Aimee Gourlay, Director of Training and
Services
Ms. Gourlay, Executive Director of Mediation Center for Dispute Resolution, joined the Center in 1992. Ms. Gourlay is also a frequent presenter at national conferences and seminars and an Adjunct Professor at William Mitchell College of Law, teaching Mediation Skills and Alternative Dispute Resolution. She has trained hundreds of individuals in mediation and family mediation skills, advanced mediation topics, negotiation skills and conflict management.
Ms. Gourlay is a mediator and facilitator. With expertise in providing assistance to people in highly conflictual relationships and diverse backgrounds, she frequently mediates workplace disputes, public policy issues, family cases, and organizational problems. She is a facilitative mediator who focuses her workplace mediation on pre-litigation employment issues, working with individuals and teams to resolve problems before they escalate and to improve the quality of the workplace. Ms. Gourlay also serves on the United States Postal Service panel of EEO mediators.
She provides consultation and administration of Alternative Dispute Resolution ("ADR") processes within organizations, and conflict management coaching. Her work includes consulting with the Midwest and Atlantic area consortia of electric utilities to design and implement an ADR system for member utilities as required by the Federal Energy Regulation Commission and writing an ADR Handbook for internal organizational use. She has presented on dispute systems design at national conferences.
Her public policy mediation and facilitation work includes cases involving nonprofit boards, funders and staff; racial discrimination; allocation of public resources; and, work with teams within state and local government. She also facilitates communication between community members, elected officials, city staff and developers about redevelopment projects. She received a B.A. with honors from Macalester College, and graduated cum laude from the University of Minnesota Law School.
Recent publications:
"Mediation: The Process," Minnesota State Bar Association Continuing Legal Education, acted as the mediator for a professional education video to train mediators, Winter 1999;
"Mediation in Employment Cases is Too Little Too Late: Organizational Conflict Management Begins Before a Lawsuit," 21 Hamline University Law Review 261, Winter 1998 (reprinted in Perspectives, a publication of the Society for Professionals in Dispute Resolution and scheduled for publication in Australia);
"Mediation for Dads: A Workbook," A. Gourlay, A. Hayden, N. Tift and M. Toogood, 1996