After many years with CNVC, I have stepped away (in 2026) from my role as a CNVC Certified Trainer and Assessor.
I will be continuing to follow many of the same threads through research and writing — exploring what it means to be human, how we meet loss and transformation, how we make meaning, and how we find our way toward one another and ourselves.
My work with Nonviolent Communication was rooted in a love of what becomes possible when people gather with the skills, courage and curiosity to meet one another more fully. I was particularly drawn to the longer journey: retreats, immersions, trainer candidate programs, facilitation training, and explorations of the spiritual dimensions of NVC. I cared deeply about growing and strengthening the CNVC community itself — connecting with like-skilled people across cultures and places, celebrating what binds us together while working to create a network that holds greater diversity.
My years as a Trainer and Assessor offered meaningful opportunities to support individuals in discovering who they were without the layers of defensiveness, judgement, labels and unspoken expectations. It brought me great joy to support the unique expression of each person as they discovered, trusted and expressed what was distinctly themselves.
The first chapter of my journey with NVC took place largely in the public sphere. I mediated processes concerning National Parks, land-use planning, community policing, environmental assessment, wildlife management, leadership in urban slums, Indigenous heritage and rights, international development and co-housing. My work took me to India, Ecuador, Switzerland, Chile and Mexico. In Ecuador, I developed community-based planning processes that were implemented at both municipal and national levels.
Bringing NVC into this work led me somewhere much more intimate: into the heart of my closest relationships and my understanding of myself. I am deeply grateful for the ways it transformed how I parented and how I navigate my relationships.
What remains is considerable gratitude for the people with whom I learned, taught, struggled, experimented, travelled, laughed and built community — and for the many ways this work changed the course of my own life.
