Mediators Beyond Borders International is a nonprofit organization governed by a Board of Directors, comprised of 17 remarkable individuals. This article is the first of the Meet the Board series—putting faces to the decision-makers, guiders, and advisors of MBBI. 

Meet the Board: Charlie Pillsbury 

It’s not everyday, that you meet someone who contributed to the growth of alternative dispute resolution in the United States–and then to the growth and success of Mediators Beyond Borders. Charlie Pillsbury, a “recovering lawyer” and mediator, transitioned from law to direct a community mediation center in 1989. It was a center modeled on the successful community boards program in San Francisco and established in an era when the Department of Justice was expanding its local justice centers for ADR across the country. 

Charlie directed the community mediation center and practiced as a mediator for 20 years, until an email brought Mediators Beyond Borders into his life. In 2007, he was working at his desk when into his inbox jumps a message: Contribute $1 a day to mediation to help bring world peace. “One dollar a day to bring world peace? Now that’s a deal,” Charlie laughs. Charlie was one of the first 150 people to donate to MBBI, and thus became a founding member. 

“I didn’t think much about it,” he says, until a few months later he received an invitation to attend the first Mediators Beyond Borders Congress at St. Malo’s retreat center in Colorado. Curious to see what he had helped fund, Charlie flew from his east-coast community to Denver in February of 2008. “It was an Alice in Wonderland experience,” he says. “I’d been so steeped in community mediation that I had not appreciated the broader world of [conflict resolution].”

Over the next six months, “the stars were aligning,” Charlie says. At the congress, he met John Paul Lederach (“He’s just a superstar in my book”), who shared a mutual friend, Ricardo Esquivia, working on peace and conflict issues in Colombia. Charlie was soon engaged in a Latin America interest group that developed two projects in Ecuador and Colombia. 

MBBI’s first local partner in Colombia was Sembrandopaz, a Mennonite organization working in war-ravaged communities in the Montes de Maria region in northern Colombia. Many of its communities had little to no active government present. “You get to places where the state doesn’t operate, and the only institutions are the church and the school,” Charlie says. In one community of about 500 people, MBBI’s team and Sembrandopaz held a “workshop laboratory” with local leadership to discuss the types of conflicts faced by this “community of return”, which had been completely displaced several years earlier. Not unlike communities back home–and a reflection of Charlie’s work as a community mediator–the rural community was struggling with bored teenagers. The teens, who had grown-up internally displaced in the city, were not used to the pace of the community. The resulting partnership helped the community establish restorative justice circles, as well as historical memory circles that were open to the entire community. 

Charlie’s interest in Latin America has remained constant in his time with MBBI, even as his role within the organization has shifted. In 2009, on the brink of retirement from the community mediation center, Charlie received yet another life-changing email from MBBI. The organization was looking for a volunteer interim executive director. “I can do that,” Charlie thought. He applied, was hired, and began the work of steering MBBI until his resignation at the start of 2014 when he transitioned to a part-time position at a law school. 

“It was time for new leadership, as fate would have it,” he says, reflecting on a conversation with Prabha Sankaranarayan in D.C. in December 2013. She was interested in becoming the next executive director. “Let’s switch places,” Charlie told her. “You become the executive director; I’ll join the Board as treasurer.” And that’s precisely what they did. 

Now, at the start of a new decade and over 10 years after Charlie first volunteered for the role of interim executive director, he asks: “What do we do in the next ten years?” 

“[MBBI is] moving from a project-focused organization into a training organization. I think that’s a significant shift,” Charlie says. “People are asking for training because they’ve seen our work and want to be a part of this enterprise. After years of operating below the radar, we’re now a known international peacebuilding organization. I’m excited about our future.” 

Perhaps it is no coincidence that Charlie reengaged in Colombia for a training program in 2016. With Catalina Chaux-Echeverri and Macarena Mata, MBBI, Rotary clubs in Bogota and California, and a local Mennonite organization called Mencoldes joined forces to build local conflict resolution skills. It was MBBI’s first International Peace Training Institute of women conducted fully in another language. “It’s one of the reasons we’re planning to do our next International Peace Congress in [Latin America],” Charlie says. 

“We’re not the conflict resolvers,” he says. “In the early years, people thought we were dropping mediators from airplanes with parachutes to mediate local conflicts. MBBI goes beyond borders, but we don’t mediate there. We train local leaders to do the mediating, coach them, mentor them, support them: that’s our job. Their success is our success.” 

“I’ve been living and breathing this organization for 12 years. I remain committed to do what I can. To some extent, it’s an outgrowth of my work as a community mediator — taking the conflict resolution skills I learned in my community and helping communities around the world.” 

“The fundamental idea is that somehow, we can find a way to export peace, instead of exporting arms, guns, and soldiers,” Charlie says in conclusion. “Right now it’s counter-cultural, but–maybe–one day it’ll be the norm.” 

Article by Emily Zmak, MBBI Writer

When Sameer started his Law studies in 1994, he had not foreseen that mediation would become his passion and main dedication in life. As of today, Sameer Shah is a highly qualified lawyer, arbitrator and, above all, a mediation practitioner with 25 years of active practice and experience with hundreds of solved disputes in its portfolio. Besides, Sameer’s dedication to mediation led him to broaden his action as a mediation promoter. In fact, he is currently teaching and organizing training as well as coaching sessions. In order to promote mediation into society, Sameer organizes various types of learning activities for law school students as well as he is involved in organizing trainings for aspirant mediators and arbitrators. “Whatever I do, I do it for giving back to society what life has given to me. It may seem a lot to do, having a busy working life, but it is my passion, so it turns out to be satisfying and not burdening as one may think.”

From law to peace, from litigation to mediation

He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Law at the University of Delhi, and immediately after started practicing as a Senior Associate for a law firm in Ahmedabad, his native town. As a key expert in arbitration and litigation processes, Sameer began earning confidence with multiple areas of dispute resolution expertise, having to deal with a wide range of legal cases, from commercial disputes to matrimonial cases. Such experience brought him to establish his own legal firm in 2003, the S.U. Shah & Associates, that assists various groups of clients with different needs. As a lawyer, he is also currently a Senior Partner of one of the most renowned legal firms of India – Trust Legal Advocates & Consultants.

Sameer never studied mediation, but as the years passed, he got into contact with colleagues and experts that gradually induced him to it. It did not pass long for mediation processes to become his passion. “During my early career, I realized that alternative dispute resolution mechanisms such as arbitration were unable to provide the required solution to the range and quantity of disputes in India. That is the reason I got passionate into mediation, which I believe to be the most effective amongst all the ADR methods.” In his activity as a mediator, Sameer deals with a great variety of cases but he prefers not to conform himself to a strict and rigid scheme of mediation. After all, the power of mediation undoubtedly lies in the flexibility and openness of the process, which adapts according to the necessities and attitudes of the parties. In this way, Sameer applies and mixes various types of mediation (facilitative, transformative and evaluative) depending upon the case.

But Sameer does not like to limit himself. Aside from being an active mediator, his engagement with mediation covers various areas and scopes. For instance, he makes parts of several authoritative bodies engaged with mediation worldwide, such as the Hong Kong Joint Mediation Centre and the Alliance for Equality in Dispute Resolution. Finally, Sameer is deeply committed to awareness-raising efforts aimed at broadening the impact of mediation within Indian society. As a promoter of mediation, he organizes workshops, seminars, and trainings to Senior Law university students in order to sponsor the effectiveness of mediation processes and shape their attitudes towards the way disputes resolution is perceived. During several years, he has also been an organizer and Panel Arbitrator of several Moot Competitions in India and Honk Kong. For those unfamiliar with this term, a Moot Competition gathers aspiring arbitrators and mediators in a simulation of various dispute resolution processes, in order to equip them with the first-hand experience and enhance their professional skills in mediation.

Throughout the years spent dealing with litigation, arbitration, and mediation cases, Sameer reached a conclusion: “Mediation undoubtedly stands as the most effective and passionate way to solve disputes. One of the greatest advantages of mediation is its lack of staticity, rule-wise.” Indeed, letting alone a few basic rules such as confidentiality, mediation provides a needs-based structure that is capable to vary from dispute to dispute. Here a key role is played by the capacity of the mediator to be sensitive, receptive, empathetical to the needs and reservations of the parties. Additionally, the fact that mediation lies in non-binding principles and outcomes results in more attractive, especially for more informal cases such as commercial transactions or family disputes.

Mediation gaining momentum 

In comparison to arbitration, Sameer believes mediation to draw its strength from the fact of being much more flexible and informal, “this allows the parties to open more easily and being more prone to say what they really want to say, without fears of legal repercussions,” he asserts. It goes without saying that such an open-minded process is more likely to pave the way for a genuine conversation among disputing parties. “As either miscommunication or lack of communication often represents the core of the problem, a process that is able to allow such informality and flexibility is likely to lead the parties to communicate in a more effective way,” Sameer adds.

Sameer is strongly convinced that mediation is increasingly gaining momentum in the Indian society and he devotes a great number of his professional efforts to this goal. If mediation was scarcely considered until a few years ago, its above-mentioned characteristics and pros with respect to other dispute resolution techniques are attracting more and more people towards choosing it to settle their own controversies. In India and elsewhere, what is needed is a more sustained awareness-raising action in order to bring it within the reach of everyone. Noticeably, this can prove to be challenging if the socio-political textile is highly diversified in culture and ethnicity as in India. Nevertheless, Sameer demonstrates great enthusiasm for the advancements that his country is achieving in this respect. In fact, India is among the main signatories and promoters of the Singapore Convention on Mediation. Plus, the Indian government has taken great steps in the last few years in promoting mediation within dispute settlement processes.

Just to mention one example, the Chief Justice of India has recommended for framing guidelines for Law Schools in India to include a specific curriculum on mediation in their academic curricula. In fact, the Honorable Supreme Court of India has also constituted a committee of experts to frame Mediation Law for the country. Surely, an unprecedented result if compared to Western countries. However, what is really needed, and yet partially lacking, in Sameer’s view is a broad paradigm shift in the way dispute resolution practitioners perceive conflict resolution. “An essential part of expanding the outreach of mediation is represented by a total change of practitioners’ mindset in order to see conflict in a holistic way rather than an offensive one.

Shortly, disputes can be tackled in a more comprehensive and flexible way if they are seen through the appropriate lenses, rather than immediately triggering a traditional dispute resolution mindset which often results detrimental to parties’ relations and attitudes among each other. Therefore, the key to an effective conflict resolution must be “A change in the mindset of mediators towards focusing more on understanding the underlying roots of the conflict and elaborating alternative strategies to tackle such roots causes without passing through the Court. Only if this shift happens, ADR processes can effectively achieve a settlement of the conflict without risking to amplify it.”

Sameer has joined MBBI only in recent times but he is already eager to bring MBBI impact to India. As he had the opportunity to know the work of the organization, he immediately got attracted by the degree in which MBBI’s mission overlaps with his own professional ideals and efforts, for the benefit of the overall society. “I find MBBI to be such an amazing platform to work collectively for the promotion and development of mediation within the global society,” Sameer is thrilled to mention.

Written by Matteo Piovacari: MBBI Writer