I am the daughter of an immigrant refugee, displaced by war. My mother lost her family, her community, her homeland and her identity because people couldn’t figure out how to get along. I lived the cost of war. It took me many years to realize that it was my mother’s lived experience that led me to my career in conflict resolution. Check out my TEDx talk below for my personal story for how I arrived at being a mediator and my mission as a result.

 An Apple for the Mediator

I started my career as a teacher and it is an abiding part of who I am. I taught English as a Foreign Language in Japan for a year where my own communal values were strengthened. When I returned to Canada, I helped start the first Fringe Theatre Festival in Victoria, BC – then I married the man who started them all. That took me to Edmonton, where I ran a refugee friendship program for 4 years, matching over 1,000 newly-arrived government-sponsored refugees to volunteers for mutual understanding.

Community Mediation

When I found mediation in 1993 in Edmonton, I still had my day job as a refugee friendship coordinator and found myself enamoured with volunteering as a community mediator.  I trained with the local community mediation centre. They offered 70 hours of mediation training, some of it with Gordon Sloan – one of Canada’s premier conflict resolution trainers. I was full of hope! Then I mediated my first case! I still remember that mediation, as my co-mediator Susan Sharpe and I trudged out on a snowy January evening in Edmonton. I spent most of the session with my legs securely wrapped around each other like a pretzel! I was scared. Here were two neighbours, who had lived beside each other for years, and they hated each other. What was I supposed to do? From that rocky start, I went on to co-mediate a variety of community and civil claims and victim-offender mediations over the following 5 years. I mediated over 100 cases with other volunteer mediators in a volunteer co-mediation model.

Restorative Justice

I eventually had my first “real job” as a mediator when I co-led  an adult criminal court diversion mediation program: Edmonton’s Victim Offender Mediation Project – a first of its kind in Alberta. We had a board of directors and my co-leader Ashley Daniel and I supported over 20 volunteers to mediate. We also published a seminal book on Restorative Justice written by the same Susan Sharpe who had co-mediated with me on my first case! My work through the victim-offender program introduced me to important concepts of restorative justice, systemic oppression and circle processes for healing and change. Within a few years, my life changed again as I had a baby and my family and I moved back to Victoria from Edmonton in the late 1990s.

Conflict Resolution Teaching and Professional Coach

I immediately joined the teaching team at the Centre for Conflict Resolution at the Justice Institute where I’ve been ever since! I also got my certification in being a Professional Coach, through the International Coach Federation. I discovered how coaching is a powerful complement and tool in helping people de-escalate and prepare themselves for difficult conversations, negotiations, mediations and conflicts.

Leaders, Conflict, Organizations

When I returned to Victoria in the late 1990s. I specialized in coaching leaders and working with conflict within organizations. I’ve concentrated exclusively on conflict in workplaces ever since, bringing my own eclectic blend of a culturally sensitized lens combined with coaching, training, mediation, leadership and team conflict development and a restorative and systemic perspective. Together with my monthly newsletter – and the miracle of the internet – I’ve been privileged to touch the lives of countless people in conflict around the world.

On Conflict Podcast

Ever wanting to discover what can make war, pain and violence obsolete and what can grow us as human beings at the same time, In 2018 I started the On Conflict Podcast. with long-time collaborator and fellow Justice Institute of BC colleague, Gordon White.

On Conflict Leadership Institute

In 2021, Gordon and I also co-founded a place where leaders can develop their conflict competency and make conflict culture change. Check out our On Conflict Leadership Institute where, these days, I concentrate most of my teaching. I love to learn, absorbing podcasts and books and webinars and workshops over the years. I write about a lot of what I learn in my newsletter (sign up!).

Formal Education

Here are a few of my more official designations:

  • Masters in Educational Psychology, specializing in Leadership (M.Ed.), University of Victoria
  • Professional Certified Coach (P.C.C.), International Coach Federation
  • Certificate in Negotiation & Mediation (Cert.Con.Res.), Justice Institute of British Columbia
  • Certificate in Immigrant Settlement Work, Grant MacEwan College
  • Certificate in Human Resource Management, Grant MacEwan College
  • Post-Graduate Diploma in Applied Linguistics/T.E.S.L. (Teaching E.S.L.), University of Victoria
  • Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature, University of Victoria

Phone: 250–381–7522 • E-mail: julia@juliamenard.com