In honor of the California Bar Association and California Judicial Council resolution recognizing the third week of March as California Mediation Week, you are invited to a panel discussion that celebrates the enduring power of the community mediation and conflict transformation movement around the world. |
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|PARTIAL LIST OF PANELISTS|
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|Amy Cardamone|
Program Director, Photovoices International
BALI, INDONESIA
With a background in community health development, Amy Cardamone has been working in communities, with women, children and young people, on health, environment and empowerment in Indonesia for 18 years. Since 2014, she has been involved in running Photovoices International, bringing people together to discuss and research their concerns; facilitating dialogue on challenging issues, and, working together with under-represented communities to amplify their voices, using visuals and narratives, to advocate for positive change.
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|Aleix Masramon Cruzate|
Coordinator, Social Action and Coexistence Programs,
University of Barcelona
SPAIN
Aleix Masramon Cruzate studied Political Science at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona and later trained in Conflict Mediation at the University of Barcelona. He further professionalized in the field of mediation and restorative justice by taking postgraduate courses at Universitat a Distancia de Madrid. In addition, he focuses on service management, social action and mediation. Currently, he coordinates different citizen services and community mediation in different municipalities of the Catalan territory. At the same time, he manages prevention and coexistence services in neighbourhoods of Barcelona.
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|Frederic Deycard|
Associate Director, Mali and the Sahel Conflict Resolution Program, The Carter Center
MALI
Frederic Deycard is the Associate Director for Mali and the Sahel, in the Conflict Resolution Program at The Carter Center. His portfolio includes the Mali Independent Observer, which supports the 2015 Peace Agreement in Mali, and the Peace through Health Initiative, a community-driven approach to peacebuilding in central Mali. As a consultant, Frederic developed the PH Initiative in 2017. His role is to manage all aspects of the project, including coordinating the Peace through Health team in Atlanta and Mali, developing the project’s strategy, organizing research, training, and mediation sessions, supervising the Peace through Health Mali data analysis project, and providing expert analysis of the conflict. Frederic also supervises the Independent Observer’s team, which writes public reports on the implementation of the Peace Agreement and offers solutions to mediation and dialogue between the parties, the civil society, and the public. Before joining The Carter Center, Frederic worked in Niger, Mali and Chad as a researcher and consultant in conflict analysis with research centers, think tanks, and INGOs such as the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, the Group for Research and Information on Peace and Security, or the Small Arms Survey, and advised the European Union on its peacebuilding and security reform programs in Mali and Niger. He holds a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology and a Masters in Conflict Analysis from the Political Studies Institute of Bordeaux, France, and a Masters in Contemporary History from the Michel Montaigne University of Bordeaux.
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|Fica Djohani|
Founder & Director, Coloured Consultancy
THE NETHERLANDS
Fica Djohani started her own consultancy and training organization, Coloured Consultancy (CoCon), in 1991. For her vision and organization’s mission, “Coloured” refers to the social diversity in the Netherlands and CoCon’s willingness to fully utilize that diversity. In 1996 CoCon was introduced to ‘neighborhood mediation,' inspired by Community Boards in San Francisco and then launched Neighborhood Mediation Rotterdam-Lombardijen, the first ever project of its kind in the Netherlands, with the motto “for and by the neighborhood.” The key elements at CoCon are carrying out, innovating, and expanding the empowerment, talent development, and self-sustainability of all civilians, young and old. Today CoCon provides direct services and training programs for volunteers focused on solving community conflicts and tackling residential concerns in social housing.
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|Varuna Bhandari Gugnani|
Advocate & Mediator
INDIA
Since 2010 Varuna Bhandari Gugnani has been working to adopt the ancient Vedic philosophy of Indian Culture embodied in the Sanskrit line ‘Santosham Paramam Sukham’ (“Satisfaction is the ultimate happiness”) into mediation as it is one mode for attainment of 'Peace.’ With more than 30 years of experience in litigation, Ms. Gugnani is a Distinguished Fellow of International Academy of Mediators (IAM) and one of the first trained mediators of the Supreme Court of India's Mediation Centre. The primary aim of her mediation practice is to strengthen the social fabric and use peace and to deliver ‘justice’ in its true sense. Ms. Gugnani is an empaneled mediator with the nonprofit organization Delhi Dispute Resolution Society (DDRS), and provides community mediation at different levels: neighborhood, labor, municipal corporations, students, and many others. In 2021, Ms. Gugnani was awarded ‘Star Woman Lawyer of the Year’ at the Legal Era Woman in Law Excellence Awards.
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|Hicham Kantar|
Judge, Professor & Advocate
LEBANON
Hicham Kantar has served as a judge in Lebanon for over 18 years, serving in criminal and civil courts and as a prosecutor. He has a MA in public international law from Université Saint Joseph in Beirut and an LL.M. from Columbia Law School, where he received the Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar honors. He also worked as a legal consultant for the Independent High-Level Legal Panel of Experts on Global Media Freedom and the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute. In 2022, Mr. Kantar was a Visiting Scholar at Columbia Law school in New York, working on research on the use of alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, especially mediation, in criminal affairs, not merely as a means to alleviate backlogs and render a more people-centered justice, but also as a tool for transitional justice in a long-standing conflict context that is Lebanon in particular and the Middle East in general. Hicham teaches Human Rights and International Courts at the Lebanese American University in Beirut. He also worked as a legal consultant for the Independent High-Level Legal Panel of Experts on Global Media Freedom and the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute, advising on issues of freedom of expression and media freedom, state practices, legislation and case law in the MENA region. He is currently a legal consultant for the World Bank, working on the Equality of Opportunity for Sexual and Gender Minorities project.
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|Karolína Miková, PhD|
Director, Senior Trainer & Facilitator
Partners for Democratic Change Slovakia
SLOVAKIA
Karolína Miková has worked at Partners for Democratic Change Slovakia, with short interruptions, since 1996. She started as a volunteer, then a project manager, trainer, and facilitator. Today she is its executive director. She studied urban planning at the Faculty of Architecture of the Slovak Technical University in Bratislava and took a one-year study program at the Institute for Public Studies at Johns Hopkins University. She completed her Ph.D. studies at the Department of Political Science at the Faculty of Philosophy, Comenius University, Bratislava. Her research focused on deliberative democracy methodologies. In 2011-2012, she worked as the head of the Office of the Slovak Government Plenipotentiary for the Development of Civil Society. She was responsible for preparation of the Strategy of Civil Society Development in Slovakia. As an expert, she deals with participatory policy-making, conflict transformation and development of civil society, its resiliency and relationship to the government. She has trained and consulted CSOs in the CEE region for most then 20 years and, internationally, she has worked in over 35 countries.
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|Keiko Tanaka|
Director, Mediator, Trainer & Lecturer
JAPAN
Keiko Tanaka is the Director of Mediations, a private mediation organization in Tokyo. She is also a Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR) accredited mediator, a family court mediator, and a lecturer at Aichi University of Education, Aichi, Japan.
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|Professor Brian Williams|
Principal, Williams Labour Law and Mediation
SOUTH AFRICA
Professor Brian Williams was born during the apartheid period in South Africa. This oppressive system constituted the worst typologies of legalized and systemic violence in the world. His sense of solidarity resulted in a passion to always seek peace and to work tirelessly for justice. Despite being detained and charged with the notorious Internal Security Act during the mid-80s, he contributed his leadership to the trade union movement and the liberation struggle. He has five university degrees and is an accredited Mentor, Coach, and Assessor with the South African Qualifications Authority. Today, he works extensively in the field of peace and mediation in some of the worst war zones in Africa, such as South Sudan. He is a Visiting Professor in the fields of peace, mediation, and labour relations at the University of Lusaka and the University of the Sacred Heart in Uganda. He is also an international award winning poet, recognized as the Thought Leader of the Year by the Black Management Forum, and is the Chief Executive of Williams Labour Law and Mediation. He is currently involved in groundbreaking peacemaking work in Cape Town where he helps address the root causes of violence and transgenerational trauma.
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|Cindy Lugten|
Communicatie, Coloured Consultancy
THE NETHERLANDS
Cindy Lugten takes care of the communication activities for Coloured Consultancy- CoCon, including publications and events. Born and raised in The Netherlands Cindy decided to find her place in the sun in Indonesia, where she worked more than 25 years in communications and business development for the Dutch Chamber of Commerce, a financial news provider, a luxury villa management company, and a paper cone producer. After 33 years in Jakarta and Bali, Cindy moved back to The Netherlands where she found her place at CoCon as a community mediator and advisor at the hotline for people experiencing conflict in the community.
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|Darlene Weide, MPH, MSW|
Executive Director, Community Boards
UNITED STATES
Darlene Weide, MPH, MSW is the Executive Director of Community Boards, the longest-running community mediation center in the US, based in San Francisco. Her work emphasizes equity, inclusion, and belonging to foster collaboration, people power, and impactful dialogue, understanding, and change. She’s designed creative initiatives such as Taking Mediation to the People Project, curriculum to prevent LGBTQI discrimination in schools, housing justice initiatives, and the San Francisco Peacemaker Awards. She is also a trainer, organizational ombuds specializing in healthcare and higher education settings, and a faculty member at Georgetown University where she teaches in the M.A. in Conflict Resolution program and also at City College of San Francisco. She highly values all the volunteers that share their compassion and skills to support their neighbors and communities.
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join us online
Join us on social media as we engage San Franciscans
in restorative justice and peacemaking!
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