International Training Program

The UC Law San Francisco Center for Negotiation and Dispute Resolution (CNDR), at the University of California College of Law, San Francisco, in partnership with the JAMS Foundation, is proud to present the International Mediation Development & Leadership Institute (IMDLI). IMDLI is intended for a diverse group of professionals—lawyers, judges, court administrators, academics, mediators, and others—interested in learning how to cultivate robust mediation ecosystems in their home countries and how to become an effective leader of mediation implementation and development. Top-level U.S. and international experts drawn from the court system, private ADR institutions, and universities will share best practices and lessons learned from decades of ADR reform experience—information that is rarely available to the public. Anticipated topics covered:

• How mediation can promote access to justice and help reduce court backlogs
• How to design and operate mediation centers (public/court annexed and private)
• How to build capacity and ensure that such centers are sustainable into the future
• The advantages and disadvantages of voluntary, mandatory, and judicial referral models
• How to convince mediation skeptics and secure their buy-in
• The social, political, economic, and legal ingredients and interventions necessary for a mediation center to thrive and for an ADR ecosystem or culture to take root
• The importance of data collection and analysis
• What empirical research on ADR tells us about the who, what, where, when, and how of mediation, including what works and what does not
• Factors that have helped drive the success of mediation in the U.S. and other key jurisdictions

 

Location: UC Law SF, 200 McAllister Street, San Francisco, CA 94102

Dates: September 8-12, 2025 (exact times TBA)

Registration: 

Early Bird Discount Rate: $1,199 (deadline March 28, 2025)

Discounted Rate: $1,749 (deadline August 1, 2025)

Ordinary Rate: $2,000 (deadline September 3, 2025

Register for the 2025 Training

If you are in need of a visa letter or would like to inquire about scholarships, please fill out this form before registering. Questions to CNDR@uclawsf.edu.

Hiro N. Aragaki, J.D. Ph.D. is a tenured professor of law at University of California College of Law, San Francisco and a Professorial Research Associate at SOAS School of Law in London. His scholarship on arbitration has won prestigious accolades and been published in top U.S. law journals. His primary interests cluster around the study of arbitration and mediation from comparative, international, and law and development perspectives. He is frequently called upon to train judges and consult on ADR reform projects around the world, most recently as an Advisor to the Expert Committee on Mediation, Supreme Court of India, an Advisor to the judiciary of Kazakhstan regarding arbitration law reforms, and a mediation expert for the World Bank’s new Business Ready Project. He has served as a neutral for twenty years, most recently with JAMS, and is a Chartered Arbitrator and Fellow of the Chartered Institute (U.K.) and a Fellow of the College of Commercial Arbitrators (U.S.). He holds degrees from Yale, Stanford, and Cambridge, and is dual qualified in the U.S. and U.K.

 

Shannon M. Baker, Esq. is the Deputy Director and Quality Assurance Director for the District Court of Maryland Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Office. As Deputy Director, Shannon is responsible for monitoring and evaluating all District Court ADR programs and ensuring the provision of high-quality ADR services for District Court cases. This involves the development and delivery of ongoing training and continuing education for ADR practitioners, the creation of best practices and policies, and maintaining and updating internal and external ADR program procedures. Shannon serves as staff to the District Court ADR Subcommittee and the Online Dispute Resolution Workgroup. She is a member of the Maryland Judiciary’s 40-hour Basic Mediation Training team and served on the workgroup to develop the current Maryland Standards of Conduct for Court-Designated Mediators. Shannon helped create and launch the District Court’s new Remote Pre-trial ADR Program in July 2020. Shannon holds a B.A. in French and a B.S. in Business Administration from Susquehanna University. Shannon earned her J.D. from the University of Baltimore School of Law where she was a UB Law Scholar, received the Nancy Cogliano Strause Award for graduating first in the evening program, and was named by the Honors Committee as the 2014 Law Faculty Award evening recipient. Shannon was admitted to the Maryland Bar in 2014. Shannon lives in southern York, PA with her husband and three children.

 

Ellen Bass has served as Director of the Weinstein JAMS International Fellowship Program for over a decade, leading the development of the Fellowship Program in collaboration with the JAMS Foundation’s Board of Directors and Judge Danny Weinstein (Ret.). To date, the Weinstein JAMS Fellowship Program has supported 145 current and emerging ADR leaders from 85 countries — judges, lawyers, law faculty, graduate law students, court administrators, law enforcement personnel and NGO directors — in their efforts to advance dispute resolution practices and processes in their home countries and beyond. In her role as Executive Director of the Weinstein International Foundation (WIF), Ellen manages the Foundation’s daily operations and works with the Foundation’s Board of Directors and global network of Senior Fellows to implement the Foundation’s strategic initiatives, while defining and developing Foundation procedures and programs. Founded in 2018, WIF is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization  dedicated to making mediation available and accessible worldwide in the face of increasing global challenges and conflict. An attorney and trained mediator, Ellen served as co-mediator and assistant to Bruce Edwards from 2011-2018. A member of the California State Bar, she earned her J.D. from the University of San Francisco, School of Law, where she was selected as a Research Fellow to the McCarthy Institute for Intellectual Property in 2008. She further served on Law Review, the Moot Court Honors program, and was a finalist for the Advocate of the Year Award. She is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley (magna cum laude) and recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Berlin, Germany, where she studied philosophy and comparative literature at the Freie Universität.

 

Lisa M. Courtney, Esq. is the Director of the newly formed Division of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) in the NYS Office of Court Administration, where she works to promote the growth of alternative dispute resolution programs throughout New York State. Lisa led the Statewide ADR Office as Statewide ADR Coordinator from June 2017-March 2024, and previously served as Special Projects Counsel. She has overseen the Housing Court’s Volunteer Lawyer Program, Help Centers, Community Seminars, and the Civil Court’s Mediation Program, and worked as a court attorney in the Bronx and Manhattan. Lisa is an advisor to the Chief Judge’s Statewide ADR Advisory Committee, former co-chair of the New York Women’s Bar Association’s ADR Committee, and winner of the NY Peace Institute’s Peace Raiser Award (2019). Lisa previously worked as a litigation associate before joining the court system, and as a legal writing instructor. Lisa received her J.D. from the Columbia University School of Law, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, and graduated cum laude from Columbia College. She speaks Spanish and Hebrew.

 

Leonardo D’Urso is CEO and co-founder of ADR Center, Italy, one of the most respected mediation centers in the world. Since 1998, he has resolved more than 1,000 national and international complex civil and commercial mediations. With twenty years of full-time work in the field of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), Mr. D’Urso has been responsible for managing ADR Center’s strategic activities, the opening of thirty-one Resolution Centers in Italy, and the creation of ODR Center, an innovative cloud platform that manages the mediation process. In 2017, Mr. D’Urso was designated by the Council of Europe as the Scientific Expert of the Working Group on Mediation within CEPEJ (The European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice). In that capacity, he is undertaking the Report on the Impact of CEPEJ Mediation Guidelines in the legislations of the 47 CoE Member States and coordinating the draft of the 2018 European Model Law on Mediation. Mr. D’Urso has managed complex capacity-building projects funded by international donors in Africa, Europe and Central America (Serbia, Turkey, Nigeria, Barbados and all EU Member States and North African countries). He played a key leadership role in ADR Center’s project to establish the Afghanistan Centre for Dispute Resolution (ACDR) in Kabul, and he is currently Team Leader of a promotion mediation project in Azerbaijan. Among the many projects he carried out during the growth of ADR Center, he developed the first multilingual platform to easily manage, from different devices, all documents related to a mediation and arbitration procedure. Mr. D’Urso holds an MBA in International Business at Thunderbird School of Global Management, Phoenix, AZ, U.S.A. and an Economic Degree in Italy. He is the author of several books, publications and videos on mediation and ADR and an experienced trainer of mediators and trainer-of-trainers.

 

Bruce A. Edwards brings over 35 years of alternative dispute resolution experience to Signature Resolution as a media tor, arbitrator, and special master. Edwards graduated from law school in 1981 and began working for Sedgwick, Detert, Moran & Arnold in San Francisco as a litigation partner. Edwards stepped away from his law practice in 1991 to de vote full time and energy to developing one of the first mediation companies in the United States committed to the practice of mediation in commercial litigation. Together with John Bates, he c o-founded the Bates Edwards Group which soon grew to six  offices employing a dozen mediators before partnering with Endispute to become the largest attorney mediation firm in the country. In 1994, Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services merged with Endispute/Bates Edwards Group and for thirty years, in addition to his daily meditation practice, Edwards served as c o-founder, Chief Mediator, Executive Vice President and eventually Chairman of the Board. In Edwards’ mediation work, he emphasizes the importance of education and skill development, particularly in mediation advocacy, as fundamental pillars. He teaches advanced mediation skills to mediators, attorneys and judges both nationally and internationally, and believes that being invited into someone’s dispute is a sacred invitation and should be respected above all else. Mediation professionals need to be emotionally and psychologically prepared to assist t their clients, a level of preparation that requires considerable self-reflection, training and mental focus. In 2014, Edwards co-founded The Edwards Mediation Academy, an online training platform, with the goal of providing aspiring mediators, mediation advocates and other dispute resolution professionals the highest quality skill development. He has taught in-person mediation training in over 25 countries, and here in the United States at the Straus Institute of Dispute Resolution, Pepperdine University in Malibu, California.

 

Constantin-Adi Gavrilă is a full-time professional mediator, CEO, and founder of ADR Center Romania and Senior Fellow of the Weinstein International Foundation with extensive experience since 2002 in supporting individuals, groups, companies, governments, and international organizations to resolve a wide variety of domestic and international disputes. Adi has trained more than 1000 mediators and has provided consultancy services to beneficiaries and governments from more than 20 countries to design and develop mediation programs. Adi is also an active mediator in the development space, working with various Independent Accountability Mechanisms (IAMs), like the  Office of the Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman (CAO) and Independent Project Accountability Mechanism (IPAM), the IFC/MIGA (World Bank) and EBRD’s IAMs, to facilitate dialogue processes between the bank clients and communities concerned about the environmental and social impacts of bank-financed projects. Examples of multi-party cases supported by Adi are Seismic impacts and other E&S concerns of communities regarding the technology used by the oil & gas sector; Air quality impacts of the steel production industry; Risk of rockfalls and landslides related to HPP construction works; Community resettlement related to the expansion of mining activities; Impacts of public transportation projects for pedestrian accessibility. Adi is a co-founder and general manager of Craiova Mediation Center, Romania, Advisory Council’s member of the Lord Slynn of Hadley European Law Foundation, London UK, first president of the Romanian Mediation Centers Union, vice-president of the first Mediation Council, and he served as Co-Chair of the Independent Standards Commission convened by the International Mediation Institute (IMI). Among other awards, Adi was honored with the Association for Conflict Resolution (ACR) International Development Committee’s 2009 Outstanding Leadership Award for outstanding contributions to international conflict resolution. Adi received his Ph.D. from the University of Craiova with an emphasis on “Mediation and Access to Justice” and coordinates the Mediation Campus at the Law Faculty from Craiova University. Also, Adi is as associate professor at the Conflict Studies Center within the Faculty of Political, Administrative and Communication Sciences, part of Babeş-Bolyai University in Romania, where he is teaching “Developing skills in conflict resolution” and “ADR comparative systems”. More information about Adi can be found at https://adrcenter.com/senior/constantin-adi-gavrila/ and www.adigavrila.com.

 

Jean-Marie Kamatali is the Professor and Ella A. Ernest H. Fisher Chair of Law at The Claude W. Pettit College of Law, Ohio Northern University. He is involved in two significant research projects: ADR in Civil Law Legal Systems, and a Human Rights Database and Analysis Project, which seeks to build a human rights database and assess human rights progress. Formerly, Professor Kamatali served as the Dean of the Law School at the University of Rwanda, where he contributed significantly to the post-genocide judicial reform of Rwanda. His extensive teaching career includes roles at the University of Notre Dame Law School, Indiana University (South Bend and Indianapolis), Kent State University, and Leuven University. Professor Kamatali is a regular consultant for the UN Office on Genocide Prevention and Responsibility to Protect, USAID, and the US Department of Justice (DOJ). He has also provided consulting services to the World Bank, UNICEF, and the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Center, among others.

 

Jill F. Kopeikin manages the ADR Unit of the U. S. District Court for the Northern District of California. She is responsible for designing, implementing, and administering the Court’s multi-option ADR program. Ms. Kopeikin works closely with the Court’s judges, their staff, and the clerk’s office to ensure integration of ADR in the judges’ case management. She is also responsible for recruiting, training, supervising and coaching hundreds of neutrals who serve on the Court’s mediation and early neutral evaluation panels, and advises the Court concerning local rules and practices related to ADR in the Northern District. Other duties include serving as a visible and accessible information source for judges, neutrals, litigants, attorneys, client groups, bar associations, judges and staff from state and other federal courts, academics, law school classes, researchers and foreign judges and court administrators. Ms. Kopeikin also serves as a neutral for the Court as a mediator and early neutral evaluator. Prior to joining the Court, Ms. Kopeikin provided ADR services for more than 25 years, with the California State and Federal Courts, presiding over mandatory settlement conferences and day of court mediations in the California Superior Courts, and serving on the mediation and early neutral evaluation panels for the Northern District of California. She has also served as the co-chair and a mediator for her community’s mediation program and has taught mediation theory and practice as an adjunct professor. Ms. Kopeikin brings to her ADR practice a breadth of experience acquired as a lawyer in private practice for more than 30 years, having handled a wide range of civil litigation and counseling matters. She has specific expertise in intellectual property matters, complex commercial business disputes and related employment matters, and has handled a broad range of professional liability, regulatory and investigation matters. Kopeikin has practiced in the State and Federal Courts of California, numerous other states, as well as multi-district litigation, arbitration and international tribunals. She has tried cases to verdict and handled matters on appeal.

 

Tamara Lange is a mediator and arbitrator at JAMS. She’s known for her skillful management of high-conflict disputes and for her optimism, creativity, and tenacity. Ms. Lange previously served as ADR Director for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, where she mediated or served as a neutral evaluator in hundreds of cases, trained and supervised more than 200 court-appointed neutrals, and advised the Court on ADR-related local rules and case management. Ms. Lange regularly handles employment, healthcare, disability, intellectual property, civil rights, constitutional law, and complex commercial cases. Her careful preparation, trustworthiness, and ability to connect with the parties also have won her accolades in many other highly-specialized practice areas, including product liability, maritime, franchise, insurance, environmental, labor, and Native American law. From 1995 until she became a full-time neutral in 2015, Ms. Lange was a litigator at a large law firm in San Francisco, a boutique law firm in Los Angeles, the national ACLU’s LGBTQ & AIDS Project, the National Center for Youth Law, and Santa Clara County Counsel. She graduated from Berkeley Law, Order of the Coif, and served as a law clerk for judges on the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

 

Raman Maroz leads the Dispute Resolution topic of the Business Ready (World Bank Group) project, working on the design and implementation of indicators related to court litigation and alternative dispute resolution. He previously was in charge of the Enforcing Contracts indicator and contributed to the Resolving Insolvency topic in Doing Business. Raman’s research pieces regularly appear in World Bank products and law journals. Prior to joining the World Bank, he worked for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and clerked at the Constitutional Court of Belarus. Raman holds a Master of Laws (LL.M.) from the University of Notre Dame Law School where he was a Fulbright scholar, a Law degree from the Belarusian State University, and a university degree in Political Science and European Studies from the Université Montesquieu – Bordeaux IV.

 

Bridget M. O’Connell works as a Court Attorney Referee and Alternative Dispute Resolution Coordinator for the New York State Courts’ 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th Judicial Districts and the Court of Claims through the office of the Deputy Chief Administrative Judge for Courts Outside New York City. Bridget graduated from John Carroll University and attended the State University at Buffalo Schools of Law and Social Work where she  acquired a Juris Doctor and master’s degree in social work. Her path has included private practice, work with the local Community Dispute Resolution Center, teaching at UB Law and SUNY Buffalo and serving as Principal Law Clerk to the Hon. John F. O’Donnell, J.S.C. All of this has given her a deep appreciation for the many things to do with a law degree and the diversity of interests, needs and people that make up the legal community and the communities impacted by our work. Bridget is committed to organizations that promote the equal administration of justice and foster attorney well-being and professional development. She is a Past President of both the Bar Association of Erie County and the Western New York Chapter of the Women’s Bar Association of the State of New York and has served on their boards and chair ADR and matrimonial and family law related committees for each organization. She served on the NYSBA House of Delegates and is a member of the Women Lawyers of Western New York, the Minority Bar Association of Western New York, and the Onondaga County Bar Association. Recently, Bridget joined the board of the Charles S. Desmond Inn of Court. Bridget has most recently been recognized for her work with the Lamplighter Award from the 8th Judicial District’s Committee on Gender and Racial Fairness, the Woman Lawyer of the Year Award from the Women Lawyers of WNY and the Volunteer Lawyers Project VIP Award for her work on the Pro Se Civil Litigation Practicum at UB Law. She is a past recipient of the M. Dolores Denman Lady Justice Award from the WNY Chapter of WBASNY. Bridget is a proud, lifelong Buffalonian.

 

Glen Parker, Esq. serves as Assistant Deputy Chief Appellate Court Attorney for the Civil  Appeals Management Program (CAMP) and Mandatory Civil Appeals Mediation Program (MCAMP) for the New York State Appellate Division. He previously served as Associate Counsel in the Statewide ADR Program of the New York State Unified Court System. As his first career path after law school, Glen has served in the field of ADR in a number of capacities including: Manhattan Civil Court Mediation Coordinator, Restorative Justice Manager at New York Peace Institute, President of the Association for Conflict Resolution of Greater New York, and circle keeper for Hidden Water, a non-profit group that supports healing in a family system affected by child sexual abuse through restorative practices. Glen trains and publishes on restorative justice and conflict resolution, and is co-editor with Lela P. Love of Stories Mediators Tell: World Edition, published by the ABA. Glen received his B.A. in Philosophy at SUNY Purchase and his J.D. and LL.M. (Dispute Resolution and Advocacy) at Cardozo School of Law, where he also served as a Fellow for the Kukin Program for Conflict Resolution and was the founding professor for the Appropriate Dispute Resolution Field Clinic. He lives in Brooklyn.

 

Dorcas Quek has more than a decade of experience as a practicing mediator and in dispute research. Prior to joining academia in 2016, Dorcas was a District Judge in the State Courts for almost seven years, where she conducted mediation and early neutral evaluation for hundreds of civil and criminal cases, contributed to the courts’ mediation policies as well as published extensively concerning dispute resolution. She was earlier an Assistant Registrar in the Supreme Court and concurrently Assistant Director of the Singapore Mediation Centre (SMC). Dorcas is currently an Associate Professor of Law in the Singapore Management University’s Yong Pung How School of Law. Dorcas has been accredited by the International Mediation Institute and Singapore International Mediation Institute. She is a mediator with Singapore International Mediation Centre (SIMC), SMC, Asian Development Bank and the Office of the Ombudsman for UN Funds and Programmes. She is also a Fellow of the National Center for Dispute Resolution and Technology. Dorcas has conducted negotiation and mediation training in SMU, Attorney-General’s Chambers, Singapore, SIMC and SMC. Dorcas’ research focuses broadly on the interaction between dispute resolution and the substantive and procedural aspects of justice. She has also explored the influence of culture on the mediation process. Her dispute resolution research has been published in leading journals including Harvard Negotiation Law Review, Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution, Civil Justice Quarterly and Australasian Dispute Resolution Journal.

 

Kyungah “Kay” Suk is a Circuit Mediator at the Mediation Office for the U.S. Courts for the Ninth Circuit. Before joining the court, Kay was a mediator in private practice, a member of the American Arbitration Association and an Attorney Mediator with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing. Prior to focusing full-time on mediation, Kay was a Deputy Attorney General with the California Department of Justice as a civil litigator and an Administrative Law Judge with the California Office of Administrative Hearings. Raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Kay received her J.D. from the University of California at Davis and her B.A. and B.M. from Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music.

 

Emmett J. Ward is a seasoned dispute resolution expert with a distinguished career in both the District of Columbia and Maryland Judiciary. His leadership roles have been pivotal in the development and enhancement of dispute resolution programs. Most recently, Emmett served as the ADR Training Manager for the Multi-Door Dispute Resolution Division at the D.C. Superior Court, where he designed and implemented comprehensive training initiatives across the Civil and Family Branches’ nine dispute resolution programs. As a senior manager, he also oversaw division policies and provided ethical guidance to mediators and staff. Prior to this, Emmett contributed to the Maryland Judiciary’s Administrative Office of the Courts Mediation and Conflict Resolution Office (MACRO), offering technical assistance and evaluation support statewide. He was a key member of the Major Project Committee Online Dispute Resolution Work Group and served as an instructor at the Judicial College of Maryland, where he conducted 40-hour basic mediation training for judges, magistrates, court administrators, and staff. With thirteen years of experience as a lead mediator in Maryland District Court Day of Trial mediation programs and extensive mediation work in the Baltimore County Circuit Court Family Mediation Office, Emmett has mediated hundreds of cases. His expertise is further recognized through his certification as a performance-based mediator by Community Mediation Maryland. He holds a master’s degree in Conflict Analysis and Dispute Resolution from Salisbury University. Currently, Emmett serves as an associate Ombudsman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and leads Ward Mediation Solutions, a firm specializing in mediator training and consulting.

 

Jonathan Westen is a Circuit Mediator at the Mediation Office for the U.S. Courts for the Ninth Circuit. Prior to joining the mediation office, Jonathan served as a Supervising Staff Attorney for the Ninth Circuit. Before joining the court, Jonathan was a litigator at a national law firm in San Francisco. Jonathan serves as a volunteer panel mediator for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Jonathan went to Berkeley Law School and then clerked for Judge Bruce Black and Chief Judge Parker on the Federal District Court of New Mexico. Originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan, Jonathan has an undergraduate degree from Georgetown University, and before law school was a Fulbright Scholar in Accra, Ghana.

 

Learn More About The 2023 Program and Participants