SHARING NEGOTIATION WORKS’ UNIQUE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE NEGOTIATION FIELD

NW Executive Director Melissa Reinberg, Cynthia Wang, Daniel Ames, and Hannah Riley Bowles

This past July, Executive Director Melissa Reinberg had the privilege to speak on a panel titled Expanding Access to Negotiation Education for Less Privileged Communities: Opportunities for Teaching, Outreach, and Research, at the International Association for Conflict Management's Annual Meeting in Burlington, Vermont. Co-panelists included Hannah Riley Bowles, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Management at the Harvard Kennedy School, and Daniel Ames, Professor of Business at Columbia Business School. Cynthia Wang, Clinical Professor of Management & Organizations and Executive Director of Northwestern University’s Dispute Resolution and Research Center moderated the panel. Conference attendees were primarily negotiation faculty from business and law schools around the world. Melissa and her co-panelists shared their experiences teaching negotiation and conflict resolution to people from historically marginalized communities, with the goal of strengthening the network of negotiation scholars and educators interested in providing similar services.

Given Negotiation Works’ unique program structure and participant base, the conference offered Melissa an opportunity to share our important contributions to the field of negotiation. Before we started providing our programs in the DC area, customized negotiation skills programs--known throughout academic, legal, and executive arenas to lead to a reduction in and better management of conflict--had not typically been offered in historically underserved communities. Melissa described to the attendees how Negotiation Works fills this gap: now, individuals returning to the community from prison or homelessness or facing other barriers have access, through our programs, to the self-advocacy and conflict resolution training that would make them more effective at handling many situations they regularly face dealing with landlords, employers, family members, and others. Negotiation Works looks forward to expanding our impact by supporting academics and other community groups who seek to provide these important programs.