The 2011 Training Team

Miki and Inbal Kashtan, founders of BayNVC and trainers at the Leadership Program for the first 9 years of the program, will not be on the training team in 2011. François Beausoleil and Roxy Manning will be the core trainers for the 2011 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, Jorge Rubio and Arnina Kashtan, long-standing members of the CNVC global community. Kit will attend the February retreat, Arnina the June retreat and Jorge the October retreat. Read below to learn more about the team for 2011.

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

Roxanne Manning has been using NVC in her psychotherapy practice since 2003, and has been teaching NVC since 2005. She has been working with BayNVC as a trainer to increase our range of offerings in the South Bay both for parents and for couples. She is a main trainer and organizer for the annual New York Intensive, and one of the trainers for the NVC and Diversity Intensive, now in its fourth year. Roxanne holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from Binghamton University, NY.

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.

Jorge Rubio Vollert has been a CNVC certified trainer for 12 years. He has worked intensively in his country of origin, Colombia, as founder and executive director of The Foundation for Nonviolent Communication Center and participated in the Presidential program "Haz Paz", with the intention to create a culture of peace in a country of war. He also directed three Community Peace pilot projects with the Colombian Institute for the Welfare of the Family, and worked at the INEM School (Instituto Nacional de Educacion Media), a public school in Ibague that serves the poorest economic strata. Jorge travels internationally to conduct workshops, and to consult and mediate with businesses, schools, organizations, police, families and individuals. He is currently working in the U.S., Spain, and Latin America trying to support the creation of living empathic networks. Recent extensive work in several regions of Bolivia has included workshops with government agencies at the national level, with child protective agencies, and with community and human rights organizations. For more: http://vivenciawork.com/.

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.

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 2010 we anticipate having 4-7 assistant trainers, including graduates from our 2009 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.