Moty Cristal – Founder and CEO of NEST
Following an illustrious career as one of Israel’s leading negotiation experts, Cristal established NEST Consulting to bring a unique approach to the world of negotiation and the benefit of his experience and success to the private sector.
Prior to founding NEST, Cristal held several key positions in Israeli negotiation teams, including serving as Deputy Head of the Negotiation Management Centre at former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s office, wherein he played a part in both the Camp David and Taba summits.
Following the outbreak of violence September 2000 he was responsible for all preparatory work, scenario planning and crisis management analysis, before famously leading the negotiation at the Church of The Nativity Crisis in Bethlehem in 2002.
Cristal is a graduate of the School of Law at Bar-Ilan University and of The Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is currently completing his PhD at The London School of Economics where he has developed the revolutionary Negosystem©, a breakthrough model for negotiation systems.
Cristal lectures graduate students in International Negotiation and Crisis Management at both Tel Aviv University and The Lauder School of Government at the Inter-Disciplinary Center (IDC), Hertzlia.
Moty Cristal and his NEST team are in charge of all Civilian crisis management at the office of Israeli Prime Minister Mr Ehud Olmert.
Derek Gaunt – Hostage Negotiator and Trainer
Derek Gaunt is a seasoned negotiator and leader. He is a 23 year veteran of the Alexandria, Virginia police department and Commander of their Hostage Negotiation team. He is also an instructor of international business people in the application of hostage negotiations practices and principles to business negotiations; contracts, mergers, procurement and acquisitions. Derek has guest lectured at the Goethe School of Business in Frankfurt, Germany and Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business.
Derek is the Lead Instructor and developer of curriculum for the Northern Virginia Criminal Justice Training Academy’s Hostage Negotiations Course. He has developed simple and complex practical training exercises related to hostage negotiations for use by negotiations teams throughout the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. Derek assists law enforcement agencies throughout the Washington D.C. metropolitan area with establishing and enhancing their hostage/barricade management capabilities. He has also trained international law enforcement, military and security personnel in hostage negotiations practices and principles. Derek is a Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services certified instructor.
Sheila Heen – Cofounder of Triad Consulting Group
Sheila is a Partner at Triad Consulting Group and a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. She also teaches courses for executives and lawyers through Harvard’s Executive Education series. Through her consulting practice Sheila has worked with a wide variety of clients.
In addition to corporate clients like Ford, Citigroup, IBM, Shell, DuPont and Merck she has also provided training for the Singapore Supreme Court, assisted Greek and Turkish Cypriots grappling with the conflict that divides their island, and worked with people who talk to families about donating a loved one’s organs for the New England Organ Bank.
Recently she spent time in Barrow, Alaska, with the Inupiat Board of Directors for the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, who controls the Arctic Slope and ANWAR.
Sheila spent ten years with the Harvard Negotiation Project, developing negotiation theory and practice. She specializes in particularly difficult negotiations – where emotions run high and relationships become strained.
Sheila is co-author, along with Douglas Stone and Bruce Patton, of the New York Times Business Bestseller, Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most.
One of the side benefits of writing Difficult Conversations has been the chance to appear on shows as diverse as Oprah and the G. Gordon Liddy show, NPR’s Diane Rehms Show, The Connection with Christopher Lydon, Fox News, and CNBC’s Power Lunch.
Her articles on negotiation have appeared in the Negotiation Journal, Oprah’s O Magazine, Fortune and USA Weekend, and Real Simple magazine
John Richardson – Senior Consultant of Triad Consulting Group
John is a Senior Consultant for Triad Consulting, a lawyer, and a PhD candidate in Organizational Studies at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management. John taught Negotiation and Multi-Party Negotiation at Harvard Law School, and served as an Associate at the Harvard Negotiation Project.
He wrote Getting It Done with Roger Fisher, the author of the international bestseller, Getting to Yes. Most recently, John co-authored Negotiation Analysis with Harvard Business School guru Howard Raiffa and David Metcalfe. Negotiation Analysis synthesizes game theory, quantitative decision analysis, and negotiation theory. It was published by Harvard University Press in January 2003 and has quickly become a central text at business schools around the country.
John’s corporate consulting clients include Deloitte and Touche, CSC Consulting, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse First Boston, Ropes & Gray, Monsanto, Sankyo Pharma, BankAmerica, Compaq, AT&T, and Ameritech. In 1995, John helped found a regional consulting and training practice in the Australasia region, based in Melbourne, Australia, working with clients like BHP and Ericsson.
In the public sector, John has worked with the Virginia Military Institute, The Citadel, the Department of Justice National Advocacy Center, and the Archdiocese of Medellin, Columbia.
For reasons that were clear to him at the time, he left teaching to get a PhD, and expects to graduate in 2007. John graduated from Wesleyan University and Harvard Law School. He practiced securities law in New York before returning to negotiation research and teaching at the Harvard Negotiation Project.
Collins Dobbs – Leadership Coach at the Stanford University School of Business
Collins is an experienced Leadership & Organization Development Coach with a 15 years proven track record of helping organizations achieve both their strategic and operational goals through the use of a wide range of services, including: leadership coaching and development programs, diversity/inclusion workshops, conflict resolution skills development, and team building for intact and cross functional teams. Collins is appreciated for his ability to quickly partner with leaders to help assess, design and deliver solutions which blend human and operational processes in service of achieving the maximum desired outcomes for clients.
Collins brings a strong global perspective to his work as a result of his work in various countries, including: the Czech Republic, Slovakia, China, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Kenya, Bangladesh, Uganda, Mexico, Germany, amongst others. He thrives on working with organizations and communities to understand and leverage their diversity to create a climate of inclusion and innovation, focused on achieving performance results while building organizational empowerment and efficacy.
Collins spent 12 years working in the telecommunications sector. In addition, he has provided consultation and training services in other sectors, including: Stanford University, Princeton University, CARE USA, City of Washington DC, City of Rochester, and the Richmond Roundtable for Quality Teams.
Today, in addition to operating his independent consulting practice, Collins serves as a Leadership Coach in the Center for Leadership Development & Research in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. In this role, Collins works with emerging leaders to support their leadership development journey by providing both academic training, as well as direct leadership coaching to support them in dealing with their current leadership challenges associated with their various professional and on-campus leadership roles.
Sandra Hein – Hostage Negotiator and Trainer
Sandra Hein is a respected hostage negotiator and trainer in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area with many years of experience in managing hostage-barricades and training new negotiators. She is currently a detective with the Alexandria Police Department in Alexandria, Virginia. Sandy is a 22-year law enforcement veteran who has been assigned to the Hostage Negotiations Team for the past nine years. Since being assigned to the team, she has negotiated or supervised nearly a dozen incidents involving hostage-takers, lone barricades and suicidal individuals.
Sandy is a certified Instructor with the Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) for the Commonwealth of Virginia and serves on the training faculty of the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance (VSDVAA). She has trained law enforcement officers and allied professionals in the areas of sexual violence, SART response, crisis intervention, hostage negotiation, and police investigative procedures. In addition, Sandy is an associate instructor at the Northern Virginia Criminal Justice Training Academy’s Introduction to Hostage/Crisis Negotiations Course and trained in Critical Incident Stress Management.
Sandy developed the curriculum for the Criminal Investigations course currently offered at DeVry University and was part of a team of professionals who developed the Sexual Violence Training for Trainers course for the VSDVAA (Action Alliance). She holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Criminal Justice from Old Dominion University and was recognized with the Vola Lawson Award by the Alexandria Commission on Women at the 2011 Salute to Women Awards for her work in the area of Sexual Violence.