John has offered communication and conflict resolution to people around the world, including work with Afghan tribal elders along the Pakistani border in early 2002. John specializes in NVC mediation as a spiritual practice, and over the past 7 years he has co-developed with colleague Ike Lasater NVC mediation training that now includes 5-day residential retreats and year-long immersion programs in the U.S., Europe, and Australia. He has been a trainer of the Center for Nonviolent Communication (CNVC)since 2000 and is a co-founder of the Bay Area NVC organization (BayNVC). He has studied and worked closely with NVC founder Marshall Rosenberg since 1998 and has been regularly invited by him to be a staff trainer at 9-day international intensive trainings.

John has mediated conflicts on just about every level of human relationship, including couples, family, community, business, legal contexts and institutions. In organizations he has had particular experience with family businesses. John's mediation practice has included an entire graduate faculty of the University of California at Los Angeles, the Executive vice Chancellor and all the vice chancellors at another UC system university, numerous family businesses, families with inheritance issues, faculty and administration in alternative schools, personal and business partnership dissolutions, and individuals and groups desiring conflict coaching and communication training support.

John's professional background is in academic psychology and psychotherapy, particularly in Carl Rogers' study of empathic listening, congruence, and unconditional positive regard, and also Mahatma Gandhi's life and work applying nonviolence to social change. John received his B.A. from the University of San Francisco, where he majored in studies of psychology and philosophy and played for their nationally ranked soccer team. He went on to receive an M.S. degree in clinical psychology from Penn State University, spending 5 years of doctoral training working as a psychotherapist with individuals and groups, and as a research assistant at the Penn State Stress and Anxiety Disorders Institute. After graduate school, John helped start and develop a small business in the gourmet food industry, and then went on start two NVC businesses. John lives with his wife and three children in the San Francisco Bay Area. For more information about NVC see www.baynvc.org, www.cnvc.org, and www.nonviolentcommunication.com.