I am sorry to report the unexpected passing of Margaret Shaw, a pioneer in the ADR field and founder of ADR Associates, which merged into JAMS. I did not know her personally, but I (and my students) benefited greatly from her wisdom captured in numerous teaching videos in which she played the role of mediator.
Mediate.com’s tribute (where I learned the sad news), including a link to her obituary, can be found here.
I worked for many years with Margaret as a fellow trainer for federal courts, CPR, corporations, universities and others. We were dear personal friends and spent over 20 years together in the annual meetings of the Senior Mediators Group. She was amazingly kind, generous and rigorous in her work. She taught as an adjunct at NYU for close to 25 years and is responsible for man court programs and reforms. She wrote the single best non-academic article ever on mediation, by pointing out, among other things, that even if you think you are only a facilitative mediator, the raising of any eyebrow can be a “human” evaluative move. She was, with a small group of us, not only in the first generation of the modern ADR movement but an organizer and leader of women mediators and we met often to discuss the challenges of those of us who early on did “big” cases (class actions, etc.) in a less than hospitable environment. She was not only a professional colleague and leader of the field, but a dear friend to me and so many others in our field and I shall miss her very very much. She has two wonderful grown professional children and 4 grandchildren and a husband who will miss her more than any of us.
This was sudden, shocking and very sad new.. RIP Margaret, I love you.
Carrie MM
This breaks my heart. Margaret was tough as nails, kind as [something really kind – the world needs a good kindness metaphor], and always available to help guide those of us coming up through the field.