Teaching connection around the globe
John and Ike’s approach has been well-received around the world. Between them, they have trained thousands of people on four continents, in places as remote as the Afghanistan–Pakistan border. Their yearlong NVC Mediation Immersion Program has been offered in four languages in five countries—Australia, the Netherlands, Poland, South Korea, and the United States.
Meet John, Ike, and our co-trainers
John Kinyon
Ike Lasater
Newt Bailey
Ania Mills
Lisa Montana
Sigal Shoham
Lori Woodley
John Kinyon
John has studied and worked closely with NVC founder Marshall Rosenberg since 1998, becoming a leader in the NVC community in his own right. He has been a trainer for the International Center for Nonviolent Communication since 2000 and is a cofounder of the Bay Area NVC organization.
Since 2003, John has been collaborating with Ike Lasater on an innovative approach to teaching and learning NVC Mediation. The partnership first began in the wake of US military actions that followed 9/11, with a 2002 journey to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to do a training with Afghan tribal elders. There, John and Ike experienced anew the power and universality of NVC, which succeeded despite the eight languages in the room.
Today, John and Ike offer yearlong NVC Mediation immersion training programs around the world. The growing list of locations already includes the United States, Poland, South Korea, Holland, and Australia. Training is also available through telecourses, workshops, and multiday intensives.
Over the years, John has mediated conflicts in a wide variety of contexts: personal, family, community, business, and legal. He has worked with an entire graduate faculty of the University of California at Los Angeles, numerous small and family businesses, families in conflict over inheritance issues, faculty and administration in alternative schools, people and businesses dissolving relationships, and individuals and groups in need of conflict coaching and communication training support.
John’s background is in psychology. After earning a BA from the University of San Francisco, where he studied psychology and philosophy, he went on to earn a degree in clinical psychology from Penn State University. During his five years of doctoral training, he worked 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 launch and develop a small commercial business before embracing full-time communication and conflict resolution work.
John lives with his wife and three children in the San Francisco Bay Area. Click here to learn more about workshops and teleclasses with John.
“We have the ability to return to connection and collaboration when in conflict, no matter how great the differences or divide or emotional pain. It’s learnable. I believe our collective well-being and evolution on this planet depend on it. In our trainings, when I see participants learning and practicing these skills, working with real situations from their lives, I am often in awe as I witness lives changing before my eyes.”
Ike Lasater
Ike was introduced to NVC in 1996, when he attended a workshop presented by Marshall Rosenberg. He was immediately taken by what he heard. Thus began a learning odyssey and a long association with Marshall, with whom he spent several years studying and working. Since 2002, he has presented or facilitated workshops in 11 countries.
Since 2003, Ike has been collaborating with John Kinyon on an innovative approach to teaching and learning NVC Mediation. The partnership first began in the wake of US military actions that followed 9/11, with a 2002 journey to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to do a training with Afghan tribal elders. There, Ike and John experienced anew the power and universality of NVC, which succeeded despite the eight languages in the room.
Today, Ike and John offer yearlong NVC Mediation immersion training programs around the world. The growing list of locations already includes the United States, Poland, South Korea, Holland, and Australia. Training is also available through telecourses, workshops, and multiday intensives.
Ike’s book Words That Work in Business: A Practical Guide to Effective Communication in the Workplace was published in 2010. He also contributed to What We Say Matters: Practicing Nonviolent Communication.
Over the years, Ike has served on the boards of the Center for Nonviolent Communication (1999–2005) and the Association for Dispute Resolution of Northern California (2005–2008). He also served on the mediation panel for the United States District Court for the Northern District of California (2003–2009).
Ike’s background is in law. For 20 years, he was a high-stakes litigation lawyer in the federal and state courts of California. In San Francisco, he cofounded Banchero & Lasater, a 20-person law firm that specialized in complex multiparty commercial and environmental cases. In the legal context, he experienced “mediation” as a process of threatening and cajoling the parties to reach settlement. That changed when he met Marshall and saw that mediation could be a life-affirming way to understand and communicate what was really important between people. NVC’s approach was congruent with his values, developed through long-term practices of Zen meditation, yoga—he cofounded Yoga Journal in 1975—and aikido.
Ike lives in a suburb of Warsaw, Poland, with Ania Mills, a CNVC Certified Trainer. They co-facilitate the Poland NVC Mediation Immersion Program
“My hope for the work I’m doing is for people to be able to be heard across gulfs of discord and cultural training regarding culture, class, religion, sexual orientation, and so on. I want hope, and I want others to have hope, that we can deal with these issues in ways that strengthen our communities and our capacity to deal with even bigger issues—such as climate change, geopolitical conflicts over ideologies, and scarce resources.”
Newt Bailey
Newt first started training with John and Ike in 2005. In 2006, he began mediating conflicts and sharing NVC with others. Today, he coleads the Heartland NVC Mediation yearlong program, the first program to realize John and Ike’s dream of having their students lead yearlong programs following their curriculum. He is also a Collaborative Trainer with Bay Area Nonviolent Communication (BayNVC)
In his private practice as a communication trainer and coach, mediator, and facilitator, Newt works primarily with couples and organizations in the for-profit, education, and not-for-profit sectors. He has also taught NVC in San Quentin prison. He appears with Miki Kashtan on the TV show Conflict Hotline.
Newt lives in San Francisco’s Mission District with two cats whose conflicts he frequently mediates. For more about Newt, visit www.newtbailey.com.
“NVC Mediation has hugely reduced my fear of conflict and increased my capacity to speak up when I’m not enjoying what’s happening in any given situation or relationship. It has also given me the enormous gift of helping people in conflict to figure out what’s really important to them and to work together toward mutually satisfying, and often quite surprising, resolutions.”
Ania Mills
Ania co-facilitates the Poland NVC Mediation Immersion Program with Ike and has co-facilitated with both Ike and John in five countries. She has been incorporating NVC into her everyday life since it was first introduced into Poland—with her help—in 2001. She has studied with NVC founder Marshall Rosenberg and with international trainers in France, Hungary, Poland, Sweden, and the United States. A trainer since 2003, she became a CNVC Certified Trainer in 2008.
A full-time NVC trainer and mediator, Ania also works with groups and couples and has facilitated workshops for the education sector, government organizations, NGOs, and businesses (Citibank, ING Bank, Nokia Siemens). A recent professional interest is training trainers—offering NVC as tool for improving quality and efficiency for trainers in other disciplines. In 2009, she completed postgraduate Trainer Studies at Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities.
Ania lives in Warsaw, Poland, with her daughter and Ike Lasater. Her website is nvc.com.pl.
“What keeps motivating me in my work as trainer is hearing feedback from participants. They came to the training to learn new skills, but as they begin to apply them, they realize the training is really about changing their lives.”
Lisa Montana
Lisa has been involved with NVC since 2005, when she first came to the Bay Area Center for Nonviolent Communication (BayNVC). She is now a trainer there. She started training with John and Ike in 2006 and has been teaching with them since 2007.
She has studied various aspects of NVC with Marshall Rosenberg, Miki and Inbal Kashtan (who cofounded BayNVC with John), and Dominic Barter, who works with UNESCO in Brazil and offers international trainings in restorative justice.
In her private practice, Lisa, a business consultant for more than two decades, offers mediation, conflict coaching, and private trainings to individuals, businesses, and organizations around the country. She is also trained in improvisational storytelling, which she finds enhances her mediation skills by teaching her to listen deeply and stay connected, even when other people’s beliefs and experiences are different from her own.
Lisa lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. To contact Lisa, write her at letter4lisa@yahoo.com.
“I value NVC Mediation for the meaning, insight, and sense of community it brings to my life. I believe that practicing NVC helps to build the world I want to live in, and it’s important to me to translate its principles into language that’s accessible and relevant to people from diverse cultures and backgrounds.”
Sigal Shoham
Sigal has been mediating, training, and facilitating NVC professionally since 2003. As a lead trainer for Bay Area Nonviolent Communication, she has trained over 1,500 people and supported dozens of organizations.
Beyond her private practice, Sigal has mediated for San Francisco’s small claims court; Community Boards (a nonprofit community resolution center); and the Office of Citizen Complaints. She is pursuing graduate studies at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University, with a focus on organizational leadership and peace building.
Sigal lives in the Bay Area with Kyle (her honey) and Huckleberry (their dog). In her spare time, she develops and performs one-woman theater pieces that satirize the world of personal-growth workshops. For more about Sigal, visit www.sigalshoham.com.
“It sounds selfish, but I do this work because it makes me feel good. If I help two people get through their divorce with even the smallest bit more ease, or the principal of a school support her teachers with the tiniest bit more understanding, or a parent see things from his teenager’s perspective even for a second … I feel as though I’ve participated in a bit of magic.”
Lori Woodley
A CPA turned Unity minister, Lori offers NVC workshops, mediation, coaching, and spiritual direction. She co-facilitates and organizes the USA Heartland NVC Mediation Immersion Program—the first to fulfill John and Ike’s goal of others leading immersion programs. She has attended more than seven weeks of NVC Mediation training with John and Ike, has participated in three yearlong US immersion programs, and is a candidate for CNVC certification.
Lori earned her Masters of Divinity from Unity Institute. She founded Peace Matters, an alternative ministry devoted to helping others connect to themselves and others. She has also attended peacemaking training with the Lombard Mennonite Center, is a certified Ministry Peacemaking and Transitional Consultant, and is an approved divorce mediator in the state of Missouri.
Lori and her family live in Kansas City, Missouri. She invests her personal time in her family and friends, study, a formal mediation and prayer practice, yoga, and nature. For more about Lori, visit www.peacematters.com.
“When someone connects to their needs in my presence, I don’t need to see them, because the very energy in the room changes. To me, what I am witnessing is sacred, because I believe they are connecting to their true essence. This is what I have devoted my life to, these moments of connection.”
Click here to meet our co-facilitators for the 2012 flexible training options.