Certified Facilitators of Compassionate Listening℠
Therese Charvet has been a teacher, organizer, and facilitator for over 30 years, in a variety of contexts and venues, professional, community, and spiritual. She is a nurse, midwife, and ordained minister, and owner /director of Sacred Groves, a small eco-spiritual center based on her property on Bainbridge Island (see www.sacredgroves.com). She trains individuals and couples in Compassionate Listening and has offered the skills as a peacemaking tool in a variety of organizational and individual situations.
Andrea Cohen is a communications consultant, project developer, and facilitator who has been involved with the Compassionate Listening Project for many years (see Andrea’s website). In 1998, Andrea went to the Middle East with the Compassionate Listening Project to direct the film “Children of Abraham.” She is co-director of the Jewish-German Reconciliation Project, a program of the Compassionate Listening Project that brings together primarily Jewish Americans and non-Jewish Germans to do the work of deep listening and healing. In the last several years, Andrea has facilitated numerous Compassionate Listening workshops here and abroad. She has been instrumental in incorporating Compassionate Listening into community dialogue events and works with her therapist partner to integrate Compassionate Listening fundamentals into their work with couples.
Glenn Dickter is a small business owner who has had a private practice as a financial advisor with Ameriprise Financial for 29 years. Glenn was an active board member for Creativity for Peace from 2007 through 2012. He now serves on the Emeritus Board. He has been involved for 17 years with The Mankind Project. He is dedicated to the dialogue process as a tool to end conflict. As a trainer and facilitator, Glenn has brought the principles of Compassionate Listening to a number of settings in Santa Fe and elsewhere, including his synagogue and other church groups, educators, and volunteer organizations. Perhaps nowhere has he been more inspirational than with his three grown children, who all seem to like each other and their parents, and even enjoy spending time with the whole family together. They hike, play Scrabble, and whenever they can attend music performances and festivals throughout the southwest.
Maha El Taji is a Palestinian-American residing in Haifa, Israel. She is a lawyer with a Masters in International Human Rights Law and a Ph.D. in Near and Middle Eastern Studies. Maha participated in a week-long compassionate listening delegation of Jews and Palestinians at Thich Nhat Hanh’s Buddhist Monastery (Plum Village) in France in July 2001. She completed the introductory and advanced Compassionate Listening trainings, is a certified Compassionate Listening facilitator. She has co-led the Israel-Palestine Compassionate Listening delegations with Leah Green since 2004. Maha was awarded the University of Washington Graduate Student Medalist Award for being a scholar/citizen for the academic year 2003/2004 and was a Bartos Fellow at United World College in January 2006 where she mentored international students in the Constructive Engagement of Conflict program. Maha is fluent in Arabic and Hebrew.
Phil Fratesi is an organizational development consultant and event planner. Phil’s early career in education as a teacher and school administrator taught him that listening to the stories of others was a cornerstone of learning and mutually productive relationships. In his work with organizational leaders, he elicits vision, inclusion, and accountability. The work of Compassionate Listening reflects his values and commitment to assisting others in their personal and organizational development.
Leah Green is founder and director of the Compassionate Listening Project. She holds a masters degree in Public Policy and Administration from the University of Washington, where she also completed her coursework for a masters in Middle Eastern Studies. Leah is internationally recognized as a leader in Jewish-Palestinian reconciliation, having led 26 citizen delegations to Jordan, Israel/Palestine, and Syria/Lebanon. She has produced three documentaries about the conflict, including Children of Abraham, and co-founded the Jewish-German Compassionate Listening Project. Leah began teaching CL in Israel and Palestine in 1999, and since that time has taught widely in N. America. She began training as a facilitator of Systems Constellations with Francesca Mason Boring in March 2010, and is excited to be integrating Constellations into her trainings. Leah is a 2003 recipient of the Yoga Journal’s “Karma Yoga Award,” and was recognized by the international women’s peace organization, Peace X Peace, in 2010. Her work has been profiled in many articles and books.
Jan Hutton MSW, a graduate of the University of Michigan, believes in supporting wholeness in every human being. To that end, during the last 41 years, Jan has served as a community organizer and activist, social worker in hospice and hospital settings, meditation teacher and, she hopes, a ‘kind’ person. The operative principle for Jan’s work as a facilitator and mentor is, “How do we look at those who differ from us and see our shared humanity?” She offers Compassionate Listening with the strong belief that implementing peacemaking in the public sector makes it vital we practice, heart to heart, that very same peacemaking in our personal lives. (Do you?) Jan has been privileged to offer trainings in different locales across the country. Please read some of her recent testimonials here: Testimonials for Jan
Carol Hwsoschinsky is the former Training Director of The Compassionate Listening Project. She holds Masters Degrees in Special Education and Psychology. She is a licensed counselor in private practice, an educator and a mediator. She teaches conflict resolution, develops diversity and conflict resolution curricula for schools and mediates for a Victim/Offender program in the courts and for community disputes. She has worked in Armenia to support dialogue and joint projects with Armenia, Karabakh and Azerbaijan, and taught psychology and communication in the former Soviet Union. Carol is the author of “Listening With the Heart – A Guide for Compassionate Listening”.
Bill Jacobsen teaches at Arcadia University in the International Peace and Conflict Resolution Masters Program. His specialty is conflict transformation skill building, offering trainings in Restorative Justice, Beginning Mediation, Intercultural Mediation, Conflict Coaching and Dealing with Difficult People. He earned his Ph.D. in Theology and Communication from Princeton Theological Seminary. Bill mediates in Custody Court and Dependency Court in Philadelphia, is the Director of Mediation Services and Training for The Peace Center in Langhorne, PA. He is the current president of the Association for Conflict Resolution, Greater Delaware Valley Chapter, and serves on the Advisory Committee to the PA Joint Legislative Task Force on Alternative Dispute Resolution. He is a volunteer facilitator for the Alternative to Violence program at Graterford Prison near Philadelphia, where he also facilitated a Compassionate Listening Training. Bill has taught CL in Rwanda with former Hutus and Tutsis, and in Burundi through the African Great Lakes Initiative program.
Susan Partnow, M.A., organizational development and training consultant (www.PartnowCom.com) enjoys being a catalyst for individuals and teams seeking positive changes through workshops, retreats, and coaching. Susan participated in an early trip to Israel/Jordan/Palestine in 1992, and served as a board member for The Compassionate Listening Project from 2000-2004. For over fifteen years she has facilitated dialogues, networking, and community building in organizations, government agencies, and the community to promote positive social change, ‘out of the box’ thinking, collective wisdom and teambuilding. Susan’s interest arises from a lifelong journey as a peacemaker, mediator and activist. Former teacher and speech pathologist, and author of Everyday Speaking for All Occasions with an M.A. from Northwestern University, Susan’s work is enriched by Open Space, Dynamic Facilitation, Spiral Dynamics, chaos theory, Appreciative Inquiry, Non Violent Communication and the Public Conversations Project. She co-founded Conversation Cafes and Let’s Talk America, and founded Global Citizen Journey in 2005.
Yael Petretti Bringing people together comes naturally to Yael. This theme has run through everything she has ever done and continues to be what most inspires her passion in life. Both before and after earning a degree in International Relations at UC Berkeley, Yael traveled widely to meet people of other cultures and creeds. She organized citizen diplomacy groups to travel to other countries, giving Americans the chance to build real friendships with people they would otherwise have never understood. She served on the Israel-Palestine Working Group at the United Nations and facilitated a number of Compassionate Listening trainings in the United States. As a licensed tourist guide living in Jerusalem over three decades, she facilitated encounters between her tourists and the various religious and ethnic groups who inhabit the Middle East: Bedouins, Druze, Israelis, Christian and Moslem Palestinians. Appreciation of cultural diversity, friendship and mutual respect are her deepest values. Yael relocated in 2010 to New England where she teaches Compassionate Listening to a wide variety of groups and organizations. (Click Here to see her website) Her work as a certified Compassionate Listening Facilitator provides the perfect tool for bringing people together: the practice of listening and speaking to one another from the purest places of the heart.
Amy Rakusin is a licensed psychotherapist. For over 20 years, Amy has worked with numerous populations using her knowledge of psychodynamic and somatic therapies to bring health and integration of body, mind, and spirit. Specializing in the treatment of trauma, she provides individual and group therapy to survivors of abuse, violence, torture, and war-related conflict. She holds the vision that healing and lasting peace is possible through service and compassion. You can read more about her on her website at www.amyrakusin.com.
Linda Wolf is co-founder and Director of Teen Talking Circles, (www.teentalkingcircles.org), whose mission is to educate, inspire and empower young women, foster understanding between the genders, generations and cultures, and support youth activists for a just and sustainable world. She is co-author of the award-winning books, Daughters of the Moon, Sisters of the Sun: Young Women and Mentors on the Transition to Womanhood, and Global Uprising: Stories From a New Generation of Activists. Linda trains adults to facilitate teen talking circles and speaks on the issues teenage girls are dealing with and on gender reconciliation through group process. Her handbook, Speaking and Listening from the Heart: The Art of Facilitating Teen Talking Circles was published in the Fall, 2004.
Naomi Wolfe lives on Vancouver Island, where she is a faculty member in the English Language Program at North Island College. Originally from Saskatchewan, Naomi also lived, studied and worked in the USA for 11 years and in Guatemala for 10 years. As a teen in Tennessee, Naomi developed a keen interest in anti-racism work and cross-cultural awareness. In Guatemala in the 70’s and 80’s, Naomi did research for the National Indigenous Institute, began her career as an English teacher and studied legal translation. Her journey took her to Toronto and British Columbia in the late 80′s. Naomi’s growing awareness of the challenges and barriers facing immigrants in her community led to the founding of the Campbell River Multicultural and Immigrant Services Associatio
n (CRMISA) in 1992. She continues her connection with CRMISA as a trainer and committee member. Naomi has certification and/or worked extensively in intercultural, diversity, and anti-discrimination training, Spanish/English interpretation, ESL teacher training, Theatre for Living, and human rights and international solidarity projects. She has facilitated Compassionate Listening trainings for interculturalists, restorative justice and hospice volunteers, educators and students, daycare workers and others in Canada, the USA and Spain. Naomi greatly values any opportunity to share her skills in ways that heighten our understanding of and deepen our connections to one another.
Sarah Zale is founder and director of The Listening Tree Project (LTP), an academic program with Compassionate Listening and interactive theatre (Theatre of the Oppressed) as its foundational tools (http://new.shoreline.edu/listening-tree/). Its mission is to promote a climate of equality, justice, and respect for all people, and facilitate student leadership development. LTP is designed so that members of the campus community participate in problem-solving around issues that traditionally have made education and the delivery of services difficult for all students, faculty, and staff, but especially for those of color, women, differently-abled people, religious minorities, LGBTQ people, immigrants and international students, and low-income people. LTP may be defined in terms of intercultural communication, multicultural understanding, and global awareness, all of which fall under the umbrella term of internationalization. An English teacher at Shoreline Community College in Washington state, Sarah uses LTP as a vehicle to introduce Compassionate Listening and interactive theatre as across-the-curriculum tools to increase multicultural understanding and to create citizens of the world. A poet, Sarah published her first book, The Art of Folding, following her travels with the Compassionate Listening Project to Israel and Palestine. Her new collection celebrates a re-envisioning and celebration of Detroit (www.sarahzale.com).
Other certified facilitators:
Brian Berman
Lisa Berman
Peter Hwoschinsky
Sissi Loftin
Janet Brocklehurst
Rabbi Andrea Cohen-Kiener
Rona Reuben
Shifrah Tobacman
