John Ford, BA.LLB
I’m John Ford, owner of John Ford and Associates, the founder of the HR Mediation Academy and author of Peace at Work, the HR managers guide to workplace mediation.
My passion is empowering HR professionals to mediate thereby bringing more peace into the world.
I’m originally from South Africa. I studied law at the University of Cape Town before moving to Namibia where my law practice centered on human rights work, labor and employment law.
It was through labor law that I started to mediate. When I moved to the United States in 1996 I trained formally and have been mediating ever since. In addition I provide soft skills training to organizations that are developing their overall conflict management competence.
I am inspired to move upstream away from the court house to address conflict at the source. I want to nip conflict in the bud.
I conduct a two day mediation training for members of the Northern California Human Resources Association and a longer 30 hour version for students at UC Berkeley Extension. That class is called Internal Workplace Mediation for the HR Professional.’
Beyond training, I teach organizational collaboration online to master’s students at Creighton University. I also teach mediation to graduate HR students at Golden Gate University in San Francisco. For two years I directed a certificate program in organizational conflict management through JFK University.
Along the way I have been president of the Association for Dispute Resolution of Northern California and was the managing editor of the award winning Mediate.com website for 10 years.
My ultimate vision is peace on earth. I have chosen to focus on peace at work.
I want to make a difference and believe that empowering HR professionals to manage workplace conflict through tools like mediation will help.