Robert Mnookin
I left Stanford Law School and arrived here at HLS in 1993 to become the Samuel Williston Professor of Law, the Chair of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, and the Director of the Harvard Negotiation Research Project.
My interests and approach to negotiation and conflict resolution are broadly interdisciplinary and I enjoy drawing on economics and psychology in my work. Outside the academy, I have had the opportunity to apply my approach to a remarkable range of problems, both public and private. I have successfully mediated many complex commercial disputes. Over the years I have also taught numerous workshops for corporations, governmental agencies and law firms throughout the world and trained many executives and professionals in negotiation and mediation skills.
Before joining the Harvard Faculty, I was the Adelbert H. Sweet Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and the Director of the Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation, an interdisciplinary group concerned with overcoming barriers to the negotiated resolution of conflict. I received my A.B. in Economics from Harvard College in 1964 and my law degree from Harvard Law School in 1968. After serving as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice John M. Harlan, I joined the San Francisco law firm of Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Robertson & Falk. I began teaching law at Boalt Hall, U.C. Berkeley, in 1972 and was on the Stanford Faculty from 1981 until 1993. I have been a Visiting Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford University, a Visiting Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, and the holder of the Francqui International Chair at the University of Leuven in Belgium. In 2006 – 2007 I was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. I am a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
I have written or edited eleven books and numerous scholarly articles. In addition to Beyond Winning: Negotiating to Create Value in Deals and Disputes and Bargaining with the Devil, other books relating to dispute resolution include Kissinger the Negotiator: Lessons from Dealmaking at the Highest Level (with James K. Sebenius and R. Nicholas Burns), Negotiating on Behalf of Others, an exploration of the role of agents in negotiation which I co-edited with Professor Lawrence Susskind; Barriers to Conflict Resolution, a joint project with members and associates of the Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation, and Dividing the Child: Social and Legal Dilemmas of Custody (with Eleanor Maccoby), an empirical study which examines the social, legal and economic realities of how divorcing parents make arrangements for their children. My most recent book is The Jewish American Paradox: Embracing Choice in a Changing World. My best-known law review article is probably “Bargaining in the Shadow of the Law: The Case of Divorce,” written with Lewis Kornhauser and published in the Yale Law Journal. My current research projects include interviewing every living American Secretary of State about their most difficult diplomatic negotiations (together with Professors Nicholas Burns of the Kennedy School and James Sebenius.
Erica Ariel Fox
I graduated from Harvard Law School in 1995 and started teaching the Negotiation Workshop in 1996. With a year off time and again, I’ve taught the Winter Workshop since then. I love coming back to spend January with students and the teaching team who’ve worked together over so many years. I remember my own Winter Workshop as a time of immense learning and growth.
After the attacks of September 11th, 2001, I felt a strong pull to understand what we in the conflict resolution field were missing. In 2002 I founded the Harvard Negotiation Insight Initiative at PON, which I directed through 2008. HNII researched diverse and non-conventional fields, including mythology, depth psychology, and contemplative traditions, looking for links to modern-day negotiation theory and best practice.
Coming out of those years of exploration, I developed a framework and a methodology for mastering your inner life as the basis for how to deal with people in the outside world. I wrote and published a book on this topic called Winning From Within: A Breakthrough Method for Leading, Living, and Lasting Change. The book is a New York Times bestseller and is published in 15 languages. Today I’m a Regular Contributor at Forbes, writing Op-Eds applying “the inner life of the leader” to current news events. The second week of the Winter Workshop touches on some of these themes.
I spend a lot of my time now advising CEOs of global companies on their toughest leadership challenges. I do that through a boutique consulting firm I co-founded 15 years ago, Mobius Executive Leadership. We have clients around the world. That means I’m on a plane very often, typically traveling across Europe. I split my time between Europe and the US anyway, because I live in both New York City and outside of Amsterdam. My husband and my step-son are Dutch, so we move back and forth between the two countries. I’m willing to bet I have more frequent flyer miles on Delta/KLM than most people.
Kathy Holub
I am a Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School and a consultant in conflict resolution. I have been teaching the Negotiation Workshop at HLS since 2006 and a similar workshop at Columbia Law School for 19 years.
As the founder of Holub Consulting, I’ve spent many years providing negotiation training to senior executives and professionals all over the world. I have also worked as a conflict advisor for individual clients facing high-stakes negotiations involving business, family, or both. Much of my practice now focuses on helping families resolve conflict over inheritance, estate plans, family enterprises, and elder care. I work with individuals as a strategic advisor and coach, and with groups as a facilitator or mediator.
Conflict resolution is a second career for me. My first was in journalism. I started at the tiny Delta Democrat-Times in Greenville, Mississippi, which provided one of the greatest adventures of my life. I then moved to the San Jose (CA) Mercury News, where I covered Silicon Valley and became a staff writer for the Sunday magazine. I was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in General News Reporting, and my work has appeared in many other publications.
The link between the two careers was a pivotal year I spent at Stanford University as a Knight Fellow in Journalism. The fellowship was created to give experienced journalists a year of R&R to recharge their batteries. It was just what I needed. After 14 years in journalism, I was burned out and struggling with a massive career crisis. On the first day of my fellowship I dropped in on the Negotiation Workshop at Stanford Law School, taught by Bob Mnookin. I was hooked from the first class. The next year I left journalism and went to law school.
I have an A.B. in Government from Harvard University and a J.D. from Yale Law School. I clerked for the Hon. Sonia Sotomayor in the Southern District of New York and practiced law for two years before moving into teaching and consulting. I live in New York City.
Linda Netsch
After more than fifteen years of running a business and traveling too much, I joined the law firm of Fenwick & West in San Francisco. I am now the General Manager of FLEX by Fenwick, a service of Fenwick & West that matches clients needing flexible in-house legal support with experienced attorneys. Our clients range from high growth startups to Fortune 500 companies, primarily in the technology and life sciences fields. I enjoy putting the skills of negotiation into practice every day, including thoroughly understanding the interests of our clients, negotiating engagement terms with other lawyers, advocating for budget and resources with our CFO, and managing a team of lawyers.
Prior to joining Fenwick & West, I founded Align Consulting, providing negotiation, coaching, and conflict resolution services. I worked with clients from fields including technology, life sciences, banking & finance, healthcare, law, government, and education. My projects included helping companies prepare for and conduct major negotiations, working with international organizations to manage cultural and communication challenges, and implementing major corporate change initiatives. Executive coaching and leadership development were also part of my practice, as was mediation of organizational and employee disputes.
I’ve worked extensively with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs on their business and legal negotiations, as well as on their pitches to investors. I served as an Executive-in-Residence at a technology incubator, and as a member of Golden Seeds, an early-stage investment firm with a focus on women leaders. As Treasurer of the Board of the Silicon Valley Humane Society, I had the good fortune to work with other animal lovers to raise and manage funds for one of my favorite nonprofit organizations.
In addition to training and consulting, I practiced law at an entertainment law firm in Los Angeles and worked as an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Attorney at the US Postal Service Headquarters in Washington, D.C. As an ADR attorney, my duties involved increasing the use and effectiveness of negotiation, mediation, and other alternative dispute resolution processes within the Postal Service. I also mediated federal contract and employment disputes and facilitated sessions on changing federal rules and regulations.
Before private law practice, I served as an officer in the US Air Force – first as a communications-electronics program manager for a NATO satellite project and then as an attorney practicing criminal prosecution, contract, and labor law. I was on the faculty of the Air Force Academy where I taught business law and negotiation.
I have a B.S. in Molecular Biology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a law degree from Harvard Law School. I live in the San Francisco Bay area.
Doug Stone
I am a founder of Triad Consulting Group and a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, where I have taught for almost 30 years.
Through Triad, I’ve consulted to a wide range of organizations, including Honda, HP, Merck, Ropes & Gray, and Time Warner, and I’ve lectured at Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Pixar. I’ve worked with journalists in South Africa, diplomats at the former Organization of African Unity, police and community leaders in Springfield, MA, and doctors at UN/AIDS and W.H.O. I’ve also worked with the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, Teach for America, the Ford Foundation, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the State Department, the Department of Justice, and the White House. I’ve lectured at Birzeit University in Ramallah, at Kashmir University in Srinagar, and was a Wexner Scholar in Jerusalem. In 1999, Sheila Heen and I were on Oprah.
I am co-author of Difficult Conversations (2nd ed. 2010), which has been translated into 25 languages and is a New York Times business bestseller. I am also co-author of New York Times bestseller Thanks for the Feedback (2014). My articles on negotiation and conflict management have appeared in the Harvard Business Review, Rotman Management Magazine, Educational Leadership, and the New York Times.
I graduated from Brown in 1980 and Harvard Law School in 1984. Prior to returning to Harvard, I practiced transactional and regulatory banking law at firms in Boston and New York. There are rumors that I was asked to write for Beavis and Butthead, Conan, and Jon Stewart, but seriously, how could these be true?
Alain-Laurent Verbeke
In the first place, I am father of Alexander (25, notary lawyer), Charlotte (24, pharmacy, last year master student) and Jan-Willem (21, law, master student in LM Munich this year), and husband -since the Summer of 1987- of Els (lawyer, senior manager ING). As a juvenile diabetes patient (type 1), mindfulness and small happiness guide my life.
I am a Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School since 2007.
At KU Leuven, I have been a Full Professor of Law for about three decades, currently with a Chair in Trusts & Estates and a Chair in Negotiation & Mediation. At the Faculty of Law, I am director of the Rector Dillemans Family Property Law Institute, co-director of the Center for Notary Law and of the Institute for Contract Law. At the Faculty of Psychology, I am co-chair of LCM (Leuven Center for Collaborative Management).
Since 1999 I am also Professor of Private & Comparative Law at Tilburg Law School, and since 2008 Professor of Law & Negotiation at UCP Lisbon Global School of Law.
I have written and lectured extensively on all aspects of Private Law and ADR, and (co)supervise numerous Ph.D. and post-doctoral research. See http://www.law.kuleuven.be/fvr/nl/pdf/cvALV and http://ssrn.com/author=1126172.
In 2006, I was sponsor of the International Francqui Chair, awarded to Professor Mnookin, who came for six months to Leuven. In 2010-2011, I received the Belgian Francqui Chair at the University of Brussels, on the theme “collaborative negotiation as inspiration for new professional ethics”. In 2014-2015, I received the KBC Chair in Family Wealth at Antwerp Management School.
As a Private Client Attorney at the Bar of Brussels, I am Senior Partner at Greenille, the private client department of Deloitte Legal Attorneys. On the preventive side, I give estate planning advice and coach and facilitate processes of next gen transition, family and business dynamics and governance in large family businesses. On the conflict side, I am mostly negotiating family wealth or family business disputes, including inheritance, divorce and contract cases. I also am a mediator and arbitrator.
I have a Bachelors degree in Philosophy magna cum laude (University of Leuven 1984), Masters degree in Law (J.D.) summa cum laude (University of Leuven 1987), LL.M summa cum laude (University of Michigan Law School, Ann Arbor 1988), Ph.D. in Law (University of Leuven 1991), Masters degree in Notary Law summa cum laude (University of Ghent 1995), Post-doctoral Fellow in Negotiation (Harvard Law School Winter Term 2005).