Mediation: A Healing Perspective. Member Spotlight: Nicole Angela Williams
Nicole Angela Williams is a newly certified family mediator from Toronto, Canada, who is devoted to guiding families through challenging transitions with compassion. With over 20 years of experience as a healer and birth doula, Nicole is passionate about supporting people through times of crisis and change. She sees her recent shift to mediation as aligning naturally with her skills in deep listening, intuition, and conflict resolution.
Discovering her calling
Nicole Angela was first inspired to pursue mediation 10 years ago, after her own positive experience with mediation. She found the mediator to be “such a useful, beneficial support at such a challenging time,” leading her to recognize how mediation could greatly help families struggling through separation by providing a kinder alternative to expensive, drawn-out legal battles.
With a long career as a healer and doula, Nicole Angela is adept at holding space for people in traumatic situations. Driven by a natural desire to “see situations and people complexly, intuitively, strongly,” Nicole Angela’s motivation to empower others facing adversity has always been there – she just had to figure out how to apply it. After exploring her calling in these various capacities over the years, Nicole Angela recently completed an accredited mediation program at York University. The intensive course deepened her understanding of how to create constructive frameworks for conflict resolution. After completing the course in April 2023, Nicole Angela is now focused on bringing her talents in empathy, insight and communication to help families experiencing challenging transitions.
A budding career in mediation
As she begins her mediation internship, Nicole Angela is eager to learn by shadowing experienced mentors, in order to further hone her skills and confidence. She hopes to gain insights into fostering a safe, supportive environment for clients. She wants to bring mediation “to the forefront” as an option, raising awareness of its benefits for struggling families. Nicole Angela firmly believes that mediation can make the painful process of family transition “a little bit more doable” by giving people greater agency in their decision-making rather than having outcomes imposed on them.
Nicole Angela is open to discovering how she can best contribute as a positive force for good in the world through her mediation practice, believing her healing background will complement the work. She reflects that “I’m excited to see where and how mediation can take me because when I look at organizations like Mediators Beyond Borders, there are so many awesome things being done.” Her goal is to develop a fulfilling mediation practice that aligns with her spirit of deep listening, intuition, and finding common humanity in every conflict.
Connecting with a global community
While still a budding professional in the field, Nicole Angela embraces advice to “listen more than you speak,” conveying her desire to learn from leading mediators and discover ways she might contribute to spreading non-violent approaches to conflict. Viewing her membership of MBBI as an opportunity for future training, networking, and participation, and ultimately helping her to become more experienced in the field, she reflects that groups like Mediators Beyond Borders demonstrate “there are so many great people out there doing this work” across diverse areas.
Nicole Angela sees mediation as integral to peace work, helping families move towards a new normal with empathy and insight. She is dedicated to developing her practice guided by principles of deep listening, intuition, and uncovering shared humanity in every dispute. Her attitude to this work exemplifies how cultivating peace within families creates ripples that contribute to a more peaceful and healthy society through transforming relationships.
Article by Natalie Dewar, MBBI Writer