The 2012 Training Team

François Beausoleil and Roxy Manning return as the core trainers for the 2012 program. They both have extensive experience with all aspects of the Leadership Program, having graduated as participants in 2005, then served as assistant trainers beginning in 2006, and full members of the training team beginning in 2008. They will be joined at the retreats by trainers Kit Miller, Mary Mackenzie and Arnina Kashtan, long-standing members of the CNVC global community. Kit will attend the January retreat, Mary the June retreat and Arnina the October retreat. Read below to learn more about the team for 2012.

Core Trainers

François Beausoleil Passionate about contributing to the well-being of himself and others through teaching communication skills and promoting a respectful way of living interdependence, Francois Beausoleil, after a career as a professional musician, is teaching, mentoring and consulting (in French and English) in organizations and communities in Canada, United States and Japan since 2004. François has been leading training sessions in the states of California, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Colorado, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Washington, North Carolina, as well as in the provinces of Quebec (Quebec City and Montreal) and British Columbia, and in Japan (Tokyo and Osaka). Apart from his mentoring work with individual clients, he is currently involved in several projects involving mentoring, consulting and trainings in United States and Canada. Some of his organizational clients are: * Volunteers of America’s PACE program, providing Health Care support to elders (Colorado and California) * Quebec-Transplant (coordinating organ donations throughout the Province of Quebec in Canada) * BCNCC, whose mission is to support the growth of NVC education in British Columbia. * The Vachon Island NVC Family Camp, in Washington State. He is also in the process of getting certified as an executive coach and trainer for the New-York based company Optimum Associates (www.executivestamina.org) For more: www.francoisbeausoleil.com

Roxy Manning, a licensed clinical psychologist, has been using NVC in her psychotherapy practice since 2003, and has been formally teaching NVC since 2005. She provides coaching to individuals and couples who wish to deepen their integration and utilization of NVC in their lives. Roxy works with therapists and health professionals to help them bring an NVC consciousness to their therapeutic approach with clients. Roxy has worked with businesses and non-profits to increase their ability to function more cohesively as a team and to better understand and respond to client needs and requests. Roxy has also worked at over 30 intensive retreats with people seeking the deepening and integration of NVC consciousness that is supported by group interaction and sustained interaction and contact. She is the lead organizer of the NVC and Diversity retreat as well as a trainer since its inception in 2007 and is the main organizer and lead trainer for the New York Intensive, now in its 8th year.

Guest Trainers

January 2012: Kit Miller serves as the director of the MK Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence. Her prior position was as director/celebrator of Bay Area Nonviolent Communication in Oakland, California. In part after coming to understand through meditation about violence within the human heart and mind, Kit began learning about and organizing for nonviolence for 16 years in many capacities, including serving as a board member and board president for the Center for Nonviolent Communication.  Kit is a certified permaculturist, which she experiences as an applied nonviolence practice, and is active in the US Transition movement to create sustainable communities worldwide. She has 3 children and is amazed and grateful to have been happily married for 19 years.

June 2012: Mary Mackenzie is a Certified CNVC Trainer and author of Peaceful Living: Daily Meditations for Living with Love, Healing and Compassion. She holds a MA degree in Human Relations and is a trained mediator. Mary is the co-founder of the NVC Academy, an online school for learning Nonviolent Communication; and the executive director of the Peace Workshop, International, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting practical methods for living nonviolently. She teaches Nonviolent Communication to individuals, couples, and families, and offers retreats and workshops to help organizations strengthen their productivity and success. Click here to read a brief article by Mary.

October 2012: Arnina Kashtan, a poet, musician and performer, has been living and teaching NVC since 1992 in Israel, the US and Europe. Founder of Meitarim (“strings” in Hebrew), the Center for NVC in Israel, (in 2000), Arnina has facilitated thousands of people in their transformational path, in her workshops, coaching, therapy and mediation sessions, where she works with individuals and groups, couples & parents, teachers & psychologists, as well as social, governmental and business organizations. In 2004 she co-founded the NVC Concsious Leadership bi-annual Training for Trainers in Israel. A long-time facilitator of The Work (TW) of Byron Katie, Arnina has developed a unique synergy of various modalities, principally NVC & TW, into a dynamic self-realization tool. She specializes in working with anger, fear, guilt, and shame, limiting patterns and beliefs, and parent-child relationships. In her work she helps people re-discover their universal core needs, the heart’s truth. Her view is, that connecting with our needs, we free ourselves from debilitating, disconnecting beliefs, re-learn to listen to ourselves – and, as a result, to others – while learning to make new, conscious, empowered choices. The author of the first comprehensive NVC workbook in Hebrew (2006), and the editor of the first Katie’s (2007) and Marshall Rosenberg’s books in Hebrew (2009), as well as being interviewed in leading magazines, radio and TV programs in Israel, Arnina is also acclaimed for her blending of a profound, laser-like mode of inner-introspection with a rare sense of empathic humor.

Assistant Trainers
Every year since 2003, we have had graduates of the LP program join our team as assistant trainers. All of us – program participants, assistants, and leaders – have deeply enjoyed and appreciated the contribution of LP assistants. In 2012 we anticipate having 4-7 assistant trainers, including graduates from our 2011 program. Assistant trainers maintain personal contact with program participants (quarterly calls and some additional availability when the need arises), offer empathy support during retreats, lead small groups, and engage in many other invisible support activities. The contributions of assistant trainers to the depth and richness of connection and learning that take place in this program have been celebrated by past and current participants as a powerful and essential part of the Leadership Program.