Training Program Staff
Laurel Singer, Director of Training Programs & Core Trainer
Laurel Singer, MS, LPC, directs NPCC's training program, providing training and experiential learning to professionals, teams, and students in conflict resolution, various graduate programs, and law schools within the Oregon University System. She is a seasoned trainer with over three decades of experience designing and implementing customized, skill based training in areas including: collaborative governance, mediation, conflict resolution, and communication. In addition to her role managing training, Laurel also serves as the Program Manager of Health and Human Services in NPCC’s Oregon Programs. In this capacity, Laurel works to foster the use of collaborative approaches for addressing public policy issues in areas such as education, health care, housing and diverse communities. Laurel draws on 18 years of experience in private practice as a mediator and facilitator, with expertise in designing and implementing the most effective process possible to assist an organization, public body, or collection of stakeholders in making decisions and resolving conflicts constructively and collaboratively. Laurel also brings to her role over 20 years of experience working in the human service arena at both the treatment and management level.
To contact Laurel, e-mail laurels@pdx.edu or call 503-725-8224.
Mari Saint-Pierre, Internship & Training Program Coordinator
Mari Saint-Pierre coordinates the internship program and provides logistical support for trainings and events. Mari came to NPCC after serving for three years as the Training and Development Specialist for DoveLewis, where she designed and facilitated new hire orientation and staff training, coordinated continuing education lectures and conferences, and administered the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Prior to DoveLewis, Mari was an instructor at Everest College. After completing her MFA in non-fiction writing at Pacific University in 2006, Mari transitioned from teaching to training, beginning her new role as Training Coordinator at NPCC in November 2009.
To contact Mari, e-mail msaint2@pdx.edu or call 503-725-8114.
Elaine Hallmark, Core Trainer
As Senior Associate, Elaine Hallmark advises on collaborative processes and provides training on collaborative government for NPCC. Elaine served as Director of Oregon Consensus from program inception in 2003 until January 2009. Elaine is a founding member and Board President of Beyond War, an international non-profit educational organization that models and promotes the means for living without war. She is a member of the Ethics Committee of the Association of Conflict Resolution, Environmental Public Policy Section and former Co-chair of the Section. She is also a former Chair of the Oregon Mediation Association Ethics Committee. Elaine served four years on the former Oregon Dispute Resolution Commission, including three years as founding Chair.
As a private practitioner with Confluence Northwest and later with Hallmark Pacific Group, Elaine mediated numerous multi-party disputes about the environment, land use, natural resources, business and employment issues in the Pacific Northwest and nationally. She served as an assistant General Counsel to the Bonneville Power Administration, US Department of Energy, in the 1980s.
Elaine is known for her ability to work with contentious groups and deal with technical issues, and has received numerous awards for her work in alternative dispute resolution in Oregon, including the Oregon State Bar’s Lezak Award of Merit for Outstanding Achievement in Appropriate Dispute Resolution, and the Lewis and Clark Law School Outstanding Environmental Alumni Award.
Elaine has a J.D. from Northwestern School of Law of Lewis and Clark College and a B.A. from George Washington University.
To contact Elaine, e-mail elaineh@pdx.edu.
Jamie Damon, Core Trainer
Jamie Damon has worked as a mediator and facilitator guiding individuals and communities through disputes to develop working relationships since 1986. She comes to Oregon Consensus from Portland based, JLA Public Involvement, a public process consulting firm, where she was a Principal and Senior Associate. Jamie has guided communities, and local, state and federal agencies in Oregon, Washington and Alaska through hundreds of contentious issues involving land use, transportation, water resources, emergency services, and organizational development. In addition, she has taught classes and training in mediation, facilitation and public process.
Jamie has an M.A. in International Conflict Transformation, is the past Chair of the Oregon Dispute Resolution Commission, and has held leadership positions with the Oregon Mediation Association.
To contact Jamie, e-mail jdamon@pdx.edu.
Craig Shinn, Core Trainer
Where people and the environment intertwine, you will find Craig W. Shinn (B.S., University of Maine; M.P.A., Lewis & Clark College; Ph.D., University of Washington). The Pacific Northwest gives Dr. Shinn an endless stream of opportunities to work on environmental and natural resource policy and administration through teaching, research and professional outreach.
His teaching, through the Masters in Public Administration program, the Public Administration and Policy doctoral program and the Executive Leadership Institute, demonstrates his commitment to combining people, politics and the environment. The National Policy Process seminar travels to Washington, D.C. following natural resource policymaking step by step. His classes and seminars in organization theory draw on his experience with and study of natural resource organizations and institutions.
Short courses like Natural Resource Policy Values and Economics, or Watersheds: The Clean Water Act and More, and programs he oversees like the Executive Seminar Program and the Watershed Management Professional Program, build on his practice and understanding of policy, institutions and community-based natural resource management.
Dr. Shinn is regularly involved in the community of practice-providing applied workshops, consulting services and outreach in the region and across the nation and globe. Craig Shinn currently Chairs the as hoc Advisory Committee for the Sustainable Forest Indicators Project for the Oregon Board of Forestry and as a member of the Advisory Board for The Resource Innovation group and for the Institute for Natural Resources.
Dr. Shinn's research stems from his interests in how policy agreement is created and sustained in society including administrative aspects of adaptive management, social aspects of sustainability, civic capacity building and inter-jurisdictional administration of natural resources. He coauthored Rural Resource Management (1994) with Sandra Miller and William Bentley and co-managed the Oregon State of the Environment Report (2000). Most recently he co-authored Foundations of Public Service with Dr. Doug Morgan et al.
He has recently been involved in three funded research efforts: a partnership to collaborate in developing indicators of sustainability with the Mt. Hood National Forest and David Ervin, Portland State University a study of civic engagement with Douglas Morgan, Hatfield School and Dilafruz Williams, Graduate School of Education, PSU and Masami Nishishiba, Hatfield School, PSU and a review of USDA Forest Service Community Based Watershed Restoration Partnerships with Bob Doppelt, Center for Watershed and Community Health and DeWitt John, Bowdoin College (September, 2002).
To contact Craig, e-mail shinnc@pdx.edu or call 503-725-8822.
Turner Odell, Core Trainer
As Natural Resources Program Manager for Oregon Consensus, Turner Odell fosters the use of collaborative approaches for addressing public policy issues related to natural resources and the environment. Turner has nearly 20 years of experience in environmental and natural resource law and regulation, including litigation, administrative practice, agency negotiations, and mediation of complex, multiparty environmental issues.
Before joining Oregon Consensus, Turner was a Senior Mediator in the Portland, Oregon office of RESOLVE, a non-profit organization providing neutral consensus-building services for resolving environmental, energy, and health-related public policy issues. At RESOLVE, Turner’s practice focused on designing, convening, and facilitating policy dialogues, interagency and stakeholder workgroups, and other agreement-focused multi-party processes involving complex scientific, environmental, and public policy issues.
Prior to RESOLVE, Turner was a senior attorney with the Environmental Law Institute in Washington, D.C., where he conducted research and analysis, and facilitated stakeholder groups. As counsel to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Pennsylvania office, a regional environmental organization, Turner worked to restore and protect the Chesapeake Bay. Earlier, Turner worked as a Senior Project Attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council and as an Associate with the Fried Frank law firm in New York.
Turner received his B.S. from Cornell University in resource economics and his J.D. from the Rutgers School of Law – Newark.
To contact Turner, e-mail todell@pdx.edu or call 503-725-8200.
