I am a certified mediator through the nonprofit organization, California Lawyers for the Arts. My background in mediation comes from working with birth parents and potential adoptive families to reach an agreement on levels of contact between both families after an open adoption. We called it permanency planning mediation. It worked. I also helped write, and I carried California’s first Open Adoption Contact Agreement legislation, with then California Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman, Adam Schiff, who now chairs the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee.

Today, I am using my conflict-resolution, mediation, and negotiation skills to help provide a voice for community understanding and to find win-win, mutually developed and mutually beneficial solutions for willing people. I have worked in law enforcement as a prison administer in a California maximum-security prison and I most recently I began working in higher education equity and financial aid access for college and career training, helping low-income and marginalized young people find their place in the world. Both jobs have taught me the mental determination it takes to help people to see themselves differently. To help people develop a plan and a strategy for their lives that focuses on constructive, rather than destructive futures and living harmonious, fulfilling lives.