I’m Diane Levin, a dispute resolution professional in the U.S. in the Greater Boston area. I run two businesses, Partnering Solutions LLC, a mediation consulting firm on Boston’s North Shore, and OptionBridge LLC, a full-service ADR firm headquartered in Concord, New Hampshire, with offices in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

I like to think of myself as a dispute resolution multi-tasker. I mediate, I train, I coach, I consult.

Since 1995, I have helped litigants and private clients resolve disputes involving tort, employment, business, probate, family, and real estate issues, and serve on numerous mediation panels, including the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

My grand passion, however, is reserved for training and coaching: I have taught more people than I can count to resolve conflict, negotiate better, or become mediators, and who have hailed from many different parts of the world, including Croatian judges and Bulgarian lawyers through USAID. I’m on a mission to get the whole world trained in the art of talking it out.

My profession of origin is the law: as an attorney I practiced tort, municipal, labor, employment, and probate law, for both sides of the legal aisle, plaintiffs and defendants (needless to say, not on the same case — hey, I’m not that much of a multi-tasker). It gave me an appreciation for seeing things from all sides.

While real-world, in-person interactions are important to my work, the internet constitutes an important part of my professional life. I serve as technology consultant to mediators and other service providers seeking to leverage the web for social networking and to market their business, since I’m one of those people who actually builds web sites for fun. I’m one of the first people on the planet to blog about ADR, building a community of dispute resolution bloggers at ADRblogs.com. And for three years I’ve published this blog, first at its old home at the Online Guide to Mediation, and now here at MediationChannel.com.

“Only connect” is now my official motto — ironic when back in law school I turned down a free modem because I thought the internet was just a passing fad.

You can read more about me and the work my partners and I are doing to help organizations and individuals face and address conflict at OptionBridge.com.