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Mediation Services Deposit
Meet Louise & Our Team
Louise Phipps Senft
Beverly Hovmand
Bill Senft
Judge Ronald A. Karasic (Ret.)
Vicki Rhoades
Dusty Rhoades
Andrew Fontanella
Nancy Good
Monica Koski
Nan Waller Burnett
Sharon Sampson Ball
Chris Rubacky
Nicole Davis
Lori Mostofsky
Barry Evans
Luanne McKenna
Trail Blazer, Conflict Resolution Pioneer, Best-Selling Author and Attorney Mediator, Louise Phipps Senft has been transforming the lives of thousands experiencing conflict or unasked for difficult circumstances. She founded the Baltimore Mediation Center in 1993 (now Senft and Associates/Baltimore Mediation), the first mediation and training firm in the United States with a focus on relational approaches to negotiation and conflict resolution. Ms. Senft has been selected as mediator for over 4000 family and divorce mediations and hundreds of commercial and employment mediations. The firm is founded on a belief that people experiencing conflict or differences with each other have the capacity to engage in quality interactions to break through barriers when given a quality face to face dialogue process, facilitated by a neutral who believes in their capacity. For over 25 years, Senft, who is referred to nationally as an "extraordinary and gifted mediator" and a "master teacher" and her team have been sought after to facilitate difficult and sensitive interactions and to teach others across the US and abroad a transformative approach to conflict. Ms. Senft was recently named one of the Daily Record's 2020 Leadership in Law Award honorees for her work as a state leader in mediation. Ms. Senft has been voted "Baltimore's Best" Mediator by Baltimore Magazine 2002, named one of "Maryland's Top 100 Women" for the years 2004, 2007 and 2009 by The Daily Record, inducted into Maryland's "Circle of Excellence" for outstanding leadership in Maryland in 2009, and been honored with the highest award in her state of Maryland for her work in Alternative Dispute Resolution, namely the Chief Judge Robert M. Bell Award for Outstanding Contributions to ADR in Maryland in 2018. In 2019, she was honored by the Women in Business with their Humanitarianism Award for her work with Safe Streets Violence Interrupters. Ms. Senft has trained 1000's of professionals in relational ways to engage in difficult dialogues and negotiations, and she has brought her conflict transformation mindset and skillset and extensive Enneagram teaching background to CEO's of Fortune 100 companies and non-profits across the US. She donates a portion of her training proceeds to the Safe Streets Violence Interrupters, whom she personally trains in self-awareness and mediation skills to keep them safe in their work on the inner-city streets. Her own family suffered tragedy in 2015 when one of her five children had a catastrophic freak diving accident rendering him a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the neck and chest on down. She began donating her time and skillset to assist families in crisis in relational ways to advocate and navigate the world of spinal cord injury during hospitalization and rehabilitation and in integrative health methods for reducing pain and promoting healing. As a result, in 2019, Governor Hogan appointed Senft to the Maryland State Board of Physicians which oversees and regulates the medical profession and licensing.
Ms. Senft and her husband of over 35 years, William Senft, are authors of the best-seller book, Being Relational: The Seven Ways to Quality Interaction and Lasting Change (Health Communications, Inc. 2015). The book details ways of being in relation to others that capture the heart and soul of all that is self-help which became an instant best-seller in communication and social skills. It is grounded in method, honed during her decades of work as a transformative mediator, and is supported by relational conflict theory. The Seven Ways of being promote quality face to face interactions and positive transformation and are rooted in teachings from many sources—conflict transformation, negotiation ethics, neuroscience, multiple faith traditions, quantum physics and numerous popular self-help and business leadership books. It is a unique collection of teachings that focuses on what happens in human interaction. It is inspired by the experience of thousands of broken or strained relationships that Ms. Senft has mediated and coached back to strength, ease and connectedness over the then last two decades of her mediation career.
Ms. Senft has achieved the Advanced Practitioner status from the Academy of Family Mediators, Association of Conflict Resolution and has an extensive background in the family environment includes domestic mediation, separation and divorce, marital property and tax liability, domestic violence, high conflict, gay and lesbian partnerships, bankruptcy, religious annulment, parental rights, grandparents' rights, adoption, cognitive- psychological- social child development, parenting plans, religious faith and doctrine on marriage, adultery, adult grief and traumatic incident reduction, loss of child, abortion, guardianship, addiction, alcoholism, estates and trusts, real estate and personal property asset division, estate planning, end of life issues, elder care decision-making, and closely held family business, shareholder disputes and every variety of partnership conflict. She has been the chosen mediator for over 4000 marital, separation or divorce mediations both in the personal and in the business context and has been interviewed on the subject of divorce and family conflict by various media. She is called upon for a unique skillset that is able to synthesize large amounts of complicated and disparate points of views and to surgically unearth what it is that is most important to those who are her clients and then assist them with talking with each other. She was the selected mediator for the nationally celebrated trusts and estates case, Kloiber v Kloiber, a Dynasty trust case that challenged tax and trust laws in the US if it were to be considered marital property in Kentucky and Delaware. She was also the selected mediator by the family of the seminal marital property divorce case of Applegate v Applegate in Maryland.
Ms. Senft was elected into the honored role of Distinguished Fellow with the International Academy of Mediators and is a seasoned commercial mediator with extensive experience in the business, corporate, commercial, organizational and litigation environment, including relational and interest-based negotiation and bargaining, insurance, insurance coverage disputes, personal injury, wrongful death, Medicare and medical disclosure concerns, medical malpractice, bankruptcy, business partnerships, alliance formations, succession planning, workplace discrimination and ADA issues, organizational visioning, congregational conflicts and business/workplace mediation including interdepartmental issues, sexual harassment and EEO complaints, condominium and real estate development, construction and commercial real property management and contracting, public dialogue, regulatory disputes, public policy process, environmental policy and regulation, city planning, Board of Directors management, executive leadership teams, c-suite conflicts and disputes and systems approaches. She was selected as one of six mediators by the American Arbitration Association to mediate complex personal injury cases and was selected by the EEOC to mediate litigated employment discrimination cases for the Mid-Atlantic Region for a decade throughout the 1990's. In addition to mediating many hundreds of business, workplace, EEO and litigated disputes, she is called upon regularly to facilitate quality conversations over difficult issues and meaningful dialogue when there is complexity involving executives, managers and boards of directors, with outcomes of more fully informed decision-making and more qualitative working relations.
Ms. Senft has been selected as an ACET, the highest status awarded to a national trainer by the Association of Conflict Resolution, the largest Alternative Dispute Resolution association in the US and Canada, designating her as teacher to teach others for certification on any subject in Conflict Resolution.
Over 25 years ago, Ms. Senft pioneered into mediation and negotiation training, both in the law and business school classroom as well as her public trainings, the introduction of the study of self-awareness and method for reducing one's own personal reactivity. She is a certified Enneagram teacher in the Narrative Tradition and associated with the Trifold School for Enneagram Studies and the International Association of Enneagram Teachers in the Narrative Tradition. The Enneagram is an ancient and modern system for understanding personality and what motivates human beings. She has incorporated the Enneagram wisdom for all her trainings and she offers Enneagram workshops on emotional intelligence and self-awareness for thousands of professionals and students: advocates, judges, lawyers, businesses executives, managers, mental health practitioners, medical personnel, parents and families. An area of focus that has brought Ms. Senft great joy over the years is introducing the Enneagram and the relational transformative approach to conflict to clients to assist them with having healthier and more satisfying interactions long after they have used the services of Baltimore Mediation. She has pioneered reliance on self-awareness and the Enneagram for the conflict resolution and mediation communities as a means of quality and ethical practice and personal and professional excellence. She has championed self awareness as a way of Being Centered and Grounded for Relational Leadership.
Working with people who desire to work out complicated or difficult situations but are not sure how, as well as consulting for those who know how but there is resistance or other complications, Ms. Senft and her team have pioneered the Be Relational ™ approach. The approach focuses on the interaction itself, transforming the barriers into effective exchanges of meaningful dialogue and information. This creates breakthroughs. The outcomes of their approach are shifts, new clarity, greater connectedness of the stakeholders and practical and sustainable agreements.
Senft and her firm specialize in working with Family Offices, Business Executives, Medical Administrators and Healthcare Personnel. Baltimore Mediation offers strategy and facilitation for organizations and departments in transition or rebuilding using the Be Relational ™ approach. The firm has worked with facilitating executives and their leadership teams of Fortune 100 and 500 companies, physicians and staff in hospitals and health systems, including Johns Hopkins Medical Institution and the integration of various medical departments, including Johns Hopkins Hospital, Bayview Hospital and departments at Sibley Hospital.
Senft mediated the nationally acclaimed Harbor Point development, now known as Harbor East, in Baltimore's Inner Harbor shoreline, which was at one time contaminated land from an oil spill, lying fallow and then reclaimed for development. She was the selected mediator to facilitate contentious public meetings and to mediate with stakeholders including local and state environmentalists, historical preservationists, state regulators, contractors, developers, architects and civil engineers, city regulators, international building and landscape designers, departments of tourism and transportation, and impacted unhappy local residents and businesses. The area today is one of Baltimore's crown jewel development and revitalization projects, with approximately three miles of walking paths from Fells Point around the Inner Harbor and with the construction of LEEDS office buildings that wrap residential spaces with green roofs and a new automobile bridge to alleviate traffic congestion.
Born in Charleston South Carolina and raised in Springfield, Illinois, Ms. Senft has lived in Baltimore since graduating from law school. Ms. Senft has been dedicated to her city and to Baltimore city residents teaching ways to engage that deescalate and transform conflict. She worked for many years with a wide variety of African American churches in Baltimore and the Safe Streets Network which she co-founded to protect children in the inner city of Baltimore before and after school. In more recent years, she has worked with Safe Streets Violence Interrupters, former prison inmates now devoted to preserving life on the streets in their former inner-city neighborhoods. In the 1990s, one neighborhood in Baltimore called Senft while she was away teaching in upstate New York to return to facilitate an angry group of about 200 Baltimoreans regarding a widely publicized contentious land development proposal.
Her cutting edge work of being able to facilitate not only difficult dialogue, often face to face, but heated and often divisive issues for large groups of people has had her called upon to consult, design and facilitate other public projects around the US and the world working with different cultures. She has worked with dangerously divided political parties in Athens, Greece over issues of immigration, and she has worked with Clan Elders on the Hopi Indian Reservation over issues of cultural preservation and modernity for an Indian tribe with customs of matrilineal property succession and the eschewing of running water and electricity.
She is a frequent keynote speaker for women and young professionals in Relational Leadership and for corporate, health, medical and lawyer audiences. She loves to tell stories and to inspire. Her messages often stir the soul on ways to choose Being Relational in a highly transactional world. Ways to create well-being in negotiations and policy making leaves audiences riveted. She has provided keynote speeches throughout the US and Canada. When Ms. Senft was asked to speak at the United Nations in 2008 to inspire young leaders worldwide, she championed an elicitive and relational approach to cultural and economic differences. She urged the delegates to be mediators, what she calls "little m" mediators, assisting as "Communication Brokers", striving to work "Beyond Win-win" experiences, phrases she coined, because there is much more to agreement making than the transaction. What we need in the world are leaders who can engage relationally to negotiate agreement-making with terms that create well-being for everyone. For her medical audiences, her message is for "Relational Medicine", ways to revolutionize the quality of the interaction and that relationship to healing.
Starting with a "Mt. Everest of an idea", as noted by one Congressman in 2010, Ms. Senft was part of the founding group of Trustees of the Board of Trustees for Convergence: Center for Public Policy Resolution, a Washington, DC non-profit dedicated to moving large impact projects forward. The idea was to take an approach to dialogue used for localized issues and scale it to issues of national importance for Americans. Ms. Senft helped shape the relational aspect of the dialogue and process used now as part of the Covergence Way. Convergence was created with a focus on bipartisan dialogue on pressing US political issues of the day, including US-Muslim relations, Re-imagining K-12 Education, Health and Wellness Project on Obesity and Diabetes, Balancing the Budget and the Prison Crisis. Ms. Senft championed fund raising for quality dialogue amongst national stakeholders as the Chair of Fund Development. In five years, Convergence grew from a small group of unpaid volunteers and a zero budget to an annual operating budget of $4M. All funding was devoted to quality process of dialogue and quality decision making.
In 2009 and 2014, her firm, Baltimore Mediation, was recognized as a "Top 100 MBE" minority owned enterprise in the Mid-Atlantic region. In 2007, Ms. Senft, also an attorney, was honored with one of the Baltimore Business Journal's "Most Enterprising Woman" awards, and in 2010, Ms. Senft was inducted into the Greater Baltimore Area's YWCA's Academy of Leaders with a "Special Leader of the Year" award for her work in the field of conflict resolution with outcomes to help eradicate racism. She has also received a "Hero Award" from the American Red Cross for her work establishing the Safe Haven Network for children in Baltimore and for her transformative approach to conflict that betters the lives of families. Ms. Senft, a member of Leadership Maryland's Class of 2009, was also honored by Smart CEO Magazine with a Brava Award as a top CEO in Maryland in 2012. That same year she was invited into the Women Presidents Organization, Inc. for female founders of multi-million-dollar companies.
Baltimore Mediation offers nationally recognized negotiation and conflict resolution training, all from the transformative framework. Ms. Senft is known nationally and internationally for her elicitive design and delivery of Transformative Mediation trainings and Relational Negotiation and Conflict Transformation trainings, all rooted in relational conflict theory. She and her firm were chosen by the R. B. Bush and J. Folger team to pilot training for teaching transformative conflict theory and Bush and Folger's state of the art terms of Empowerment and Recognition with practical application in the early 1990's. Ms. Senft pioneered the critical importance of a mediator developing self-awareness for his or her own conflict triggers. A hallmark of her trainings is self-awareness, strength of self and responsiveness to others, with ways to approach difficult negotiations and conflicted situations with a skillset that invites and fosters quality engagement, without manipulation or force, which changes the interaction dynamics. Baltimore Mediation has designed interventions and trainings for professionals, executives, court systems, bar associations, law firms, government agencies, small and large companies both local and national, state and federal agencies, real estate and construction management firms, physicians and medical staff, long term care and assisted living facilities management, higher education faculty, religious and clergy as well as mental health and family law practitioners. They have also custom designed hundreds of workshops for retreats and conferences.
A hallmark of her teaching approach is to focus on the gifts of each negotiator's and mediator's essence of who they are, with developed self-observation, and then to be able to shift focus to awareness of one's emotional defense mechanisms and related somatic experiences. She carries a deep belief, supported more recently by neuroscience, that when a person learns and practices method of how to relax the three centers of intelligence, head, heart and body, he or she has a greater chance in the moment of acting in ways that are for the benefit of all, being more open and authentic to others as they are to themselves, and in response to conflict as it unfolds.
Ms. Senft, pioneering the value of self-awareness in training and practices for conflict interveners, has also brought those concepts to the academic classroom in her over 25 years of teaching courses at Harvard Law School's Program on Negotiation, the Insight Initiative, the University of Maryland School of Law for 20 years, the Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School, the Johns Hopkins University MBA Bio-technology Program, the Johns Hopkins University Business of Medicine Program, Loyola University Sellinger Business School and Villa Julie College, now Stevenson University, where she began her teaching career. In 2009, Ms. Senft designed the first state assessment program for court-rostered domestic mediators when she was asked by the Administrative Office of the Courts of Maryland to design an assessment modeled on Baltimore Mediation's Practitioner's Institute, a formative and summative assessment experience based on actual real-time observed performance of the mediator. She has expanded this program for other mediators nationwide and for the state of Kentucky.
She is a prolific writer and author of the best-selling book Being Relational: The Seven Ways to Quality Interaction & Lasting Change, co-authored with her husband, Bill Senft, published by HCI Publishers (2015). She had a monthly blog for the American Bar Association, I Can Relate, and was a monthly columnist for 10 years for The Daily Record, The Negotiating Table: Turning Problems into Opportunities. She has authored numerous mediation skills manuals, chapters in books, articles in law review journals, trade journals, magazines and has been called upon for comment as a thought leader in many news outlets. She is the author of the final chapter, Risky Business: Being Relational in a Transactional World in the book, Be the Best Lawyer You Can Be, ed. S. Levine, American Bar Association (2018). She is co-author of the final chapter of the ADR Handbook for Judges, ed. D. Stienstra & S. Yates, American Bar Association and Federal Judicial Center (2004), has her work facilitating public policy conflicts featured in Chapter 3 "Gaining Sight of the Goal of Transformation," of the revised Promise of Mediation, 2d. ed., B. Bush & J. Folger, Jossey-Bass (2004) and is co-author of the chapter "Marital Mediation: Transforming Marital Conflict through Facilitated Dialogue—Reclaiming Personal Strength and Marital Connectedness", with N. Good in Transformative Mediation: A Sourcebook, Resources for Conflict Intervention Practitioners and Programs, ed. J. Folger, B. Bush, and D. Della Noce, ISCT and Asso. Conflict Resolution Publishers (2010). Ms. Senft is working on a Being Relational series with working titles: for Parents; How to Transform Conflict Interaction with your Teenager; for Managers: How to Transform Conflict Interaction with your Staff and Co-Workers; for Doctors: How to Engage with Staff and Patients to Transform Conflict and Create Well-being; for Families in Medical Crisis: How to Engage and Transform Interactions with Doctors to Get What you Need for Your Loved One: Expert Care and Healing.
She has been interviewed by NPR and has been a guest on NPR radio affiliates and other radio programs. Ms. Senft's work with divorcing families has been featured in numerous media interviews. Emmy award winner Richard Chisolm was hired by the Maryland Judiciary to produce a documentary on Ms. Senft's work with family businesses, Resolutionary People (2002) which was shown for instruction by law schools and bar associations in the state for over ten years. Ms. Senft's work with corporate and public policy multiparty facilitation is featured in the book the Promise of Mediation (Jossey-Bass, 2004) written by Joseph Folger and Baruch Bush. Ms. Senft's work in elder care mediation was the featured story on ABC World news with Charles Gibson in July 27, 2007. Ms. Senft's relational work with medical staff and physicians is chronicled in her blog Archer Senft Updates (2015-2017) which is a personal odyssey recounted in real time about her personal life when one of her sons was in a catastrophic accident in 2015 rendering him a quadriplegic complete.
In the international arena, Ms. Senft is one of the founding members of Mediators Beyond Borders™, a non-profit whose mission is to build sustainable conflict resolution capacity for a more peaceable world. MBB's first efforts were in the area of offering conflict resolution aid and training for initiatives such as the Child Soldier Project in Ghana, the Greek-Syrian Immigration Dialogue initiative in Athens, and the Katrina Mediation Project in New Orleans and Biloxi, Mississippi. Ms. Senft served as the first Executive Chair of Training (2007-2010) navigating the first years of launch, domestically and internationally, and building internal protocols and capacity. She was a frequent speaker internationally on behalf of the MBB mission of dialogue. Ms. Senft on behalf of her firm have delivered training in conflict transformation skills and mediation in numerous European countries including Germany, Italy, Portugal, France, Slovenia, England, and The Netherlands. In 2017 Ms. Senft became a member of the International Academy of Mediators, whose mission is to elevate and maintain the quality of international commercial mediation. She was bestowed the honor of Distinguished Fellow for her work in commercial mediation. She has served on their Board of Governors and assisted with their expansion to have a wider global footprint of international commercial members.
Nationally in the U.S., from 2011-2015 Ms. Senft served as a Trustee on the Board for Convergence: Center for Policy Resolution in Washington, DC, a non-profit whose mission is to convene unlikely stakeholders and decision-makers on issues of national importance to Americans for dialogue and action. Convergence has tackled and taken on projects such as US-Pakistan Relations, Re-imagining K-12 Education, Prison Reform Re-entry Ready, Building a Better Budget Process, Future of Health, Working with Congress, California Health Reform. She served as a Chair of Fund Development the first three years and was a founding Trustee. She is currently an active member of the Convergence Leadership Council.
Ms. Senft was the first mediation trainer in the U.S. to be approved as an Accredited Continuing Education Trainer (ACET) by the Association for Conflict Resolution in 2010, providing her the distinction of approval for teaching on any subject in the conflict resolution field as an exceptional life-long teacher. Ms. She is a nationally Certified Transformative Mediator™. Senft was one of the first elected Associates of the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation. She has also been state certified by the Maryland Council on Dispute Resolution. She has passed the two performance-based certifications of skill level in the U.S. Based on these experiences, she is the architect for Maryland's Performance Based Assessment for Transformative Mediators—The Practitioner's Institute—which served as an assessment model for a program for Maryland Family Court Appointed Family Mediators that launched in 2009, part of the statewide Maryland Program for Mediator Excellence, the first in the country. Ms. Senft is also the co-architect of the state of Maryland's Mediation Ombuds Program, designed to handle consumer mediation complaints throughout Maryland with a restorative approach. Ms. Senft has earned the status of Advanced Practitioner in the international Association of Conflict Resolution's (ACR) Family Section, formerly the Academy of Family Mediators.
In her field of conflict resolution and conflict transformation, throughout the 1990's to the present, she has served continuously in various volunteer and elected volunteer leadership capacities for the Association for Conflict Resolution, on its Ethics Committee, Mediation News publication staff, National Standards for Training Approval Committee and Family Section Advisory Council, where she served as Co-Chair. She also served as Co-Chair of the Baltimore City Bar Association's first ADR Committee in the early 1990's, and she was elected and served on the Maryland State Bar Association's ADR Section Council in its early years of formation. In 1998, she was appointed by Chief Judge Bell to the Maryland Court of Appeals' ADR Commission and the task force on Professional Responsibility in ADR. In 2000, Ms. Senft was appointed by the highest court to Chair the first statewide Family ADR Initiative. She was the co-creator of the state's Maryland Program for Mediator Excellence Ombudsman Program for mediator grievances, and was subsequently appointed in 2003 as Chair of the Mediator Ombudsman Program for the Maryland Judiciary's Maryland Mediation and Conflict Resolution Office. During that time she also served in 2002 as President of the Maryland Council for Dispute Resolution for private practitioners. Her focus was to creating a strong internal infrastructure to prepare for growth and to represent the views of a broad base of private practitioners on MACRO judiciary and other state initiatives.
In non- ADR related endeavors, Ms. Senft has served as a Member of the Corporate Advisory Board for the national Saval Food Service and Deli Brand companies from 2009-2015. Ms. Senft has served non-profit organizations whose missions she champions in such elected roles as Treasurer and on the Executive Board of Network 2000, now The Alliance, whose mission is to place women on corporate boards and to mentor rising young female executives; an elected board member for the Coalition of Geriatric Services in Maryland, whose mission is to expand compassionate alternative services to seniors at home and in residential living; as Vice President of the Roland Park Civic League (2007-2013) whose focus is on civic engagement, the land preservation of historic green space in Baltimore City, preservation of an historic water tower in Baltimore City, monitoring other land developments for compatibility with preservation goals, and the creation of a 10 year Roland Park Master Plan for the preservation and modernization of the historic garden community designed by the Olmsted Brothers. She was also a founding member of the Tuesday Girls whose mission was to provide relaxed networking opportunities for women executives and business owners; was a Partner in Accelerent, a national platform for mid-sized corporate businesses in the Mid-Atlantic; served as a corporate mentor for the COMMIT Foundation, whose mission is to mentor mid-level female veterans to reach their full potential personally and professionally; and served for nine years on the Board of the Girl Scouts of Central Maryland (1989-1998) with a focus on their capital campaign to expand services and create outdoor nature experiences for inner-city girls.
She has also served volunteer Board positions in her children's schools and her church, including being the first woman President of the Parish Council for the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, the seat of the Baltimore Archdiocese; a member of the Board of Directors of Grace Methodist Church Pre-School; an Liaison officer of the Cathedral School Parent's Association, CASPA, for her Children's parochial grade school; a member of the Gilman School Parents' Association, the Bryn Mawr School Health and Wellness Committee, and the McDonogh School Parents' Association for her Children's respective high schools.
Ms. Senft was selected to serve from (2004-2010) on one of the National Catholic Review Boards, the Board of Washington, DC/Arlington Diocese regarding the pedophilia sex scandals and the oversight of the sentences of those found guilty and the potential restorative measures offered to the families of victims. Ms. Senft also served two terms on the Catholic Community Foundation, where she was Chair of Distributions and oversight of a Catholic community fund of Four Million Dollars for donor designated services. She was invested as a Dame in the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, a Catholic lay religious order, and travels in pilgrimage taking "malades", those who are sick and dying, along with a Knights of Malta medical team to Lourdes, France, for healing.
Other highlights of Ms. Senft's broad career include her selection in the mid 1990's by the United States Postal Service for their "dream team" , a hand selected group of 20 mediator trainers, at a time when the gasly expression "going Postal" was headline news across the U.S. She was part of the first national certified mediation training team for the United States Postal Service REDRESS Program for EEO/discrimination complaints and other labor-management and workplace disputes. The Program was part of a court order by a Florida judge who ruled the Postal Service had certain period of time to put in place radical culture change. Ms. Senft was part of that radical transformation in both design and delivery. From 1996 through 2001, Ms. Senft trained mediators in transformative mediation across the U.S. as part of the USPS national rollout, which trained over 2500 outside neutrals from 32 states, and more than 18,000 labor and management representatives.
Ms. Senft was the initiator of, Co-Creator, Lead Trainer and Supervisor for the Baltimore City Circuit Court Family Mediation Services program from 1998-2005, which focused on providing transformative mediation services for the resolution of custody and visitation lawsuits, and which continues to serve thousands of Baltimore City families in the court system annually to this day.
Ms. Senft was the co-founder of The Safe Haven Network: a church, police, school, and community safety initiative and collaboration for children in Baltimore City. For 20 years, the Safe Haven Network provided safe shelters before and after school for children and provided conflict intervention training and safety skills to church, community residents and school officials from 1993 to 2013. The Safe Haven Network knit together churches along the west side of Baltimore and the east side of Baltimore of all denominations, working on a common mission, a first for them to work together. Ms. Senft convened Baptist, Lutheran, Catholic, Unitarian, Methodist and AME Churches, a Muslim Mosque, Jewish Synagogues and street evangelists and inspired them to work together with a program she and they co-created. Vibrant pastors and church leaders and members, all sited in inner city Baltimore, rallied together to produce volunteers visible and present every school morning and afternoon to deter crime as the eyes and ears of the community and to provide shelter for children walking to and from school, empowered by training in conflict transformation skills and crime prevention knowledge, and held together by relationship, which Senft fostered and she and Pastor Marshall Prentice of Zion Baptist Church lead together.
Ms. Senft served on two Administration's Governor's Commissions and a Governor's Task Force, for a Democrat Governor and for a Republican Governor. For Governor Paris Glendening, she served on his Transition Team as a strategist, and she later served as a Commissioner on the Commission on Public Safety and Corrections. She also served on Lt. Governor Kathleen Kennedy's Task Force on Youth Citizenship and Violence Prevention, and she served as Chair of the Governor's Task Force on Youth Citizenship and Violence Prevention's Out-of-Schools Committee for after-school programming state-wide for Children as a crime control prevention and deterrent. She later provided technical assistance in programming, violence reduction education and program evaluation and technical assistance for the Governor's office on Crime Control and Prevention's state and federally funded initiative for community after- school programs for late elementary and middle school youth throughout Maryland from 1996-1999. From her heroic efforts with her son's catastrophic injury and her ability to navigate competing health care systems and providers while assisting others in crisis to do the same, Governor Larry Hogan appointed Ms. Senft in 2019 to serve a four-year term as a Member and Hearing Officer on the Board of Physicians, a state agency whose mission is to ensure quality healthcare with the authority to license physicians and other health care providers such as physician assistants, radiographers, radiation therapists, radiologist assistants, nuclear medicine technologists, respiratory care practitioners, psychiatrist assistants, athletic trainers, and naturopath doctors to practice in Maryland and to discipline licensees who violate Maryland Medical Practice Act. Ms. Senft also served the state when she was appointed by Chief Judge Robert Bell to the Commission on Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) where she served in numerous capacities on committees over a six-year period. This Commission recognized the value of ADR and Senft lead in designing the use of and rollout across the state of Maryland of mediation for Families, Civil and Criminal Courts, Businesses, Neighborhoods, and Schools.
Ms. Senft has served on numerous local and state and national Bar Association committees, including a committee that brought the first "Settlement Days" to the court system in the late 1980's, the precurser to Alternative Dispute Resolution, presidential appointments to the Special Committee which drafted the Guidelines for the Prevention of Sexual Harassment adopted by the Maryland State Bar for law firms throughout the State. She was also the Chair of the 1994 publication "Baltimore's Children and Their Families," a collaborative investigation through a legal lens of the health and at-risk children in the state. Listed in the Worldwide Who's Who and the International Who's Who, she was also sought out by television's Arts and Entertainment on recommendation of New York City mediator colleagues to help script the TV pilot, The Mediator.
In 2015, Ms. Senft and her husband founded the nonprofit, ORANS™: The Campaign for Relational Leadership. It was created for the purpose of driving a why message to society to choose a relational approach over a transactional approach. The mission includes teaching how to be both self and other orientated in interactions and negotiations, especially those that are difficult, conflicted or with an enemy and how to be self and other oriented in policy making. The mission of the organization turned to water when Senft's husband and co-author, William Senft, drafted a plan to use a non-profit model to take the greed factor out of water systems in the U.S. In collaboration with others in the water industry, the Senfts renamed their non-profit, the EJ Water Trust, with work underway to transform business models and policy, municipal projects, private-public partnerships, financing, collaborations, innovation, distribution, climate change, and messaging on issues of water.
Prior to founding Baltimore Mediation, Ms. Senft was a litigator and trial lawyer engaged in practice at the Baltimore law firm, Whiteford, Taylor and Preston in the areas of insurance, commercial defense and family law. She hails from Springfield, Illinois, was inducted into her alma mater's Sacred Heart-Griffin High School Hall of Fame in 2010, attended the University of Virginia, where she was President of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority and was chosen to serve as a Class Representative on the University Board, and has been active on the Class of 1983 Class Reunion Committee. She attended Washington & Lee School of Law, where she was voted Most Outstanding Woman Law Student by faculty and students, revived the Women Law Students Organization and was the first female Executive Committee representative of the honor system since its founding in 1749. Washington & Lee's honor system is single sanction for both the undergraduate and graduate students where Ms. Senft believed her primary role was to advocate strenuously for due process for students charged with an offense in a system lacking checks and balances.
She has been happily married to Bill Senft since 1984 and is the mother of five wonderful children, one of whom was tragically injured in 2015 in a freak diving accident at age 17 and was rendered a quadriplegic complete. Ms. Senft spent months living by his hospital bedside in ICU's across the country as he was on numerous life supports. She was devoted to advocating for what was possible, notably alternative ways to keep him alive and ways to wean him off of life support using homeopathic and other integrative remedies. Archer remains paralyzed from the shoulders down. The Senft family counts their blessings every day that he is alive and that they are an intact family, stronger and more grounded as a result of the tragedy.
LOUISE PHIPPS SENFT, ESQ.
Certified Teacher, Trifold School for Enneagram Studies (2009)
Certified Teacher, Enneagram Professional Teaching Program (2002-2004)
Juris Doctorate, Washington & Lee School of Law, Lexington, VA (1985-1988)
Bachelor of Arts, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA (1979-1983)
High School Diploma, Sacred Heart Academy, Springfield, IL (1975-1979)
Hearing Officer, Maryland Board of Physicians (2019-present)
Governor, Board of Governors, International Academy of Mediators (2019-present)
Relational Advocate, Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation (2018-present)
Founder and CEO, Baltimore Mediation Center d/b/a Louise Phipps Senft & Assoc./Baltimore Mediation, Baltimore MD (1994-present)
Transformative Mediation Trainer (1994-present)
Attorney, Whiteford, Taylor and Preston, LLP, Baltimore MD (1988-1994)
Co-Architect, Maryland State Mediator Ombudsman Program for the Maryland Mediation and Conflict Resolution Office and the Maryland Program for Mediator Excellence (2009-2011)
Co-Director, Lead Trainer, Supervisor, Baltimore City Circuit Court and Shepherd Pratt Community Outreach Partnership, Family Mediation Services Program (1998-2005)
Consultant and Technical Assistant, Governor's Office on Crime Control and Prevention, After Schools Programs (1996-1999)
Transformative Mediation National Training Team, United States Postal Service, Washington DC (1996-1999)
Co-Founder, Baltimore City Public Schools, The Safe Haven Network, Baltimore, MD (1993- 2013)
Co-Founder, Mediators Beyond Borders (national and international non-profit) Washington DC (2006)
Founding Director, Convergence: Center for Public Policy Resolution, Washington DC (2010-2015)
Academic Teaching Experience
Adjunct Law Professor, University of Maryland School of Law, Baltimore, MD (1996-2015)
Visiting Professor, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD (2008)
Visiting Professor, Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business, Baltimore, MD (2006-2007)
Visiting Professor, Johns Hopkins University, Blumberg School of Public Policy, Baltimore, MD (2006)
Visiting Professor, Johns Hopkins University, MBA Business of
Adjunct Professor, Loyola University Sullinger School of Business, Timonium, MD (1998-2000)
Adjunct Professor, Harvard Law School's Program on Negotiation, Insight Initiative, Boston, MA (Summer Program)
Visiting Professor, University of Baltimore School of Law, Baltimore, MD (Summer 1999)
Adjunct Professor, Villa Julie College (now Stevenson University), Stevenson, MD (1994-1996)
Professional Collaborations/Projects
International Academy of Mediators, Co-Chair, Committee for Training the Use of Zoom in the Cornona Virus, COVID 19 Crisis (2020)
Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, Relational Advocacy for families and those with spinal cord injuries (2018-2019)
Johns Hopkins Hospital, Removing Barriers for Systemic Operations, Integration of Endoscopy Departments of 2 hospitals with different cultures and protocols and operations (2017)
Johns Hopkins Hospital and Sibley Hospital in Washington, DC, Merger and Integration of Radiation and Oncology Departments of 2 hospitals (2016-2017)
Safe Streets Violence Interrupters, Catholic Charities, designated trainer for the Safe Streets men in Conflict Transformation and Mediation and Self-Awareness (2015-present)
Safe Streets Violence Interrupters, Baltimore Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, designated trainer for the Safe Streets men in Conflict Transformation and Mediation and Self-Awareness (2018-present)
Johns Hopkins Hospital, Johns Hopkins Health System and Bayview Medical Center, Integration of Obstetrics & Gynecology Departments, of two hospitals with historical tension and culturally sensitivity to the history and identity, and different operating systems and best practices, during a time of transitioning to health records sharing (2014-2016)
Kroeber v Kloiber Dynasty Trust, a national cause celeb lawsuit challenging the piercability of a Dynasty Trust as part of marital property in a hotly contested litigation in Kentucky Courts and the Delaware Court of Chancery, convening representatives of six law firms entrenched in hyper active litigation for six years and their clients, the primary beneficiary and the second generation of future interest stakeholders to resolve and settle tax and property issues and an underlying bitter divorce and marital property settlement, to sidestep the potential upending of various tax and trust and estate laws impacting all dynasty trusts (2015-2016)
Maryland Dental Association, Horizon Foundation "Healthy Beverages" Initiative, to change the culture and motivation for parents purchasing sugary drinks for young children affecting their health adversely via their teeth, statewide, MD (2015)
Nakwatsvewat Institute at the Hopi Indian Nation, Marital Mediation Project and Matrilineal land succession mediations and training of Hopi Indians in transformative mediation for their clan disputes, Second Mesa, AZ (2007-2013)
Maryland Mediator and Conflict Resolution Office, "Mediator Excellence Program", statewide, MD (2008-2014)
Illinois Department on Aging, Intra-agency Collaborative, Chicago, IL (2013-2014)
Safe Haven Network for youth and school safety, Clergy United for the Renewal of East Baltimore, West Baltimore Park Heights Association, Baltimore City Public Schools, Baltimore City Mayor's Office, Baltimore City Police Commissioner, Baltimore City Fire Department, Enoch Pratt Library, Baltimore, MD (1993-2013)
Transformative Mediation Training Program and Kentucky Administrative Office of the Courts, Lexington and Louisville, KY (2010-2013)
Olmstead Brothers' Roland Park in Baltimore City Master Plan with Mayor and City Council, Baltimore, MD (2009-2012)
Conflict Transformation and Mediation Training Project with Growing Me Executive Coaching Association, Lisbon, Portugal (2012)
Mediators Beyond Borders, Greek Immigrant Initiative, Athens, Greece (2012)
Conflict Transformation and MBB with Roman Bar Association, Rome, Italy (2012)
Conflict Transformation and MBB with Milan Mayor's Cabinet, Milan, Italy (2012)
Conflict Transformation and Mediation Training Project with Hamburg Mediation, Hamburg, Germany (2011-2012)
Conflict Transformation, Self-Awareness and Neuroscience Insights with Slovenian Conflict Transformation Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia (2011)
Gilchrist Hospice, Patient Family Collaborative, three year training module for all staff, physicians, chaplains, nurses on conflict transformation for end of life interactions with family members of dying loves ones receiving palliative care, Towson, MD (2008-2010)
Domestic Mediator Performance Based Assessment Project "The Practitioner's Institute" for the Maryland Family Court Appointed Family Mediators, Administrative Office of the Courts, inventing a full feedback loop in real time for family mediators to be assessed and supported in necessary changes for meeting standards of quality services delivered through the courts for custody and child support litigated cases, statewide, MD (2009)
Mediators Beyond Borders, Katrina Mediation Project, New Orleans, LA and Biloxi, MS (2008 -2010)
Maryland Commission on Human Rights, Mediation Program for Discrimination in Public Accommodations, statewide, MD (2008-09)
Roland Park Civic League and City of Baltimore Green Space Preservation in Roland Park, facilitating angry neighborhood meetings with a Country Club, a proposed developer of Long Term Retirement living and the city of Baltimore, Baltimore, MD (2006-2007)
Maryland Governor's Office of Children, Youth & Families, Interagency Collaboration for youth, convening and facilitating agency stakeholders from Department of Juvenile Justice, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Department of Corrections regarding the approximately 200 young people who slip through the cracks of the system in need of services from all stakeholders but receiving none, and how facilitated quality dialogue shifted agency mindset from not wanting to take responsibility because of the large financial drain on resources to creating statewide collaboration for shared service delivery, statewide MD (2005)
Maryland's Performance Based Assessment for Transformative Mediators—"The Practitioner's Institute" inventing a full feedback loop in real time for mediators interested in being assessed for certification and professional growth (2004-2015)
Baltimore City Head Start Collaboration (2004)
Streuver Bros. Eccles & Rouse and H&S Development Corp. Harbor Point Project, now known as Harbor East, facilitating the approach and the Plan to develop the previously contaminated Allied Chemical site and surrounding area/neighborhood into "green" buildings on waterfront, bridge and transportation reconfigurement, honoring historic preservation, land use preservation, and natural resource preservation, international landscape designers, architects and engineers needing to collaborate with different interests of residents and business owners, in the Baltimore Inner Harbor (2003-04)
Maryland Family ADR Initiative (2000-2004)
Maryland Environmental Service, State of the Union Collaboration (2000-2003)
Domestic Mediation Training Program for the Maryland Judiciary, Maryland Administrative Office of the Courts, Annapolis, MD (1999-2005)
United States Postal Service REDRESS Program, Lead trainer, nationwide, trained over 10,000 mediators and union representatives in transformative mediation, in what was the largest mediation project undertaken in the US and subsequently spawning the largest research project in the field of Alternative Dispute Resolution, following over 600 mediated cases each month, approximately 72,000 cases annually which formed the basis for the expansion of relational conflict theory applied (initial years of roll out training 1998-2001)
Leadership in Law Award, Daily Record (2020)
Appointment by Governor Larry Hogan, Maryland State Board of Physicians (2019)
Humanitarianism Award, Women in Business, Center Club (2019)
Distinguished Fellow, International Academy of Mediators (2018)
Chief Judge Robert M. Bell Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Advancement of Alternative Dispute Resolution in the State of Maryland, Maryland State Bar Association (2018)
"Top 100 MBE Award", Minority Owned Business Enterprises for the Mid-Atlantic Region (2009, 2014)
"IMI Certified Mediator", International Mediation Institute (2013)
"IMI Certified Mediator Training Program", International Mediation Institute (2013)
"Brava Award", Smarted Magazine (Top 15 Maryland Female CEOs, 2012)
"Most Spirited Woman Award," the American Red Cross, MyCity4Her and the Baltimore Business Journal (2011)
Vistage, Internationally approved speaker, qualified as keynote speaker for Vistage groups (2011-present)
"Special Leader of the Year Award", YWCA, for work in leadership and the eradication of racism (2010)
"ACET", First Mediation Trainer Nationally Approved as an Accredited Continuing Education Trainer (ACET) by the National Association for Conflict Resolution, (2010)
"Hall of Fame", Sacred Heart-Griffin High School Hall of Fame, Springfield, IL (2010)
"Maryland Circle of Excellence," The Daily Record (2009)
"Most Enterprising Woman Award", Baltimore Business Journal (2009)
"Top 100 MBE Award", Minority Owned Business Enterprises for the Mid-Atlantic Region (2009)
"Maryland's Top 100 Women", The Daily Record (2004, 2007, 2009)
"Baltimore's Best" Mediator, Baltimore Magazine (2002)
"Advanced Practitioner", the Association of Conflict Resolution, Family Section (2001-present)
"Certified Transformative Mediator", Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation, only performance-based measure for national certification (1999)
"Certified Mediator", Maryland Council on Dispute Resolution, the only performance-based certification in the State of Maryland (1997)
"Advanced Practitioner", Academy of Family Mediators (1992-2001)
"Pro Bono Award", Whiteford, Taylor and Preston, LLP (1990)
"Most Outstanding Woman Law Student", Washington & Lee School of Law (1988)
Corporate Director and Board Positions
Director, Saval Foods and Deli Brands, Board of Directors and Advisors, Elkridge, MD (2011 – 2015)
Civic Volunteer, Director and Board Positions
Member, Viewpoints Advisory Board, Center Club (2020)
Governor, Board of Governors, International Academy of Mediators (2019- present)
President, Capital Speakers Club Class of 2019 (2019-present)
Volunteer, My Sister's Place, Baltimore (2019-present)
Volunteer, Paul's Place, Baltimore (2019-present)
Co-Chair, Relational Practices Task Force, American Bar Association (2017-present)
Member, Program Committee, Center Club of Maryland (2017-2019)
Member, Membership Committee, Center Club, Baltimore (2014-2015)
Volunteer, Order of Malta, Annual Malade Screening at Mercy Hospital (2014-present)
Tri-Chair, Association of Conflict Resolution, Family and Elder Mediation National Retreat (2013)
Mediator & Consultant, Athens Dialogue Initiative (2012-2013)
Director and Chair of Distributions, Archdiocese of Baltimore's Catholic Community Foundation (2012- 2016)
Trustee, Board of Trustees, Convergence: Center for Public Policy Resolution, Washington, DC (2011- 2015)
Co-Chair, Family Section Advisory Council, National Association of Conflict Resolution (2011-2014)
Member, Roland Park Capital Campaign Committee for Green Space and Preservation (2011-2015)
Advocate, Roland Park Campaign to Save the Water tower (2012)
Publication Board, National Association of Conflict Resolution (2010)
Facilitator, Focus Groups, Cathedral of Mary Our Queen Clergy/Parishioner Collaboration (2010)
Member, Stewardship Committee, Cathedral of Mary Our Queen Church (2010-2013)
Steering Committee, Roland Park Master Plan, Baltimore, MD (2009-2011)
Director and Treasurer, Network 2000, Baltimore, MD (2009–2010)
Facilitator, Roland Park Civic League and Baltimore Country Club land dispute (2008-2009)
Volunteer, Calvert County, St. Mary's County Community Mediation Program (2008-2014)
Volunteer, Charles County Community Mediation Program (2008)
Vice President, Roland Park Civic League, Baltimore, MD (2007-2012)
Representative, Maryland's Task Force on Mediation Definitions (2007-2009)
Executive Training Chair, Mediators Beyond Borders (2007-2010)
Community Capacity Building Trainer, Hurricane Katrina Project, Mediators Beyond Borders (2006-2007)
Group Creator, Maryland Program for Mediator Excellence (2006)
Elected Plat Representative, Roland Park Civic League, Baltimore, MD (2006-2007)
Elected Representative, Maryland's Mediation and Conflict Resolution Office, Task Force on Professional Responsibility in ADR (2006-2007)
Pilgrim, Sovereign Military Order of Malta, Annual Pilgrimage, Lourdes France (2005, 2007, 2010, 2012)
Independent Schools Liaison, Cathedral School Parents' Association (2004-2006)
Council Member, Maryland Mediator Excellence Council (2004-2006)
Director, National Catholic Review Board for sex offenses, Washington, DC and Arlington, VA (2004-2010)
Representative for Private Mediator Practitioners, Maryland MACRO Future Search Conference, (2003)
Elected Representative, Maryland State Bar Association, Alternative Dispute Resolution Section Council (2000-2001)
Elected Representative for Maryland Council on Dispute Resolution for state's Mediator Quality Assurance Committee (2001-2003)
Appointed Chair, MACRO's Maryland's Family Mediation Initiative (2001-2008)
Appointed Member, Chief Judge Bell's Court of Appeals ADR Advisory Cabinet (2001-2014)
Appointed Commissioner, Chief Judge Bell's Maryland Court of Appeals' Alternative Dispute Resolution Commission (1998-2000)
Co-Creator, Worcester County Circuit Court Family Mediation Program (1998-2003)
Director, Grace Methodist Pre-School Board of Directors, Baltimore (1996-1998)
Co-Chair, Baltimore City Bar Association, Alternative Dispute Resolution Section (1996-1997)
Director, Community Mediation Program Board of Directors, Baltimore, MD (1996-1997)
Co-Creator, Sheppard Pratt and Baltimore City Circuit Court Family Mediation Program (1995-2001)
Chair, Governor's Task Force on Youth Citizenship and Violence Prevention, Out-of-Schools Committee (1995-1997)
Appointee, Governor's Task Force on Youth Citizenship and Violence Prevention (1995-1996)
Appointee, Governor's Commission on Public Safety and Correction (1996)
Appointee, Governor Glendening's Transition Team (1995)
President, Special Committee drafting Guidelines for the Prevention of Sexual Harassment adopted by the Maryland State Bar for Maryland law firms (1994-1995)
Publication Chair, Baltimore City Bar Association, Baltimore's Children and Their Families (1994)
Co-Founder and Chair, Safe Haven Network, Baltimore, MD (1993-2013)
First Female President, Parish Council, Cathedral of Mary Our Queen Catholic Church (1992-1994)
Facilitator, Cathedral of Mary Our Queen School sexual education conflict (1992)
Vice President, Parish Council, Cathedral of Mary Our Queen (1991-1992)
Director, Girl Scouts of Central Maryland Board of Directors, Baltimore, MD (1990-1998)
Troop Leader, Boy Scouts of Central Maryland, Ellicott City, MD (1988-1990)
First Female Honor Council, Executive Committee representative, Washington & Lee School of Law (1986-1987)
Law School Representative, Committee for Admittance of Females to Washington and Lee University (1985-1987)
President, Kappa Alpha Theta Sorority, University of Virginia (1982-1983)
Sorority Rush Co-Chair, Kappa Alpha Theta Sorority, University of Virginia (1981-1982)
Sorority Rush Recommendations Chair, Kappa Alpha Theta Sorority, University of Virginia (1980-1981)
Pledge Class President, Kappa Alpha Theta Sorority, University of Virginia (1980)
Class President, Sacred Heart Academy, Springfield, IL (1975-1979)
President, Math Club, Sodality, Pep Club, School Newspaper, Sacred Heart Academy, Springfield, IL (1975-1979)
International Academy of Mediators (2018-present)
Capital Speakers Club (2019-present)
American Bar Association (2017-present)
Catholic Business Network (2015-present)
Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (2015-present)
CEO Space (2015)
XPX, Maryland Exit Planning Exchange (2014-present)
Women Presidents Organization (2013-present)
Maryland Chamber of Commerce (2012-2015)
Women in Business, Center Club (2012-present)
Accelerant (2011-2014)
Bergamo Enneagram Missing Middle (2012-present)
International Enneagram Association (2010-present)
Leadership Maryland, Class of 2009
Teachers of Trifold Studies in Enneagram Narrative Tradition (2008-present)
Family Section Advisory Council, Association of Conflict Resolution (2008-2014)
Innercircle (2006-2009)
Maryland Program for Mediator Excellence (2006-present)
Mediators Beyond Borders (2006-present)
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Professional Mediators Group (2005-2009)
Network 2000 (2004-2013)
Association of Enneagram Teachers in the Narrative Tradition (2002-present)
Ethics Committee, Association of Conflict Resolution (2001-2010)
Training Committee, Association of Conflict Resolution (2001-2014)
Association of Conflict Resolution (2001-present)
American Arbitration Association, Mediation Section (1999-2001)
Associate and Affiliate, Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation (1997-2008)
Alternative Dispute Resolution Section, Maryland State Bar Association (1994-2010)
Alternative Dispute Resolution Section, Bar Association of Baltimore City (1988-1994)
Family Law Section, Bar Association of Baltimore City (1988-2004)
Young Lawyers Section, Bar Association of Baltimore City (1988-1994)
Women's Law Center (1988-1994)
Maryland State Bar Association (1988 began)
Baltimore City Bar Association (1988 began)
Center Club, Baltimore, MD (2009-present)
Roland Park Women's Club, Baltimore, MD (2008-present)
Parishioner, St. Mary's Star of the Sea, Cape May, NJ (2007-present)
Mt Vernon Women's Club, Baltimore, MD (2006-present)
Dame, Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta (2006-present)
Roland Park Civic League (1995-present)
Parishioner, Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, Baltimore, MD (1988-present)
Author, Books, Articles
"Risky Business: Being Relational in a Transactional World", final chapter in Be the Best Lawyer You Can Be, ed. S. Levine, American Bar Association (2018)
Being Relational: The Seven Ways to Quality Interaction & Lasting Change, Senft, Louise Phipps & W. Senft, Health Communication Inc. Books (2015)
"Transformative Mediation: Transforming the Adversarial Ethic", Senft, Louise Phipps, Experience Magazine, American Bar Association (Winter 2015)
"Mediation Changes People", Senft, Louise Phipps, Translated into French (2010)
"Mediation Basics for Biotech: How to Transform Your Negotiation", Senft, Louise Phipps, John's Hopkins University, Medical Innovation and Business (Oct. 2010)
"Legal System Must Change to Help Families", Senft, Louise Phipps, Unified Family Court Connection, Center for Families, Children and the Courts (2010)
"Lawyers in Mediation: Conflict or Opportunity?", Senft, Louise Phipps, Roman Bar Association, Conciliar, Rome, Italy (2010)
"Marital Mediation: Transforming Marital Conflict through Facilitated Dialogue—Reclaiming Personal Strength and Marital Connectedness", Senft, Louise Phipps, Good, Nancy, Transformative Mediation: A sourcebook, Resources for Conflict Intervention Practitioners and Programs, Bush, B. & Folger, J. (eds.), Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation and the Association for Conflict Resolution Publishers (2010)
"Vocational Truthfulness: Having the Courage to Love and Need Our Work", Senft, Louise Phipps with Aloi, M.J., ACResolution (Spring 2009)
"Mediating End of Life Decisions with Quality Interaction", Senft, Louise Phipps, Senft, William W., ACResolution (Summer 2009)
"Mediating End of Life Decisions: Meeting Basic Nutrition Needs and the Advanced Health Care Directive", Senft, Louise Phipps, Senft, William W., MCDR Resolutions (Summer 2008)
"Mediation Changes People", Senft, Louise Phipps, Community Mediation of St. Mary's County News (Fall 2008)
"Quality Deliberation and Quality Decision Making: Mediation from a Transformative Approach", Senft, Louise Phipps, ACResolution (Winter 2007)
"Conflict Transformation for Separating Couples", Senft, Louise Phipps, ACResolution (Summer 2005)
"Katrina: Turning Problems into Opportunities," Senft, Louise Phipps, ACResolution (Fall 2005)
"The Interrelationship of Ethics, Emotional Intelligence and Self-Awareness", Senft, Louise Phipps, ACResolution (Spring 2004)
"ADR in the Courts: Progress, Problems and Possibilities", Senft, Louise Phipps & Cynthia A. Savage, ADR Handbook for Judges, Stienstra D. & Yates S. (eds.), American Bar Association and Federal Judicial Center (2004)
"Gaining Sight of the Goal of Transformation", Senft, Louise Phipps, Promise of Mediation, Bush B., Folger, J. & Della Noce, D. (eds.), Jossey-Bass (2004)
"Portrait of a Good Mediator", Senft, Louise Phipps, Maryland Bar Journal, 8, Vol. 36, No. 4 (2003)
"ADR in the Courts: Progress, Problems and Possibilities', Senft, Louise Phipps, Cynthia Savage, 101 PENN ST. L. REV.l22 (2003)
"Preliminary Motion for Mediation: New Tool for Litigators," Senft, Louise Phipps, Maryland State Bar Association, ADReport, Vol. 1, No. 2, (2002)
"Should a Mediator Draft Settlement Agreements?", Senft, Louise Phipps, Academy of Family Mediators, 9, Mediation News, Vol. 19, No.3 (2000)
"When to Mediate Business Disputes", Senft, Louise Phipps, Maryland Business Law Watch, 25 (Feb. 1998)
"Ten Times to Try Mediating Personal and Family Disputes," Senft, Louise Phipps, Maryland Family Law Monthly, 5 (Apr.1998)
Author, Periodicals, Blogs:
"#7Ways7Weeks" Winter YouTube Series, Baltimore Mediation (2018)
"I can Relate", blog, "Just Resolutions" online magazine, American Bar Association (2018-present)
"#7Ways7Weeks" Summer YouTube Series, Baltimore Mediation (2018)
"The Creative Miracle", blog, Archer Senft updates (2015-present)
"Relational Approach", blog (2013-present)
"Quality Dialogue", twitter (2013-present)
The Negotiating Table: Turning Problems into Opportunities Monthly Column, The Daily Record (2004-2013)
Author, Teaching and Training Manuals:
Senft, Louise Phipps (2019), Family Mediation Training Manual
Senft, Louise Phipps Senft (2018), Fundamentals of Mediation Training Manual
Senft, Louise Phipps (2014), Relational Negotiation Training Manual
Senft, Louise Phipps (2009-2015), Conflict Transformation and Self-Awareness: the Enneagram as Catalyst
Senft, Louise Phipps (2010), Family, Clan and Tribal Conflicts: A Relational Approach and Skills for the Hopi Indian Nation.
Senft, Louise Phipps (1997-2015), Conflict Transformation and Mediation Skills with a Focus on Third Party Intervention and Systems Training Manual, with Nancy Good
Senft, Louise Phipps (1996 -2015), Conflict Transformation and Mediation Skills Manual for Domestic Disputes with a focus on Working with Family Systems, Child Custody, Parenting Plans, Domestic Violence and Child Support Training Manual, early editions with Nancy Good
Senft, Louise Phipps (1996-2015), Conflict Transformation and Mediation Skills with a focus on Self-Awareness Training Manual
Senft, Louise Phipps (1997-2015), Conflict Transformation and Mediation Skills with a focus on Legal Standards and Ethics Training Manual, early editions with Larry Hoover
Senft, Louise Phipps (1997-2013), Conflict Transformation and Mediation Skills for Divorcing Couples with a focus on Quality Decision-making for Marital Property Issues Training Manual
Senft, Louise Phipps (1997-2015), Conflict Transformation and Knowing Thyself: the Enneagram as Catalyst Training Manual
Senft, Louise Phipps (1998-2014), Conflict Transformation and Mediation Skills for the Workplace Training Manual
Senft, Louise Phipps (2008, 2004), Conflict Transformation Skills and Approaches for Families Training Manual
Senft, Louise Phipps (2005, 2002, 1996), Conflict Transformation and Mediation Skills for Working with Multiple Parties Training Manual
Senft, Louise Phipps (2005, 2000, 1994), Conflict Resolution Skills for Peer Mediators, Teachers and Peer Mediation Programs Training Manual
Senft, Louise Phipps and Larry Hoover (1996, 1995, 1994), Basic Conflict Resolution and Mediation Skills Training Manual
Senft, Louise Phipps and Nancy Good (1996) Conflict Resolution and Intervention Skills for Organizational Conflict Training Manual
Senft, Louise Phipps (1994), Conflict Resolution Skills and Approaches for Families and Children Training Manual
Senft, Louise Phipps (1993), Conflict Resolution Skills for the Safe Haven Network Children at Risk Training Manual
Being Relational: The Seven Ways to Quality Interaction & Lasting Change book tour, appearances and signings:
Baltimore, Maryland: The Center Club
Baltimore, Maryland: Women Presidents Organization Annual Conference
Baltimore, Maryland: Enoch Pratt Library, Roland Park Branch
New York, New York: The Strand Book Store
New York, New York: NYS Council on Divorce Mediation
Baltimore, Maryland: National Association of Women Business Owners
Washington, D.C: Convergence Center for Policy Resolution
Golden, Colorado: ACR Rocky Mountain Retreat
Chicago, Illinois: Signode Corporation
Cape May, New Jersey: Peach Plum Farm
Orlando, Florida: UPS Go For the Greens Women's Conference
Baltimore, Maryland: Executive Women's Forum
Baltimore, Maryland: Defense Lawyers Trucking Association National Conference
Baltimore, Maryland: Okun Financial Women's Group
Winnetka, Illinois: Crow Island School, Chicago School District
Towson, Maryland: Network 2000/The Executive Alliance
Baltimore, Maryland: Maryland Mediators Convention
Baltimore, Maryland: Vernon Club
Catonsville, Maryland: Exit Planning Exchange, Baltimore
Richmond, Virginia: Kappa Alpha Theta Reunion
Cape May, New Jersey: Star of the Sea Parish Council Retreat
Owings Mills, Maryland: Classic Catering & Miss Shirley's Restaurant Staff Development
Baltimore, Maryland: Mary's Seminary
Charleston, South Carolina: Buxton Books & Tours
Springfield, Illinois: Sacred Heart Academy/Blessed Sacrament School Reunion
Boston, Massachusetts: Association of Family and Conciliation Courts Conference
Annapolis, Maryland: District Court of Maryland
Annapolis, Maryland: M&T Bank Sales Managers Annual Conference
Morgantown, West Virginia: West Virginia Bar Association Annual Conference
Towson, Maryland: Greater Baltimore Medical Center Grand Rounds
Baltimore, Maryland: Catholic Business Network
Kansas City, Kansas: National Organization of Rheumatology Managers Annual Conference
Baltimore, Maryland: University of Baltimore School of Law
Austin, Texas: International Association of Mediators Annual Conference
Owings Mills, Maryland: McDonogh High School RL Leaders
Baltimore, Maryland: Calvert Hall High School Leaders
Baltimore, Maryland: Maryland District Court
Annapolis, Maryland: Maryland State Bar Association ADR Section
Chicago, Illinois: Pope Frances Academy Retreat
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Drexel School of Law
Chicago, Illinois: American Bar Association
Winnetka, Illinois: The Book Stall
Washington DC: American Bar Association ADR Conference
Baltimore, Maryland: ICMA, International City/County Management Association Conference
Cleveland, Ohio: International Academy of Mediators Conference
Takoma, Washington: Multicar Health System Awards Breakfast
Spokane, Washington: Multicare Health System Awards Breakfast
Tampa, Florida: Tampa Book Club
Orlando, Florida: Florida Association of Collaborative Professionals
Scottsdale, Arizona: International Academy of Mediators Conference
New York City: Women Presidents Organization, NYC Chapter
Easton, Maryland: Maryland Parks and Recreation
Beverly Hovmand has fourteen years of experience as a mediator with a focus on workplace, family, and eldercare mediation, the last twelve as an associate member of Baltimore Mediation. She also acts as a co-trainer with Louise Phipps Senft for Baltimore Mediation's annual trainings including: Basic Mediation Skills, Mediation for Custody and Parenting Plans and Mediation for Workplace Issues.For the past twelve years Ms. Hovmand has been a mediator for the Baltimore City Circuit Court. Beverly helped design and is a trainer for SHAPE (Shared Parenting Experience), an educational parenting program provided by the Baltimore City Circuit Court for unmarried parents. Beverly is a volunteer mediator for the Commission on Civil Rights, Baltimore, Maryland.Prior to her training as a mediator, Beverly worked for fifteen years as a facilitator, trainer, and consultant within the Employee Assistance field conducting trainings for managers and supervisors on managing conflict in organizational settings. She had a private psychotherapy practice for ten years working with individuals and families to resolve conflict in their relationships and effectively manage life transitions and family change.Beverly completed her undergraduate work at Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts, graduate work at the University of Maryland School of Social Work, Baltimore, Maryland and is a licensed clinical social worker. She is also trained in online dispute resolution (ODR).
Ms. Hovmand is a responder with the Workplace Trauma Center, a national provider of crisis management for business industry and government, having conducted over one hundred fifty interventions including support services at Dulles Airport following the events of September 11, 2001.Beverly is a member of the Maryland Program for Mediator Excellence and the Association for Conflict Resolution.
Bill Senft, CPA and attorney, specializes in the mediation of business contract, partnership and workplace disputes including those giving rise to EEO complaints. He has served private, governmental and non-profit employers providing a neutral and confidential process for working through the difficult conflicts that arise in workplace relationships. Bill also provides mediation for corporations, partnerships, foundations and family businesses including financial planning, management and corporate control issues, business succession planning and other disputes in the family and business context – always practicing within the relational approach to mediation.For more than 20 years Bill has served as a finance consultant and legal advisor to entrepreneurs – with clients in many industries and the non-profit sector. Bill has vast experience in corporate transactions, fundraising, tax and finance planning for families and family business, debt workouts and numerous other legal and financial matters.Bill has served as Adjunct Faculty at the Johns Hopkins University Carey School of Business and at Loyola University of Maryland Sellinger School of Business teaching courses in Negotiation and Negotiation Ethics. He is a graduate of the McIntire School of Business at the University of Virginia and began his career as an accountant with Price Waterhouse before attending law school at Washington and Lee University. He practiced bankruptcy and financial workout law at law firms in Baltimore and Washington DC.
Bill serves the community through involvement in community, educational and religious organizations. You can reach him at bill@baltimoremediation.com.
Judge Ronald A. Karasic (Ret.) joined Baltimore Mediation in 2013 following his retirement from the District Court of Maryland for Baltimore City. Throughout his law career, Judge Karasic used mediation as a practical forum for resolving conflict. He has extensive experience in workplace conflict including EEO, discrimination and employment claims, personnel matters related to discipline, hiring and promotions, and labor negotiations.Judge Karasic handled civil and criminal matters for nearly twelve years on the bench, where he presided over thousands of contract and tort cases. Such matters included auto repair and towing disputes, insurance claims involving tort and contract matters, debt collection cases, civil and criminal domestic violence cases, neighborhood land disputes, and property disputes between neighbors. During his tenure, he was specially assigned to Drug Treatment Court, Housing Court and Rent Court. While presiding in Rent Court, throughout his 12 year tenure, Judge Karasic developed expertise in landlord-tenant law and matters related to residential and commercial leases including rent escrow, housing code enforcement, lead paint regulations,, subleases and renewals, and condominium law. As a recalled judge, he has presided over the Pre-Trial Settlement docket in Baltimore County.Prior to becoming a judge, Judge Karasic was the Deputy Public Defender for the State of Maryland for eleven years. Included in his duties were the mediation of agency employment matters, EEO compliance, defense of discrimination and employment claims, personnel matters related to progressive discipline, hiring and promotions.
Judge Karasic also served as a Chief City Solicitor in the Baltimore City Law Department. There, he supervised attorneys responsible for a wide variety of cases for the Baltimore City Department of Public Works dealing with land-use issues, employment matters, tort litigation and environmental matters.
Judge Karasic also represented City agencies in various employment matters involving labor negotiations, employee terminations, and discrimination claims based upon age, gender, religion and race. He was Chief Counsel to the Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners and the Superintendent of Schools.
From 1981-1990, Judge Karasic was in private practice where he concentrated on small business matters, personal injury litigation, employment disputes, and contract disputes. From 1998-2010, Judge Karasic taught courses in Legal Analysis, Research and Writing and Introduction to Advocacy at University of Baltimore School of Law.
Judge Karasic, a graduate of the University of Delaware and the University of Baltimore School of Law, is a former member of the Attorney Grievance Commission, the State of Maryland Alternative Dispute Resolution Commission, the State of Maryland Critical Areas Commission, the Governor's Commission on Alcohol and Drugs, and the District Court Commissioners Education Committee.
Vicki joined Baltimore Mediation in 2009, after years of working together with her husband, Dusty Rhoades, founding and providing mediation and facilitation services for community mediation centers in Calvert and St. Mary's Counties. Vicki and Dusty have been partners in life for over 40 years and co-mediators in the transformative framework since 2001. Vicki specializes in mediation cases around family and community issues, She is a member of the Maryland Program for Mediator Excellence and the Association for Conflict Resolution. Together with Dusty, she offers professional mediation training and coaching services.
Dusty joined Baltimore Mediation in 2009, after many years in which Baltimore Mediation provided training for 32 community centers which he helped found, namely the Community Mediation Centers of Calvert and St. Mary's County, Maryland. He is past president of the Board of Directors of the Community Mediation Center of St. Mary's County. He has mediation experience with hundreds of cases involving family, community, District and Circuit Court, discrimination and foster care cases. He is a member of the Maryland Program for Mediator Excellence and the Association for Conflict Resolution. Dusty has trained with leaders in the field of transformative mediation, including Baruch Bush, Joe Folger, Louise Phipps Senft, Nancy Good, Tom Wahlrab and Irv Foster. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School and the Defense Systems Management College, Program Manager's Course. He is an Associate Fellow of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots.
Andrew Fontanella is a mediator and attorney who practices in the Greater Baltimore and Washington DC Metropolitan area. His practice focuses on family law and consumer bankruptcy. Since 2009, Andrew has enhanced his practice by offering a range of alternative dispute resolution options to clients to deal with their conflict. In addition to mediation, Andrew is trained in conflict-coaching, and collaborative practice. In conflict-coaching a party can come to a robust understanding of the nature of a conflict when the other party does not engage or cooperate. Collaborative practice is a team approach to conflict, where parties prefer to avoid litigation and instead, create a durable agreement that focuses on their common goals and interest.In addition to Baltimore Mediation, Andrew is a contract mediator with the Circuit Court for Baltimore City in their Family Law Division, a roster mediator with Baltimore CountyCivil Division, a roster mediator for the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Maryland, the District Court of Maryland, and the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights.
Andrew is dedicated to and has a gift for intercultural communication. He is highly proficient in both Spanish and American Sign Language. He is a continuing student in the interpreter training program for American Sign Language at Baltimore County Community College. Many of his clients speak Spanish and sign American Sign Language (ASL).
Since 2009, Andrew has trained with Baltimore Mediation to become a skilled and intuitive mediator from the transformative framework. He is committed to fostering dialogue over everyday legal issues that arise in his practice and brings that experience to his mediation practice.
Andrew lives with his partner of 15 years near the cultural arts section of Baltimore City. In addition to taking care of his family, which includes 2 beautiful dogs, Andrew is part of a community group that maintains Fitzgerald Park, in the historic Bolton Hill neighborhood. He continues to participate in making Baltimore city a great place to live.
Mediation Consultant for Organizations and Churches
Conflict Transformation Assistant Professor, Conflict Transformation Masters Degree Program, Eastern Mennonite University
Senior Mediator & Trainer, Community Mediation Center, Harrisonburg, Virginia
Partner, Newman Avenue Associates Family Therapists
Former Director, National Coalition Building Institute for prejudice reduction, Virginia Chapter
Monica Koski is a dispute resolution professional with over 20 years experience with public and private litigation as a court reporter. She is a seasoned mediator having mediated hundreds of court referred and private matters over the last seven years. Monica has joined Baltimore Mediation with a commitment to educating people in the workplace on the relational approach to conflict transformation and the mediation process, and to providing third party neutral services, conflict resolution skills training, and consulting.Prior to her mediation career, Monica was entrenched in the litigation arena for 13 years in the State of Maryland, in DC, and Virginia, has seen thousands of people in conflict and has witnessed first-hand the effects of parties involved in a rigid, fact-finding process that alienated the concept and importance of relating and relationship with one human being to another.Ms. Koski was trained as a mediator through Baltimore Mediation, The Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation and Community Mediation Maryland. She has experience handling complex situations ranging from 2-10 parties.She has mediated cases involving issues on elder care, parent-teen, neighbors, local churches, the State's Attorneys Office, multiple school districts, HOAs and local private companies.Monica has committed herself to the field of conflict transformation with a dedication to relieve crises in human interaction and an intention to empower people to live authentically while working through their differences.
Ms. Koski is a member of the Maryland Program for Mediator Excellence, Association for Conflict Resolution Workplace Division and is also trained through the International Ombuds Association. She is also an elected member of the Board of Community Mediation Maryland, and chairs their Development Committee. Her depth of commitment to her mediation practice is shown in her ability to follow parties through their difficult dialogue and conflict interactions, and to facilitate meaningful conversations that result in overall party satisfaction.
Ms. Koski's training includes employee engagement work, teambuilding, dealing with difficult people, and handling high emotions. She is also a grant writer collaborating with Baltimore Mediation clients including various federal agencies such as USDA and FSIS.Ms. Koski can be reached at monica@baltimoremediation.com.
Nan has been working with Baltimore Mediation and Louise Phipps Senft, Esq. for over 15 years, as an international co-trainer, co-presenter, coach, and mediator.Nan is a dynamic facilitator, author, transformative high conflict mediator, psychotherapist, conflict systems design consultant, executive conflict coach, educator and a founding partner in Dispute Resolution Professionals, LLC, established in 1997 in the Denver metropolitan area.An expert in high conflict family systems and multiparty complex workplace disputes; she was trained as a mediator at Harvard Law School's Program on Negotiation in 1995, as well as USPS Redress training in 1998. She received specialized Divorce and Child Custody training at CDR in Boulder, CO. She has mediated over 2800 cases and was a grievance mediator for United Airlines for 25 years.Nan holds the Advanced Practitioner status in the Workplace, Training and Family Sections of the Association for Conflict Resolution.Nan is considered a national expert in high conflict family systems and mediates protracted familial disputes in 19 states. Over 40 percent of her caseload is in federal mediation, and specializes in the areas of employment, EEOC, ADA, and workplace violence, hostile work environment, public dialoging, crisis management, post-traumatic stress disorder, and critical incident debriefing.
In response to the international geo-political crisis, she became part of the founding team to develop the non-profit organization, Mediators Beyond Borders International and has served on the Board of Directors for 6 years. Over the last three years she helped to develop the Training & Research, and Events Divisions. She was also a member of the Hurricane Katrina Project for MBB in New Orleans and Biloxi.
In 2009, Nan developed the International Ambassadors Program, the worked on the Internship Program and was instrumental in launching the first Professional Country Chapter outside the US, MBB Italy. She is now working on the MBB Greek Dialogues to be held in Athens in 2013.
In 2004, she designed and remains the lead facilitator for the Rocky Mountain Retreat, teaching holistic and reflective practice to Judges, lawyers, mediators, conflict practitioners and peace-builders from over 21 countries and 45 states. The retreat was gifted to ACR for 2010 and beyond. She also served on the Board of Directors for the Global Negotiation Insight Institute; formerly the Harvard Negotiation Insight Initiative. In 1997, Nan was part of a 14 member professional delegation to Russia and Poland as a Citizens' Ambassador for Mediation and she presented at the Moscow State University College of Law. In 2009 she was the 6th Kaplan Lecturer at the Pittsburgh Bar Association Spring Legal Forum, presenting on Spiritual Intelligence in Intractable Conflict, and facilitated the MBB Congress.
Nan has presented nationally at the ABA/DR, AFCC, and ACR conferences and has been a guest lecturer at Hamline Law School in St. Paul, MN. She led a Mediators Beyond Borders Ambassador's Mission to China, Mongolia, and Korea in April of 2009, and presented on behalf of MBB in Germany and Italy in September 2009. In 2010, she led a delegation of 20 Mediators to Europe to present in Florence, Italy to the Mayor's Council and University of Rome for MBB.
She presented in Slovenia and Germany in 2011 and Italy and Portugal on her Master Practitioner Series. She will present in Athens, Greece and Budapest, Hungary in 2013.
Nan has been adjunct faculty at Regis University since 1999 where she teaches Conflict Theory, Theories of Collaborative Negotiation, Advanced Mediation, and Persuasion in the graduate and undergraduate programs. Nan founded the Regis University Mediation Project, active from 1995-1998.
She serves as one of the faculty advisors to the Regis University/Colorado Professional Chapter of Mediators Beyond Borders. She has done post graduate work at Harvard University Law School Program on Negotiation in Advanced Mediation, and at Duke University and UCLA in Neuroscience and Conflict.
Nan co-authored and has taught the co-parenting education seminar "In the Best Interest of the Children" for 14 years. She authored and developed the level two high conflict classes "Growing through Conflict" in 2001, and has served thousands of bi-nuclear families statewide and in the Denver metro area. Nan is recognized as an expert in divorced family systems and specializes in high conflict marital mediation, and divorce mediation.
Nan is also an award winning author of a daily spiritual practice book entitled Calm in the Face of the Storm: Spiritual Daily Practice for the Peacemaker, the winner of the 2008 Gold Medal for Spirituality/Inspiration at the National Independent Book Publishers Awards, [IPPY], presented in Los Angeles. www.calminthefaceofthestorm.com; or www.amazon.com You can contact Nan at Nan@disputepro.com.
Sharon focuses on providing mediation services relevant to the challenges of human resource management and was employed by the State of Maryland in the area of human resources for over 36 years — in both the Executive and Judicial branches.She says, "As a senior executive human resources professional, I (along with my team) was frequently the first responder to workplace conflicts. It has been my professional philosophy that because interrelationships between individuals and work units within the workplace often remain after a conflict has been addressed, it is critical to the good health of the larger organization that damages to these relationships be minimized and, ideally, enhanced. Given this perspective, I would attempt to facilitate discussions between individuals and/or work units as well as coach the respective administrator, director, manager, supervisor, etc. in order to resolve a conflict at the lowest possible level.In the human resources sub-discipline of employer-employee relations, matters involving disputes are generally handled through a formal grievance or disciplinary appeal process that results in a decision imposed on the parties by an arbiter. By contrast and in hindsight, I now realize that my approach to conflict resolution mirrored the transformative mediation model. It is a highly valuable and effective alternative to the formal fact-finding method because of its reliance on getting to the underlying nature of a conflict and it provides several sustainable benefits, including the empowerment of the respective parties, enhanced understanding of the other side, clarity by all parties about the underlying causes of the disagreement and the opportunity for disputants to solve their conflict."
Chris Rubacky is an entrepreneur, mediator, and trainer. He has led trainings in mediation, conflict resolution, interest-based negotiations, special education mediation, stress reduction, and emotional literacy/anger management for schools, parent groups, non-profit organizations and men's jails. He is proud to have partnered with and led workshops for a number of established training organizations on both coasts including Peer Mediation Programs (New Jersey), Bucks County Peace Center (Pennsylvania), Baltimore Mediation, Peninsula Conflict Resolution Center (PCRC, San Mateo County, California), and Community Boards of San Francisco, where he was fortunate to have traveled throughout California, Nevada and as far as Alaska in leading peer and community mediation trainings.
Chris first became interested in the study of Conflict Resolution while earning his Master's Degree from American University in Washington, DC in Special Education, with a focus on working with emotionally disturbed children. His Bachelor's degree is from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.
He is proud to have been a Community Mediator/Panel Member for Community Boards of San Francisco (CBSF), where he lived for close to a decade. The enormously diverse population and fantastic training tradition of CBSF provided excellent experience in working with a wide range of civil disputes, as well as in cross-cultural communication and transformative mediation.
Originally trained in Mediation by the New Mexico Center for Dispute Resolution, in the mid-1990's Chris earned his certification as a trainer in mediation and collaborative negotiation by now retired mediator Bill Lincoln. He benefited from Mr. Lincoln's reputation as both a pioneer in interest-based bargaining (ala the Harvard Negotiation Project) and as a seasoned international mediator.
In 2002, Chris formed his own legal staffing agency, CVR Search. In 2014, Chris was moved to go back to his roots in dispute resolution, when he received his certificate in Workplace Mediation from Louise Phipps-Senft and Baltimore Mediation. Baltimore Mediation's transformative model and emphasis on improving relationships through quality dialogue has felt like home ever since. In late 2015, Chris began helping with select consulting and coaching for Baltimore Mediation.
In addition to his consulting work for Louise and Baltimore Mediation, Chris recently opened his own mediation practice, Relate and Mediate.net. He helps resolve disputes primarily relating to workplace matters and in support of the families of U.S. Veterans, with particular emphasis on communities surrounding veterans with PTSD/Moral Injury.
As an avid fan of the mystic poet Rumi, fiction, and the great outdoors, Chris lives in the Boulder, Colorado area with his fabulous wife Jennifer and wonder-filled daughter, Gabriella. A daily meditation practice strongly informs his relational mediation practice. Along with Jennifer, he also runs monthly groups on meditation and relationships for area couples.
I am an associate on the Baltimore Mediation team, trained and certified in general mediation and family and domestic mediation. By background, I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker practicing in the field of mental health for over 25 years, having graduated from SUNY Stony Brook, School of Social Work, in 1990. I have advanced training in family therapy and as a certified mediator using a transformative framework, my approach, like all of us on the Baltimore Mediation team, is to focus on quality dialogue and communication breakthroughs. I have also been an adjunct Professor at McDaniel College's Masters in Counseling program, and worked for 10 years in Child Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where I was a 4-year long member of the hospital-wide ethics committee.
My psychotherapy practice focus includes adolescent, couples and family therapy. My mediation practice focus is family and domestic mediation. I see all my work as collaborative, working together towards goals identified by clients. In a neutral and non-judgmental atmosphere, people build upon their strengths while focusing on practical solutions to problems.
I fundamentally believe in preserving relationships and people inherently having capacity for change. This drives how I help people connect with their strengths, understand how they impact others, how others impact them, and how they navigate their larger worlds. As this process unfolds, people see ways to support themselves and live easier, happier lives.
Keynote Inspirational Speakers
Leadership Team Facilitation
1500 Union Ave.
office@baltimoremediation.com
by phone at 443-524-0833.
© Baltimore Mediation


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Who Needs Roses? 5 Alternative Valentine's Flowers
Roses are red, violets are blue, don't let a boring bouquet happen to you.
By Lucy Spicer February 11, 2015
Valentine's Day is right around the corner, which means that florists are making a killing selling overpriced red roses in gaudy vases. Nothing says romance like a one-stop-shop package of roses, a box of unidentified chocolates, and a teddy bear that will probably end up forgotten in a closet, right? If red roses are not your beloved's favorite flower, consider some thoughtful floral alternatives.
Image: ProFlowers
With thousands of different species that bloom at various times during the year, orchids are a great alternative to roses. Symbolizing beauty, orchids make for a thoughtful gift with the potential to last much longer than a standard bouquet. A single potted orchid plant is a low-maintenance, inexpensive gift that keeps on giving.
Image: fromyouflowers.com
Popular in wedding bouquets, lilies can be much more visually inspiring than a dozen boring roses. The Asiatic lily, typically available year-round, comes in bright oranges, yellows, and pinks that are sure to brighten up the potentially dreary February weather. Lilies also symbolize purity of heart, making them a great gift for a non-romantic Valentine's recipient. So even if you're single, you can send some lilies to that platonic friend who's spending her Valentine's Day alone with Netflix. She'll definitely appreciate it.
Image: Teleflora
Red roses may symbolize passionate love, but red tulips represent perfect love, which is even better. After all, sometimes I feel passionate love for chips and queso, but my tumultuous relationship with Tex-Mex food is hardly perfect. Tulips are already a popular alternative to rose bouquets, so they're easy to find at comparable prices.
If you love the idea of red flowers but think roses and tulips are too common, consider the amaryllis. Like the orchid, the amaryllis also represents beauty, and a small amount of bulbs can appear more striking than a large but monotonous bouquet. Bouquets of cut flowers can say, "My love for you is forever, unlike these roses, which will be dead in a week." A gift of a potted amaryllis can say, "I love you and I am confident in your ability to keep this plant alive." Nothing is more romantic than trust.
Image: Halladay's
Colorful yet more casual than roses, gerberas are sure to brighten your low-key loved one's day. Meg Ryan's character in You've Got Mail says that daisies are the friendliest flower, and letting a Nora Ephron rom-com inspire your Valentine's Day gift seems like a foolproof plan for success. However, daisies don't have to be romantic—gerberas are the traditional flowers to send when a person needs cheering up. What better gift to a lonely friend on Singles Awareness Day than a gift of gerberas?
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Images: #TBT Gallery looks back at homecoming 1981
By Mark Black
Oct 12, 2017 1:00 AM - Our #TBT Gallery looks look back at homecoming in 1981.
Images: #TBT Gallery remembers Cardinal Joseph Bernardin ministry
By Paul Valade
Nov 10, 2016 1:00 AM - This #TBT Gallery takes a look at the ministry of Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, including local visits to Barrington, Vernon Hills, Des Plaines, Hoffman Estates, Mundelein, Palatine and Elk Grove Village.
Images: #TBT Gallery revisits presidents, presidential candidates in suburbs
By Bob Chwedyk
Nov 3, 2016 1:00 AM - Our #TBT Galllery of presidents and presidential candidates visiting Chicago and the suburbs over the years.
Images: #TBT Gallery looks back at golf
Sep 1, 2016 12:01 AM - Our #TBT Gallery takes a look back at golf in the suburbs in the 1960s and 1970s.
Images: #TBT Gallery looks at scouting in the '60s
By Brian Hill
Aug 11, 2016 9:43 AM - From learning first aid to traveling to the Grand Canyon, our #TBT Gallery looks back at Boy Scouts in the 1960s.
Images; #TBT Gallery revisits Fourth of July, 50 years ago
By Joe Lewnard
Jun 30, 2016 1:00 AM - This week's #TBT Gallery takes a look back at July 4, 1966 -- 50 years ago -- in the Northwest suburbs.
Images: #TBT Gallery revisits suburban art shows
By Steve Lundy
Mar 31, 2016 1:00 AM - This week's #TBT Gallery is for all our suburban art lovers.
Images: #TBT Gallery features St. Charles industries from the 1940s
Courtesy of St. Charles History Center
Mar 24, 2016 1:00 AM - This week's #TBT gallery highlights images from the St. Charles History Museum's latest exhibit about how St. Charles industry contributed to the war effort during World War II.
Images: #TBT Gallery celebrates St. Patrick's Day in suburbs, city
Mar 17, 2016 9:00 AM - This week's #TBT Gallery looks back at St. Patrick's Day celebrations in the 1980s and 90s
Images: #TBT Gallery looks back at suburban animals
Mar 10, 2016 1:08 PM - People and their pets, and various animal shows in the Northwest suburbs through the years, that's the theme for today's TBT Gallery.
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