Leonard L. Riskin

Riskin is the C.A. Leedy Professor Emeritus of Law, Isidor Loeb Professor Emeritus of Law, and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution at the University of Missouri. Under his leadership and direction, Mizzou Law became the first law school in the country to integrate dispute resolution into doctrinal law courses and to offer an LLM in Dispute Resolution degree program, now in its 25th year.

CSDR leadership continues to seek Professor Riskin’s counsel on various aspects of the Center’s mission, including curriculum, pedagogy, training, and faculty scholarship. Currently, he is a visiting professor of dispute resolution at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.

A leading figure in the dispute resolution field and a prolific author, Professor Riskin has published seminal works on negotiation, mediation, and mindfulness and the law. His latest is Managing Conflict Mindfully: Don’t Believe Everything You Think (West 2023).

Donna Pavlick, ’00

Pavlick is a member of the very first graduating class of the LLM in Dispute Resolution program at the University of Missouri. Thereafter, she received her PhD in educational leadership and policy analysis, also at Mizzou. Dr. Pavlick returns to Columbia after more than 20 years in law school administration, having served as assistant dean at the University of Missouri and Vanderbilt University Law Schools and associate dean at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. As Senior Fellow, she oversees activities relating to outreach and engagement of LLM alumni and students.

In addition to her career in the legal academy, Dr. Pavlick has served as a community mediator in family and civil disputes, and recently marked fifteen years as a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) arbitrator. Before attending law school, she served as a physical therapist in the U.S. Navy, retiring from the Navy Reserves after a 30-year career.

Yael Efron

Efron is vice dean at Zefat Academic College School of Law (ZAC) in Safed, Israel, where she teaches civil procedure, alternative dispute resolution, and family law. She also heads the Clinical Education Program and directs the Legal Aid Clinic at ZAC. Dr. Efron has published widely on legal education, pedagogy and curriculum design, negotiation, and dispute resolution. She is the recipient of the Halbert Centre for Canadian Studies Post-Doctoral Fellowship and the Theodore Herzl Distinguished Chair Award.

Dr. Efron, along with Professor Michelle LeBaron, teaches the cross-cultural dispute resolution course in Mizzou Law’s online LLM program in dispute resolution. She is also a visiting instructor at the Osgoode Professional Development program at York University, Canada, and a visiting scholar at Masaryk University Law Faculty in the Czech Republic under the auspices of the Theodore Herzl Distinguished Chair. She received her LLD degree from the Hebrew University Faculty of Law.

Michelle LeBaron

LeBaron is a professor of law at the University of British Columbia Allard School of Law in Vancouver, Canada. She is a conflict transformation scholar and practitioner whose work features creativity, culture, and interdisciplinarity. Professor LeBaron has written and practiced in many types of conflict contexts; with professional dancers, visual artists, and musicians, she has explored how expressive and creative arts may be useful in opening ways forward in intractable conflicts. Concerned with how theory and practice inform each other, she has made seminal contributions to dispute resolution pedagogy and practice, and has given many international keynote speeches.

Professor LeBaron has published widely on the arts and conflict transformation. Her books include Changing Our Worlds: Art As Transformative Practice; The Choreography of Resolution: Conflict, Movement and Neuroscience; Conflict Across Cultures: A New Approach for a Changing World; Bridging Cultural Conflicts; and Bridging Troubled Waters.

Sarah Read

Read is a former senior counsel and partner at Sidley Austin in Chicago. As a lawyer, she spent more than 30 years working through complex policy issues, particularly in the telecommunications and energy industries, and was an early adopter of multi-stakeholder collaborative processes. Read also served on the Missouri Supreme Court Commission on Alternative Dispute Resolution (2009-2014), and continues to work with The Missouri Bar to pass legislation incorporating many of the Commission’s recommendations. Retired from law practice, she currently consults on conflict resolution processes and facilitates difficult dialogues within organizations and communities through her company, The Communications Center, Inc.

Professor Read teaches the public policy dispute resolution course in Mizzou Law’s online LLM program in dispute resolution. She also works with Center faculty to train practicing lawyers in dispute resolution.

Fernando Sanquírico Pittevil

Pittevil is a practicing lawyer and professor of dispute resolution in Venezuela. He teaches arbitration, Roman history law, and civil law at Central University of Venezuela, Andres Bello Catholic University, and Monteávila University. At Monteávila, Professor Sanquírico Pittevil also serves as director of the Research and Studies Centre for Dispute Resolution, as well as director of the Program of Advanced Studies in Arbitration. He is a member of the Venezuelan Chapter of the Spanish Club of Arbitration and the board of directors of the Venezuelan Arbitration Association. He is senior counsel at Dentons, in its arbitration and litigation departments.

With Adriana Vaamonde Marcano, Professor Sanquírico Pittevil teaches the dispute resolution in the digital age course in Mizzou Law’s online LLM program in dispute resolution. They have served as first partners and main contacts at Monteávila relating to Missouri’s LLM program in Spanish.

Imre Stephen Szalai

Szalai is the Judge John D. Wessel Distinguished Professor of Social Justice at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. He has served as an arbitrator in dozens of cases and authored books, book chapters, and several articles that focus on the development of arbitration law and practice. Professor Szalai has also appeared or been quoted for his arbitration expertise in national and international media, including CNN, The Economist, Forbes, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, NBC News, National Public Radio, and Bloomberg Radio.  He teaches the LLM arbitration seminar course in Mizzou Law’s online LLM program in dispute resolution and has supervised several students with their independent study projects.

Professor Szalai received his undergraduate degree from Yale University, with a double major in economics and classical civilizations, and his law degree from Columbia University, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar.

Adriana Vaamonde Marcano

Marcano is a lawyer and professor in Venezuela, with special expertise in arbitration. She leads the international arbitration practice for Latin America at JEDCA Law, PA, and serves as an international arbitrator. In addition, she is a professor of good practices in arbitration at the Advanced Studies in Arbitration Program at Monteávila University, where she also serves as deputy director at the Research and Studies Centre for Dispute Resolution.

Professor Vaamonde Marcano’s leadership positions in institutions promoting arbitration include: vice president of academic affairs of the Venezuelan Arbitration Association; membership as General Counsel of the Arbitration Center of Mexico, and the Venezuelan Chapter of the Spanish Arbitration Club; and Regional Representative of Young ICCA (International Council for Commercial Arbitration). She co-teaches the dispute resolution in the digital age course in Missouri’s online program and advises on Missouri’s LLM program in Spanish.