2023 Zurich Spring Conference Speakers

Karen Eber

Keynote Address: Shared Experiences: The Art and Science of Storytelling 

Karen Eber is an international consultant, author, and keynote speaker. Her talk on TED.com – How Your Brain Responds to Stories – and Why They’re Crucial for Leaders – has almost 2 million views. She is publishing “The Perfect Story: How to Tell Stories That Inform, Influence, and Inspire” with HarperCollins in 2023.

As the CEO and Chief Storyteller of Eber Leadership Group, Karen helps companies reimagine and evolve how they build empathic and curious leaders and teams, transform culture and inspire with storytelling.

Karen works with Fortune 500 companies including General Electric, ADP, Carrier, Guardian Life, Kraft Heinz, Microsoft, Home Depot, Facebook, Kate Spade, Big Four Consulting Firms, and Stuart Weitzman. She guest lectures for Universities like  MIT, London Business School, and Stanford. Karen is a frequent contributor to Fast Company.

Known for her storytelling, Karen helps  audiences and organizations challenge their understanding of how to shape culture and build healthy leaders and teams. She couples stories with clarity on the path forward and practical steps to take to drive change.

With 20+ years of experience, Karen has been a Head of Culture and Chief Learning Officer at General Electric and a Head of Leadership Development at Deloitte. She is a four-time American Training and Development winner.

Karen holds a Master’s in Instructional Design and a Bachelor’s in Psychology and resides in Atlanta, GA.

Roberto Azevêdo

Session: Conflict Resolution: From Alchemy to Chemistry

Roberto Azevêdo is PepsiCo’s Executive Vice President, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer. He is also Chairman of the Board of Directors of PepsiCo Foundation.
In his role, Azevêdo oversees Public Policy and Government Affairs, Communications, and The PepsiCo Foundation, while also working closely with the Sustainability team. His areas of focus include solidifying PepsiCo’s engagement with national and international governments, regulators, international organizations, and non-governmental stakeholders, all of which is informed by his political skills and technical knowledge of the complex social, political, and regulatory environments impacting companies like PepsiCo. He assumed the role in September 2020.

Prior to joining PepsiCo, Azevêdo worked as a career diplomat, most recently serving as Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) since 2013. During his tenure, the WTO expanded its membership with the inclusion of half a dozen new members and delivered the Trade Facilitation Agreement, the expansion of the Information Technology Agreement, and decisions on food security, such as the elimination of agricultural export subsidies. Under his mandate, new and creative platforms allowed the launching of negotiations on e-commerce, facilitation of investments, and domestic regulation of services.

Before that, he was Brazil’s Ambassador to the WTO. Azevêdo headed the Brazilian delegation in trade negotiations and was Brazil’s chief ligitator in WTO disputes. He both chaired and served as adjudicator on WTO panels. Over his career he held several posts in the Brazilian Foreign Ministry, including as Undersacretary for Economic Affairs, Head of the Economic Department, and Director of the Dispute Settlement Office.

Azevêdo graduated from the University of Brasilia with a degree in Electrical Engineering. He also holds a degree from ‘Instituto Rio Branco’, the Brazilian graduate school on diplomacy.  He and his wife have two daughters and six granddaughters. Azevêdo is based in Purchase, N.Y.

Emily Alison  

Session: Rapport-Based Methods of Interviewing: How to Get Information Without Asking Questions

Emily Alison is the managing director of Protagoras Forensic Services and Interventions Ltd. She has worked as a behavioural consultant psychologist for the last 20 years, providing treatment in both the criminal justice sector and in the community. Emily specialises in the assessment and treatment of violence and has worked with over 850 domestic violence perpetrators as well as designed therapeutic interventions for Domestic Abuse, Child to Parent Violence, Healthy Relationships for Children and Young People, Sexually Harmful Behaviour and Sexual Risk Taking in Adolescents, and Gang and Weapon linked offending.

For the last 10 years, she has been a research associate with the University of Liverpool and has been involved in the development of the Preventing Violent Extremism Tool for profiling potential extremism and the ORBIT framework for Advanced High Value Detainee Interviewing.

Bill Marsh  

Presentation Contributor: Rapport-Based Methods of Interviewing: How to Get Information Without Asking Questions

Bill Marsh has mediated full-time since 1991 in commercial and other disputes involving governments, national and international businesses, professional firms, factions, pressure groups, and individuals from over 50 countries, covering virtually every area of law and business. In addition to his commercial mediation practice, he also mediates in conflicts involving religious, ethnic, political, and human rights issues.

Bill has served as adviser on mediation/conflict resolution to governments including Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Saudi Arabia, and bodies such as the European Union Commission, the United Nations, and the World Bank.  He trains and mentors mediators from around the world, has served as Special Adviser on Reconciliation to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and in 2016 received the Archbishop’s inaugural award for outstanding services to reconciliation.  Bill is a Distinguished Fellow of the International Academy of Mediators and also represented the UK in the UN negotiations to produce the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Mediation.

Sukhsimranjit Singh

Session: Resolving Conflicts with Heart and Mind 

Dr. Sukhsimranjit Singh’s career is built on the foundations of peaceful methods of resolving difficult conflict. He looks forward to hearing from others and their stories. His strong belief in building people up is rooted in hard work and in genuine human connection and has trained more than three thousand business professionals, graduate students in dispute resolution.

Dr. Singh is Judge Danny Weinstein Managing Director of the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law, where he also serves as Professor and Dean of Graduate Law Programs. Within this capacity, Dr. Singh oversaw the Institute’s global outreach efforts, world-class professional training programs, and rigorous academic curriculum. His expertise is in advanced mediation, cross-cultural practice, faith-based mediation, and utilizing modern theories, science, and technology to devise creative solutions for global disputes. He previously taught at USC School of Law, Willamette University, Hamline University, as well as in India at the National Law University. 

Dr. Singh has given keynotes, lectures, and training on dispute resolution in more than 30 states and 45 countries. A TEDx Speaker, he is on JAMS and AAA Panels and is a proud father of a daughter (Apar) who will change the world.

Ulla Glässer

Panelist: Do Mediators Really Practice Differently Around the World: An Exploration of Mediation Concepts, Styles, and Strategies

Dr. Ulla Glässer holds a full professorship of mediation, conflict management, and procedural theory at the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder)/Germany. She is academic director of the Institute for Conflict Management and the postgraduate, interdisciplinary Master’s Program on Mediation at the European University. Her academic teaching and research covers the following subject areas: mediation, conflict management, conflict resolution procedures, Civil Procedure Law, Private Law (contracts, torts), and Family Law. She has been teaching/training mediation, negotiation and ADR skills at a number of universities in Germany and abroad, for the German Academy of Judges, the United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG) and numerous other institutions.

Ulla has published broadly on mediation methodology, the legal framework of mediation in Germany and Europe, quality assurance of mediation and other ADR procedures and the establishment of mediation, ADR procedures and Online Dispute Resolution in various realms of society. She is editor of two Publication Series on Mediation and Conflict Management and a commentary on the German Mediation Act.

Besides her academic activities, Ulla also practices as a business mediator and facilitator. She supports dispute resolution and decision making processes within and between all types of organisations – ranging from family owned companies to large international corporations. Her work has taken her to Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United States.

Michel Kallipetis

Panelist: Do Mediators Really Practice Differently Around the World: An Exploration of Mediation Concepts, Styles, and Strategies

Michel Kallipetis KC has 40 years’ experience as a practicing barrister in the field of general commercial, professional negligence, and employment work, and some 15 years sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge sitting in Queen’s Bench, Chancery and the TCC, provides a reliable basis for Michel’s ability to mediate most civil and commercial disputes. Twelve years ago, he left Littleton Chambers, of which he had been Head, and founded Independent Mediators Ltd, to practice as a full-time mediator. He is recognized in The Legal Directories as an expert in his field in Mediation in the UK and internationally.

He is a Distinguished Fellow and the immediate Past President of the International Academy of Mediators.  He was the first Chairman of the England and Wales Bar Council ADR Committee, a member of the working party which drafted the EU Code of Practice for Mediators, and gave expert opinion to JURI, the legal service committee of the European Parliament, prior to its adopting the European ADR Directive, and was a representative at the UNCITRAL Working Group II which drafted the Singapore Convention for the Enforcement of International Commercial Mediation Settlement Agreements. In 2012, he was invited to join the Singapore Mediation Centre’s International Panel of Mediators. He was recognized by Who’s Who Legal as a Thought Leader in 2016 and 2017 and as Mediator of the year in 2017.

Douglas Murphy

Panelist: Do Mediators Really Practice Differently Around the World: An Exploration of Mediation Concepts, Styles, and Strategies

Doug Murphy KC has practised as a barrister in Brisbane, Australia since 1980.  

As an adjunct to his legal practice, he began mediating in the mid-nineties. Having initially trained at Bond University’s Centre for Dispute Resolution on the Gold Coast, Australia, he also undertook further training at the Strauss Institute at Pepperdine University, Malibu, Ca.

He was inducted as a Distinguished Fellow of the IAM in Toronto in 1913 and  became a member of its Board of Governors in 2021. He is recognised as a leading commercial mediator in Who’s Who Legal.

Doug was a Director of Australia’s National Mediators Accreditation System for six years until he retired from that Board last year. He was a member of the Queensland Bar Council for 18 years, serving as its Honorary Secretary and Treasurer for eight years and on its ADR Committee for more than ten years. In 2019 he was elected an Honorary Life Member in recognition of his service to the legal profession and Alternative Dispute Resolution.

Varuna Bhandari Gugnani

Panelist: Do Mediators Really Practice Differently Around the World: An Exploration of Mediation Concepts, Styles, and Strategies

A practicing lawyer since 1991 and a full-time mediator since 2009, IAM Distinguished Fellow Varuna Bhandari Gugnani has served as a court-appointed mediator, private practice mediator, arbitrator, and conciliator.

She is one of the first trained mediators of the Supreme Court Mediation Centre and is a Senior Mediator, Trainer, and Observer at the Supreme Court of India. She uses her extraordinary skills to resolve even the most complex disputes in a short amount of time, restoring communication and relationships between the disputing parties.

Varuna is a pioneer in mediation who conducts more than 500 mediations a year in all genres of disputes, including matrimonial and family, contractual, commercial, industrial, and intellectual property. She conducts numerous awareness programs intended to bring mediation to the forefront as a first option in dispute resolution, and was honored as “Star Woman Lawyer of the Year” at the Legal Era Woman in Law Excellence Awards in 2021.

Hal Abramson

Breakout Session: What to do When Values Conflict with Neutrality  

Professor Hal Abramson, Touro Law Center in New York, has been deeply involved in the development and practice of domestic and international dispute resolution for more than twenty-five years. He contributes as a teacher, trainer, author, and participant on professional committees and serves actively as a mediator and facilitator. He also has taught or trained on dispute resolution in twenty-two countries on six continents. Professor Abramson has been selected for the International Who’s Who of Commercial Mediation since its inaugural year. He is an award-winning author with three of his numerous publications receiving awards from the CPR International Institute for Conflict Resolution.

Orit Asnin

Breakout Session:  Should Politics Be Part of the Conversation?

Orit Asnin has been a full-time mediator since 1999. Previously a commercial attorney, she specializes in commercial and inter-personal conflict management. Orit has vast experience mediating multi-party disputes, and she often mediates conflicts which are emotionally loaded or involving extreme cross-cultural differences.

Orit has mediated more than 5,000 conflicts, with both Israeli and international parties. She is one of Israel’s most experienced mediators and one of the pioneers in the field of mediation in Israel. Her daily mediations as well as her public work in the Israeli Bar have contributed to the current common usage of mediation in Israel.

Orit often speaks at international conferences, reflecting on the many aspects and dimensions of mediation. 

Rob Daisley

Breakout Session: “Used Car” Negotiations vs Modern Mediation  

Robert Daisley is a full-time mediator who mediates approximately 250 cases a year in a wide range of subject matters including insurance, construction defect, professional liability, contracts, employment and personal injury. He has mediated over 4,500 cases since becoming certified in 2004 by the Florida state and federal courts.  He is a Distinguished Fellow and former Board member/Membership Chair of the IAM.  

Rob lives in Tampa, Florida with his wife Chantal.  They have four children and three grandchildren.  Rob also teaches Les Mills BodyPump and guides canoe trips in the northern Ontario wilderness for Camp Temagami. 

Kim Deck

Breakout Session: Staying Centered in the Barrage of Conflict  

Kim Deck Esq., a full-time mediator since 1998, specializes in resolving employment, entertainment, business and commercial matters. She has extensive dispute resolution experience and has served in a variety of ADR roles including mediator, neutral fact-finder, facilitator conflict resolution coach and trainer for a variety of organizations. Ms. Deck served as Associate General Counsel and Manager of the Employment Dispute Resolution Group at JAMS. Ms. Deck has resolved the majority of the approximately 4500 matters she has mediated, and has a broad understanding of the unique needs and interests of litigants in a diverse range of industries.

An IAM Distinguished Fellow, Ms. Deck has been recognized as a Top 40 California Neutral by the Daily Journal and is a recipient of the Association of Media and Entertainment Counsel’s “Peacemaker of the Year” award.

Duncan Glaholt

Breakout Session: Lessons from Mediations That Don’t Settle  

Duncan W. Glaholt, C.Arb. is the founder and principal of Glaholt ADR Inc. a provider of independent mediation and arbitration services to the construction industry. Duncan is now counsel to the leading and nationally recognized construction law firm that he founded, Glaholt Bowles LLP. Duncan has practiced construction law since his call to the Bar of Ontario in 1979, resolving a wide range of disputes in the energy, infrastructure and resource industries. Since 2019 Duncan has devoted his full time to the mediation and arbitration of construction disputes. He has mediated disputes in every sector of the construction economy. He has chaired arbitration, dispute review, dispute adjudication, and combined dispute boards.

Duncan is regular speaker in the area of construction industry ADR and is the author, co-author, and editor of several standard reference books on construction law and alternative dispute resolution. These include Halsbury’s Laws of Canada’s Construction and Alternative Dispute Resolution titles (Lexis-Nexis, 2021 and 2022) and The Law of ADR in Canada: An Introductory Guide, 3rd edition (LexisNexis, 2022). Mr. Glaholt has also authored Construction Trusts (1998, Carswell) and earlier editions of Conduct of a Lien Action and the Annotated Ontario Construction Act (Carswell). He is a co-author of Bristow, Glaholt, Reynolds and Wise on Construction, Builders’ and Mechanics’ Liens in Canada, (8th edition, Carswell, 2020). Mr. Glaholt is an Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto.

Duncan is the recipient of the Ontario Bar Association Award of Excellence in Construction Law and the Toronto Construction Association lifetime achievement award.

Nina Khouri

Breakout Session: How Much Preparation is Needed for a Mediator, Really?  

Nina Khouri is a leading mediator in Aotearoa/New Zealand specialising in the resolution of civil and commercial disputes, including construction, insurance, energy/infrastructure, public/private partnership, contract, tort and trust disputes.  She has particular expertise in natural disaster insurance disputes and is currently working with the New Zealand government supervising the settlement of several thousand civil claims arising from the Christchurch earthquakes in 2010/2011.  Nina is also an Academic Fellow at the University of Auckland Faculty of Law, where she teaches and researches in dispute resolution theory and practice. She is a barrister sole in New Zealand, holds an LLM from NYU (where she studied as a Fulbright and Vanderbilt scholar in 2005/2006) and received her first mediator accreditation from the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution in the United Kingdom in 2006. 

Jonathan Lloyd-Jones

Breakout Session: The Court: Friend or Foe to the Mediator  

Jonathan Lloyd-Jones is a commercial mediator based in London and Oxford, UK.  He qualified as a mediator in 1991 whilst continuing his practice  as a solicitor.  After chairing his law firm for a number of years, he became a full-time mediator with Independent Mediators in 2012.  His practice covers a broad range of commercial matters but focuses particularly on professional malpractice disputes.  He became a Distinguished Fellow of the IAM in 2014 and is currently IAM Treasurer.  He has three sons who live in the UK, Spain, and Australia.

Steve Pearl

Breakout Session: Are Mediators Advocates for Settlement or a Good Process?  

Steve Pearl mediates all types of individual employment law disputes, wage and hour class actions, and other types of class actions. Before becoming a mediator in 2010, Mr. Pearl practiced employment law for almost 20 years, representing both employees and employers. He is also a prolific author, contributing chapters to two treatises, authoring a blog on employment law, and authoring an email newsletter with more than 2,000 subscribers.

Mr. Pearl speaks frequently on dispute resolution and employment law topics. He has served as lead organizer of the Advanced Mediation Conference (State Bar of California and the California Lawyers Association); the Advanced Wage and Hour Seminar (California Employment Lawyers Association); and the Advanced Wage and Hour Conference (California Lawyers Association).

Mr. Pearl attended the University of California at Berkeley (BA 1989) and the University of California College of Law San Francisco (JD 1992).  

Mr. Pearl loves skiing, biking, hiking, and travel. He lives with his wife in Los Angeles.

Jan Frankel Schau

Breakout Session: Between Empathy and the Law: Managing Our Internal Conflict  

Jan Frankel Schau has been mediating full time for over twenty years and is a Panel member at ADR Services in Los Angeles, California.  She came to ADR after two decades of practice as a litigator where she specialized in employment-related matters.  As a mediator, she continues to focus on employment issues, business and tort claims, including civil rights issues.

A former President of the Southern California Mediation Association, Jan has been a Distinguished Fellow of the IAM for more than 15 years, serving on our Board and  presenting and leading discussion groups at many of our conferences, including New Zealand, Edinburgh, and Santa Monica, which she co-chaired with Jeff Krivis.

Jan is the author of numerous scholarly articles and a book, “View from the Middle of the Road:  A Mediator’s Perspective to Life, Conflict and Human Interaction”.

She holds a degree in International Relations from Pomona College in Claremont, Ca. and a J.D. from Loyola Law School, Los Angeles.  She has also served as Adjunct Faculty at Straus Institute of Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California.

Sheldon Stark

Breakout Session: Closing: Is a Mediator’s Proposal All You’ve Got?  

Sheldon J. Stark offers mediation, arbitration, case evaluation and neutral third-party investigative services. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the National Academy of Distinguished Neutrals, a Distinguished Fellow with the International Academy of Mediators and an Employment Law Panelist for the American Arbitration Association. He is also a member of the Professional Resolution Experts of Michigan (PREMi).

He is past Chair of the council of the Alternative Dispute Resolution Section of the State Bar of Michigan and formerly chaired the Skills Action Team. Mr. Stark was a distinguished visiting professor at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law from August 2010 through May 2012, when he stepped down to focus on his ADR practice. He is a former chairperson of numerous organizations, including the Labor and Employment Law Section of the State Bar of Michigan, the Employment Law and Intentional Tort Subcommittee of the Michigan Supreme Court Model Civil Jury Instruction Committee, the Fund for Equal Justice, and the Employment Law Section of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, now the American Association for Justice. He was a faculty member of the Trial Advocacy Skills Workshop at Harvard Law School from 1988 to 2010 and was listed in “The Best Lawyers in America” from 1987 until he left the practice of law in 2000.

Mr. Stark received the ACLU’s Bernard Gottfried Bill of Rights Day Award in 1999, the Distinguished Service Award from the Labor and Employment Law Section of the State Bar of Michigan in 2009, and the Michael Franck Award from the Representative Assembly of the State Bar of Michigan in 2010. In 2015, he received the George Bashara, Jr. Award for Exemplary Service from the ADR Section of the State Bar.  He has been listed in “dbusiness Magazine” as a Top Lawyer in ADR for 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, and every year since.

Paul Van Osselaer

Breakout Session: The Court: Friend or Foe to the Mediator  

Paul J. Van Osselaer is President-Elect of the IAM. He mediates throughout the United States focusing his practice on disputes involving insurance coverage, including those based on events throughout the world.  Prior to his mediation career,  he was Vice-Chair of the American Bar Association’s Insurance Coverage Litigation Committee and later co-chair of its ADR subcommittee. Paul also served on the advisory committee to his home federal district court. Before entering private law practice, he was a law clerk (briefing attorney) on the private staff of a United States District Judge.

Jerry Weiss

Breakout Session: How Important is Trust and How Do We Develop It? 

Jerry Weiss, founder of MediationInc, is recognized as a go-to neutral in complex, high impact and intractable disputes.  He is the first lawyer in Cleveland, Ohio to dedicate his practice entirely to mediation, having served as mediator and negotiation consultant in thousands of mediations.  For over 30 years he has received Martindale’s highest rating, AV Preeminent.  Consistently rated First Tier in Mediation by U.S. News and World Report and a perennial selectee of Super Lawyers (frequently as Top 100 regionally) and Best Lawyers in America (selected several times as a Mediation Lawyer of the Year), he is one of 450 lawyers worldwide listed in Who’s Who Legal: Mediation.  He is a Distinguished Fellow in the International Academy of Mediators (IAM) – where he was also a Governor – and he is a peer selected member of the National Academy of Distinguished Neutrals. Jerry is a founding panelist on the United States District Court Federal Panel of Mediators and Arbitrators. 

Active in lecturing and writing, Jerry is an Adjunct Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio where he designed and currently teaches the seminar in Mediation Representation: Theory, Principle and Practice.

In a recent tribute, Jerry Weiss was commended by the Ohio Mediation Association as a “Distinguished Practitioner”.  That honor states one of the cornerstones of his success and preeminent reputation:  “As a practitioner, Jerry has had a knack of finding the human elements behind the numbers commonly exchanged in civil mediation.”.

Hayden Wilson

Breakout Session: Words of Wisdom: What are Your “Go-To” Phrases?

Hayden Wilson is a commercial mediator and advocate based in New Zealand. His mediation practice focuses on complex commercial disputes. He was admitted as a Distinguished Fellow of the Academy in 2022. In addition to his mediation practice, Hayden is the Chairman of Dentons in New Zealand and sits on the Global Board of Dentons.

Kirstin Dodge

Sights & Insights

Kirstin Dodge is an independent mediator and mediation consultant based in Switzerland, where she also serves as Head of the Americas and Southern Europe for the Swiss litigation funder Nivalion. Kirstin has 30 years of experience representing clients in high-stakes commercial litigation, international arbitrations, and mediations in the US and Switzerland, and conducts mediations in English and German. She has a J.D. from Harvard Law School, a B.A. in Political Science from Yale University, and a Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) in Mediation from the University of St. Gallen Law School. She is also an accredited mediator with the Swiss Chamber for Commercial Mediation.

Jennifer Dürst

Sights & Insights

Jennifer Dürst is a mediator, strategic dispute resolution expert, litigation lawyer and lecturer. For over 15 years, she has worked for the commercial law firm STAIGER Attorneys-at-Law in Zurich, Switzerland. STAIGER Attorneys-at-Law is renowned for its innovative and effective ways of finding economical solutions for complex and challenging issues, as well as dealing with cross-border issues. Jennifer is the founder and managing director of the conflict resolution centers mediation Dürst and STAIGER ADR-Center, both focused for many years on mediation practice and collaborative proceedings.

Jennifer has many years of professional experience in mediating, litigating and advising clients in the fields of inheritance law, company succession, family law, matrimonial property law, separation and divorce law. She focuses her practice in particular on complex national and international structures.

Jennifer is a Swiss qualified Attorney-at-law and Mediator, certified by the Swiss Bar Association (SBA) and the Swiss Chamber of Commercial Mediation (SCCM). She is also a member of the Swiss Bar Association’s expert and lecturing committee on mediation and serves as a lecturer in the fields of mediation and real estate law.

Daniel Girsberger

Sights & Insights

Daniel Girsberger is a founding member of the Faculty of Law of the University of Lucerne (www.unilu.ch) and a tenured professor for Swiss and International Private, Business and Procedural, as well as Comparative Law. Before accepting the Lucerne assignment, he taught at the University of Zurich law school. He is also of counsel at Kaufmann Rüedi Ltd., a boutique Lucerne business law firm (www.krlaw.ch).

Daniel Girsberger completed his legal and doctoral studies at the University of Zurich, where he also taught as an adjunct professor. He has taught as an adjunct at various universities and institutions abroad, such as in Brazil, Lithuania, the United States, South Africa, and the Academy for International Law in The Hague, and participated as a member of the Swiss delegation at the Hague Conference for Unification of International Private Law. 

Girsberger is the author of numerous publications focusing primarily on international private and international business law, international arbitration, and ADR. He has  frequently acted as chairman, arbitrator, and counsel in numerous international and domestic arbitration proceedings, both institutional and ad hoc, and has been an expert witness in a multitude of international litigation and arbitration proceedings. He is a certified mediator and a Member of the Arbitration Court of the Swiss Arbitration Centre (the former Swiss Chambers’ Arbitration Institution) and its Advisory Council on Mediation.

Julia Jung

Sights & Insights

Julia Jung founded Jung Legal Solutions based in Zurich in 2020. She serves as independent mediator and arbitrator in international commercial and investor-State matters. She is a Swiss qualified Attorney-at Law and holds an LL.M. in Dispute Resolution from Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law’s Straus Institute. She is a certified mediator with the Swiss Bar Association (SBA) and the Swiss Chamber of Commercial Mediation (SCCM). She is a board member of the Swiss Chamber of Commercial Mediation, a member of the Swiss Bar Association’s expert committee on mediation and a member of the ICC Commission on Arbitration & ADR for Switzerland.

Julia has extensive experience as a former litigation and arbitration counsel which she combines with practical insights from mediating in California and a good understanding of business aspects which comes from holding a position as Head Legal & Compliance at a Swiss real estate service provider with CHF 80 billion assets under management and 1,000 employees.

Julia is recognized by WWL Commercial Mediation (2022) as someone who “creates a fantastic atmosphere in the mediation conference and helps put all parties at ease” and as “THE expert in commercial mediation” and by WWL Switzerland – Mediation (2022) as someone who combines “a great command of commercial law” with “an ability to quickly grasp the gist of the dispute and find an amicable solution“.

Joyce Mitchell

Sights & Insights

Joyce A. G. Mitchell is Vice President and Distinguished Fellow of the International Academy of Mediators,  member of the ADR Section Board of the Maryland State Bar Association, a certified mediator in the states of Virginia and North Carolina and an attorney licensed in Maryland and the District of Columbia.

Joyce is nationally recognized in the field of alternative dispute resolution. She began her mediation practice in 1996 and has mediated more than 2500 cases. She mediates independently for various federal agencies, for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), and for private entities. Joyce is on the roster of mediators for several ADR private dispute resolution providers in the USA and mediates for them nationwide and internationally for their private and federal government clients. She is a skilled negotiator and conducts multi-party facilitation sessions, early neutral evaluations, organizational and management conflict inquiries, and fact findings. Joyce regularly speaks at professional association meetings on the benefits and uses of ADR techniques for resolving conflicts.

Urs Weber-Stecher

Sights & Insights

Urs Weber-Stecheris an independent Swiss arbitrator and mediator with over 25 years of experience in dispute resolution. He has acted as party representative and arbitrator in numerous international and national arbitrations in various industries and as mediator in several commercial disputes. Before starting his own practice, he was partner and head of the arbitration team in a commercial law firm in Zurich for almost 20 years. In his mediation practice, Urs Weber-Stecher draws on his many years of experience in contract and settlement negotiations. The combination with specific mediation techniques allows him to assist the disputing parties with empathy and competence in their settlement process. Who’s Who Legal Global – Arbitration 2022: “He is an extremely good counsel, arbitrator and mediator, with very broad experience.”

Alex von Ziegler

Sights & Insights

Professor Alexander von Ziegler is partner of Schellenberg Wittmer AG and specializes in dispute resolution with emphasis on international trade, shipping, aviation and insurance. He acts as advocate, arbitrator or mediator (accredited by the Swiss Bar Association and CEDER) in commercial and in particular B2B disputes. Part of  his activities include the resolution of a number of complex and high-level aviation accidents involving different players in the Swiss aviation industry. In his function as part-time Professor at the University of Zurich, he  also lectures on alternative dispute resolution and mediation. For many years he has been a Swiss government delegate at the UN (UNCITRAL) for the negotiation and drafting of international conventions within his scope of expertise. He has held positions as Secretary General of the International Union of Marine Insurance (IUMI) and the Comité Maritime International (CMI), as well as chair or board member of numerous specialized associations in his field of practice.

To register for the Zurich conference, click here.