California Lawyers for the Arts Presents
MEDIATION SKILLS TRAINING
(EXTENDED EARLY BIRD DEADLINE: 10% off if you register by Friday, April 16th)
Want to join theAAMS mediator panel? Need a mediation skills refresher?
Join us for our 25-hour Mediation Skills Training and learn the art of conflict resolution! The training will occur across 6 sessions for a total of 25 hours. This registration will give you access to all 6 sessions required to complete the training. Please note that attendance to all 6 sessions is mandatory. See flyer below for dates and details.
Topics To be Covered
• Communication and active listening skills
•Problem identification and disagreement management skills
• Techniques for breaking impasse
•How to de-escalate tense interpersonal situations and deal with high conflict personalities
• Through the use of role-playing and interactive exercises, you will have the opportunity to practice all these skills -- and more.
Whether you are involved in human resources, education, legal services or arts administration, wish to develop your interpersonal skills, help your community, or are starting out on a new career path, you will find this Mediation Skills Training indispensable.
QUESTIONS?
EMAIL: Dina.howard@calawyersforthearts.org
PHONE: 916-708-2557
Trainers
VALLENE HARDMAN
Vallene earned an MFA in Spatial Arts, a BFA in Painting, an Art K-12 Teaching Certificate, and Professional Certification from UCDavis in Conflict Resolution and Business Communication. In addition to a longtime career as a university faculty member, Vallene is experienced in public school administration; private industry management of special project concept/creation including the Prism Gallery, a collection of international work by artists with autism; and coordinated the production of the Arts Alive textbook. Throughout the past three decades, Vallene has exhibited and lectured extensively, and her work can be found in corporate offices in the Eastern region of the United States as well as a private collection in France. She continues to create and exhibit artwork, and jury art exhibitions, including the annual Modern Masters Exhibition of the Sacramento Bar Association; the Sacramento Region Arts & Business Council Awards; and the annual California State Fair art. Vallene is a Program Director for California Lawyers for the Arts, and since 2008, serves as a mediator/trainer in the Sacramento region.
Aaron Larks-Stanford
Aaron Larks-Stanford is the AAMS Program Coordinator at California Lawyers for the Arts, Los Angeles. Years of experience as a labor lawyer brought Aaron to a career in mediation. He is trained and certified by the California Academy of Mediation Professionals, the Los Angeles County Bar Association, and the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office. As a court and community mediator with the Los Angeles County Department of Consumer and Business Affairs (DCBA) and the Center for Conflict Resolution (CCR), he helps parties resolve neighbor-neighbor conflicts, landlord-tenant disputes, intra-organizational conflicts, and business and employment issues. Aaron also mediates family cases as a lead mediator with Southern California Family Mediation (SCFM), as well as disputes between members of the community and officers of the LAPD through the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office. In addition to AAMS, he's been a mediation trainer and coach for the DCBA, SCFM and the Asian Pacific American Dispute Resolution Center (APADRC). Aaron is also an arbitrator with the Los Angeles County Bar Association and a member of the Southern California Mediation Association and the California Bar Association
ALMA ROBINSON
Alma Robinson joined California Lawyers for the Arts (CLA) as the founding Director of Arts Arbitration and Mediation Services in 1980, and has since produced many mediation training programs in California as well as throughout the nation. She currently is the Executive Directive of CLA. Through CLA's Arts in Corrections Initiative, she produced a series of demonstration projects that showed the benefits of arts programs for incarcerated persons. In 2014, the results of this collaborative evidence-based research were used to facilitate an initial inter-agency agreement between the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the California Arts Council for a $2.5 million pilot project providing arts programs in 20 prisons that has send grown into an $8/million/year program in all 36. state prisons. She received her law degree from Stanford University and a BA with honors in history from Middlebury College.
EMILY PATTERSON
Emily Patterson is the Mediation Services Director for the Sacramento CARES Mediation Program at California Lawyers for the Arts. She holds a J.D. from the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law and a B.A. in Family and Consumer Sciences from Sacramento State University. Emily’s Appellate Brief was nominated for the McGeorge Global Lawyering Skills Best Brief Award, and she was the recipient of the Witkin Award in American Legal History for a paper she wrote on the History of Judicial Costume. Emily also represents CLA as the co-chair of the Modern Masters of America Art Show for Operation Protect and Defend, a project of the Justice Anthony M. Kennedy Library and Learning Center. She is trained in mediation, arbitration, and conflict resolution through CLA and McGeorge School of Law.
DINA HOWARD
Dina Howard is the Program Director for Arts Arbitration and Mediation Services (AAMS) for Northern California and the Sacramento Mediation Center (SMC) programs of California Lawyers for the Arts. Dina has been working for or running arts and non-profit organizations for most of her career including having been the Managing Director of the B Street Theatre, Executive Director of Los Angeles based Voices in Harmony, and Assistant Director for the LA office of the international New Israel Fund. She has also spent many years freelancing doing writing, public speaking, and radio journalism projects and volunteering as a board member or a “worker bee” for various non-profits and political commissions/campaigns. Dina has a BA in English from UCLA and an MBA in Non-Profit Management from American Jewish University and has taken and taught mediation training throughout California for the past 20 years. Between undergrad and graduate school Dina spent a decade as a professional actress working in film, television, theatre, and commercials. Dina starred in a feature film that won the Sundance Film Festival and her radio documentary, Dina's Diary – Journey of a Cancer Survivor for NPR won the Associated Press Mark Twain Award for Best Documentary and the PRINDI Best Documentary for 2006.
JODY PRUNER
Jody Prunier JD, MSW is an Associate Director of California Lawyers for the Arts and Director of Sacramento programs. She has a JD from Golden Gate University and practiced law as an Assistant District Attorney in Worcester County, Massachusetts for over twenty years, handling everything from juveniles and jury trials to mental health issues and appeals. With her M.S.W. from Ohio State University and stints at both the National Council on Alcoholism and as a Clinical Coordinator at the Marshal Hale Hospital, she then trained as a mediator. Jody has mediated a wide variety of disputes including small claims, landlord/tenant, civil harassment restraining orders, and other civil cases. She is passionate about community engagement and is on several area boards, and is forever interested in everything arts related. Jody lives with her husband, three teen sons, and Chloe the Frenchton, having moved here six years ago from Lenox, MA.
JESSICA YEH
Jessica Yeh is the CLA Program Director for Arts Arbitration and Mediation Services (AAMS) for the San Francisco Bay Area and the Arbitration Administrator statewide. She is a mediator and attorney based in the same region. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in Legal Studies, and minors in Theatre and Music, and subsequently received her law degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Law with a specialty in Litigation Skills. Her legal background includes alternative dispute resolution, non-profit law, and government. She has mediated cases in a wide range of issues, court levels, and in various cities across the Bay Area. She has also taught and implemented interpersonal communication skills while working in various capacities with nonprofits and nationally recognized corporations. She is excited to work with the CLA team to train new mediators.
GLORIA OSTER
Gloria Ruiz Oster brings over two decades of experience as an attorney, consultant and nonprofit administrator to her role as California Lawyers for the Arts’ Deputy Director and Southern California Director. She oversees all programs and services, staff and interns in the Los Angeles and San Diego offices of CLA and helps coordinate statewide educational planning and marketing/social media efforts for the organization. She is also working on CLA's advocacy, social justice and arts in community development initiatives. Her previous endeavors as a consultant illustrate her long-term commitment to driving non-profit organizations, foundations, small businesses, individual artists and entrepreneurs to excel by maximizing their resources and capitalizing on their competencies. Her earlier work as an entertainment attorney, both in private practice and as General Counsel and Head of Business & Legal Affairs at a motion picture production company, concentrated on providing legal advice and strategic guidance to members of the creative community. She served as Associate Director of the Santa Monica office of CLA at the outset of her career, having also administered the organization’s Arts Arbitration and Mediation Services program and trained mediators in the national cohort of Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts organizations. Gloria completed both her Juris Doctor and Bachelor of Arts with Honors in International Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and she serves on the Board Committee for Diversity and Inclusivity at The Wesley School in North Hollywood, California.
