplace, in organizations, and education. Belle Abaya earned her Masters Degree in Dispute Resolution from UMASS Boston in 2001.

 

Ben Slomoff

Ben Slomoff had a full career as a very successful business owner and manufacturer of shoes. He was also a poet and a playwright. After he retired, he decided that he wanted a college education. He came to UMass/Boston, completed a BA, discovered dispute resolution, entered the Graduate Certificate Program, and went on to complete the Masters Degree in 1997. Ben, and his wife Sylvia, then moved to California where Ben mediates every week in small claims court, and acts as the neutral arbitrator on three-arbitrator panels for disputes in the field of securities.

Ben and his wife Sylvia have been enormously generous to the Dispute Resolution program over the years, underwriting the annual Ben and Sylvia Slomoff Visiting Lecturer each year (past lecturers have included Morton Deutsch, Dennis Ross, and Phyllis Kritek), the Slomoff Dispute Resolution Browsers’ Library, and the prize offered at our biennial conference for graduate students studying conflict.

 

Susan Morash and Adele Keeley

Two DisRes alumni returned to the UMass Boston campus in November 2006 to lead a workshop at the department's biennial Conflict Studies Conference.

Susan Morash, nurse manager of a 24-bed, inpatient general medical unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston, and Adele Keeley, nurse manager of an 18-bed medical intensive care unit also at MGH, recently led a workshop entitled “Critical Conditions: Using Negotiation Skills in Clinical Health Settings.”  The workshop was part of the conference "Conflict Studies: The New Generation of Ideas,” held at UMass Boston, November 2 through 4 2007 and organized by the Graduate Programs in Dispute Resolution.

Susan Morash received her MA in June 2004. In addition to her work at MGH, Susan recently authored a chapter in The Negotiator's Fieldbook [Schneider and Honeyman, editors] published by the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolution. Entitled "Non-events and Avoiding Reality," it draws on Susan's experience in health care and deals with the issues raised when one side in a potential negotiation withholds information.

Adele Keeley received her master’s degree in dispute resolution in June 2006. She says her degree helps her manage about 72 full-time employees. She also serves as one of two Principal Investigators of a study on "Merging Palliative Care in the Critical Care Setting" funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

 

Deborah Mendez-Bowen

Deborah Mendez-Bowen earned her Masters Degree in Dispute Resolution from UMASS Boston in 2000. She has spent a decade teaching classes at Hugh Wooding Law School in St. Augustine, Trinidad. She also has designed and facilitated workshops on negotiation, conflict resolution and mediation skills for a number of corporate clients in the region, South Africa and the United States. She is currently a trainer for a workplace conflict resolution program for Coca-Cola International. The program establishes a dispute resolution system and trains every member of the company (in this case, 77,000) on how to raise, respond to and resolve conflicts. Read more about Deborah Mendez-Bowen in the news.

 

Jeannie Adams

Jeannie Adams recently relocated to Washington DC to take on the job of Director of the Multi-Door Dispute Resolution Division at the District of Columbia Courts. In this role she oversees 10 ADR Programs, 20 employees and 350 mediators. Jeannie earned her Masters Degree in Dispute Resolution from UMASS Boston in 2004.