Michael Dillo was born in May 1958 in Hannover, Germany. In 1984, he graduated as a civil engineer from the Technical University of Aachen, Germany. In his doctoral thesis, he specialized in underground structures in rock, which paved his way to Switzerland in 1991. Before becoming a professor of soil mechanics and foundation engineering at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts in 1999, he was involved in the Alptransit tunnel project in Switzerland and held a senior position in a geotechnical engineering office.

Working in the highly competitive civil engineering field, Michael became increasingly aware that many barriers in education, science, and business were created by a lack of understanding of communication between interlocutors. His observations led to a growing interest in communication and its impact on work processes, as well as on employees’ personal and private situations. It was during this phase of search that he became aware of Marshall Rosenberg, who had a home in Switzerland.

Rosenberg, a clinical psychologist, was the inventor of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) and founder of the CNVC (Center for Nonviolent Communication) in the USA. He worked worldwide in the field of conflict resolution and taught NVC for more than four decades in over sixty countries around the world.

Since 1997, Michael attended several seminars with Marshall and continuously deepened his NVC education. However, it took him quite a while to understand the difference between understanding NVC intellectually and internalizing it. In 2004, he was certified as a trainer by the CNVC. In 2013, he became an Assessor of Trainer Certification and a member of the Certification Coordinating Council (2015 – 2020) to coordinate CNVC’s worldwide education activities.

Today, Michael has shifted his work focus entirely to Nonviolent Communication. Michael works with NVC teams in the U.S. and Europe to support the spread of NVC. Over time, he has expanded his seminar and coaching activities beyond Switzerland and Germany to the U.S., Spain, Italy, Afghanistan, Brazil, Israel, Ukraine, Hungary, and most recently, Bangladesh.

Michael Dillo is married, has an adult son, and lives in Switzerland.