Building Peace Through Inter-Cultural Communication. Member Spotlight: Agnieszka Alboszta
Agnieszka Alboszta is an educator, mediator, and a program coordinator, who spent her formative years in Warsaw, Poland. However, Agnieszka relates more to the experience of a “third-culture individual”, as her family moved around a lot and then immigrated to the US (where she relocated several times herself). In the second part of her life, Agnieszka has found stability and rootedness in Eugene, Oregon. After changing career directions to study conflict resolution, she fell in love with the practice. Through her work with MBBI and now at a local community dispute resolution center, Agnieszka has been able to harness her educational and professional experience, talent for listening, natural empathy, and a profound understanding of inter-cultural communication to help build peaceful connections in her community.
Agnieszka’s Background
By the time Agnieszka started high school in Lexington, Kentucky, she had attended about 12 different schools across three continents. Her family had left the then still communist Poland to seek a new start and eventually landed in the US after a somewhat meandering path. Because of this, Agnieszka relates to the experience of “third-culture individuals.” While she feels quite at home in Europe and the US, she finds difficulty in answering questions about where she’s “from”.
Agnieszka has now been able to experience what it is to be rooted in one place. She’s lived in Eugene, Oregon since 2001, where she spent many years working in education. As an instructor at the University of Oregon, Agnieszka enjoyed spending time with international students and teaching English and academic skills to help them enter university. As a person who has always been between many cultures, even between her parents and the world she grew up in in the US, Agnieszka found she could naturally relate to and facilitate their experiences.
A Life of Mediation
“All my existence has been in this kind of neutral middle space, from where you see very diverse norms, behaviors, and practices and can help others build understanding and bridges between different ways of being”
Agnieszka feels that her personal history has greatly shaped her interest in the field of mediation. Right before covid, she took a course in transformative mediation and immediately knew this is the thing she should be doing. In 2022, Agnieszka received her Master of Science in Conflict and Dispute Resolution from the University of Oregon. After a valuable internship with MBBI, where she was supported the evolution of the MBBI-Europe group, she continued with the organization as the coordinator for the Trauma-Informed Peacebuilding program in Ukraine and later took on other roles and tasks as needed. She considers her time at MBBI extremely enriching and satisfying, both on the professional and personal level.
Now, Agnieszka works as a community mediation leader at the Center for Dialogue and Resolution (CDR) in Eugene, Oregon. This center has a strong restorative justice arm and a trainings arm, it also helps manage a broad range of community disputes, from family conflicts to landlord/tenant, to workplace issues, as well as court-connected small claims and eviction cases. While she is still getting her feet under her in the new position, she’s handling case intake/development and mediations themselves. She is keen on enhancing the volunteer program and will be involved in delivering the basic mediation trainings. She notes that CDR’s team is quickly growing, so there’s a sense of change and expansion in the organization.
Highlights of Mediation
One of Agnieszka’s favorite parts about her work is talking with potential clients. She feels that just listening can make an impact. Agnieszka notes that this simple form of connection might at times be all someone needs. Many calls that she takes at the CDR don’t end up becoming mediation cases, but she’s seen first-hand that listening and reaching back out to callers, asking what’s going on, and educating them about mediation, can expand a person’s sense of possibility and perhaps even shift the energy between people.
“The act of listening seems in many cases to be what people yearn for and find so helpful. Just talking to them on the phone, people are grateful at the end of the call, even when it doesn’t go to mediation.”
Having graduated with her master’s degree in 2022, Agnieszka still feels new in the field. There are situations that have surprised her (and inspired her to keep going). Agnieszka has found it particularly interesting that seemingly ineffective acts can make some difference in a difficult situation. Something she’s asked to do quite often is to send a letter to party 2 to invite them to mediation. Whether the second party accepts or not, she senses that party 1’s signaling an openness to discussion and desire to understand helps: it’s one human reaching out to another human with a gesture of good will.
In terms of actual mediations, Agnieszka has witnessed moments in which both parties are adamant about not wanting to move forward. And then, with one sentence or just the right question, the situation suddenly changes, and the parties began to hash out an agreement. Sometimes, she’s observed that even silence can create that flip as well. Inviting parties to a moment of reflection, or to consider the question “where do you want to go from here?” has released tension in the room and created space to take a step forward.
“Moments where there’s so much contentious energy, and then out of the blue one party softens or apologizes, are very inspiring. From what was a highly adversarial situation, there comes possibility of resolution.”
Challenges and Growth
For Agnieszka, her major challenge is still getting more experience across the board. In her Community Programs position, where co-mediation is used, she’s very grateful for the continued support, learning, and growth that happens when working alongside long-time practitioners who are experts at various techniques, and familiar with the landscape, the twists and turns mediations can take.
Agnieszka holds herself to high standards. In order to be effective, she hopes to become better versed in various areas of technical knowledge. Knowing some family or business law, the regulations of the DMV (for some cases involving cars), or the rules governing mobile home parks and their mediations is important. Thus, taking courses on specialized subjects is something she continues to do. She has heard many times that “mediation is mediation”, and no matter the issue, it is fundamentally a conflict between people. Though this may well be true, Agnieszka nonetheless desires to have knowledge of the unique areas in which mediation is taking place so that she can ask meaningful, relevant questions and better guide parties toward agreement.
“My ideal is to be an ‘everything’ person. I don’t want to specialize in one field of mediation. Identifying as a third-culture individual, I’m not surprised that I strive to be versatile and effective in many different subject areas.”
Linking Local & International Mediation
While Agnieszka continues to deepen her knowledge in many subjects, she also often thinks about working on the international level again. At MBBI, she adored the work she did; it allowed her to work with her strengths. Agnieszka thrived in internationally oriented work while appreciating the small team and work culture at the MBBI.
She often recalls Prahba Sankaranarayan’s, MBBI’s President and CEO, words, ‘it all starts with the local”. That is what MBBI is all about: partnering with and supporting local peacebuilding efforts. The grass-roots work is fundamental. Agnieszka had always had a meta-level lens and was naturally drawn to the “beyond borders” of MBBI. Now, she’s in the thick of the “mediating” part, and at the true community level. Agnieszka jokes that it’s almost like the universe is saying “you like that [the international], but right now you need to focus on this [the local]; this is where your learning is.”
“My work is now very much local. And I’ve grown to see that you have to start there. It’s these little things, these little frictions, that can snowball into larger problems and disrupt social harmony. Mending small fences bit by bit adds up. You don’t have to go global to make an impact.”
Ultimately, Agnieszka is interested in actively contributing to both the international and the local level. She strives to find ways to keep the connection between them strong, live, and meaningful. She’s found that attending international conferences, and joining meetings is helpful. She also brings in ideas from MBBI and other international organizations to her community center and explores how they might be applied on the local level. In these ways, she is doing her small part to continue building peace on both the micro and macro-spheres.
Connecting with Agnieszka
“There are so many skills in other professions that can be applied and adapted to mediation. It’s important not to hesitate if one feels moved to get into mediation later on in life.”
Agnieszka first and foremost notes that it’s never too late to start a career in mediation; older people have a great deal of rich life experience to bring to the field. That wisdom, broad perspective, and patience can be a gift to those experiencing frictions with others. In fact, Agnieszka feels that it’s only in this part of her life that she’s attained the capacity to listen in a more compassionate yet impartial manner to people’s problems and empathize with their experiences. Over the years she feels she’s grown calmer and more accepting, which is what she considers essential to truly being able to hear people and guide situations toward peace.
Agnieszka would be happy to connect with anyone who’s interested in changing their career or life path at an older age. She would enjoy providing guidance, motivation, or simply an ear to anyone considering a shift in careers, or sharing how the experience switching to mediation has been so impactful to her own life.
Another point of connection is around questions regarding the relationship between mental health and mediation. Though she’s studied some psychology, especially on trauma and its effects in mediation, she’s not a trained psychologist and would benefit from conversing with others who specialize in this area. Agnieszka wonders how to know whether mediation is right when someone may have mental health issues, how to handle the process where a mental health condition appears to be present, etc. More insight from those who have experience in this area is welcome.
Agnieszka’s interest in this subject, out of many, emphasizes her constant curiosity and commitment to growth. Her patience and ability to listen, understand, and support those around her has allowed her to smoothly transition into the career of mediation. And despite the fact that Agnieszka has already lived so many different experiences and worked with such diverse people, it seems that Agnieszka is just getting started.
Article by Elise Webster, MBBI Writer