Robert "Bob" Bordone

Robert “Bob” Bordone, J.D.  (he/him)

Email:  rbordone@themediationgroup.org
Mediation, Organizational Development, Facilitation, Conflict Assessment, Coaching, System Design and Training

Robert C. Bordone, J.D. has a full-time consulting, advisory, and training practice and joins TMG’s roster as a mediator, facilitator, consultant, and coach. As a professional facilitator and conflict resolution consultant, Bob works with individual, non-profit, governmental, and corporate clients across many sectors. He specializes in assisting individuals and groups seeking to manage conflicts in highly sensitive, emotional, or difficult situations. Among many other areas of interest, Bob specializes in working on conflicts affecting faith-based organizations and churches, family businesses, medical and healthcare institutions, universities, and the LGBTQ+ community. He brings to his work with all clients expertise in organizational dynamics and in a broad range of dispute resolution systems and practices.

In addition to his dispute resolution practice, Bob is an author, speaker, and teacher in negotiation, conflict resolution, mediation, and facilitation. Currently an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center and a Senior Fellow at Harvard Law School, he served on Harvard Law School’s full-time faculty for more than twenty years as the Thaddeus R. Beal Clinical Professor of Law, Director, and Founder of the Harvard Negotiation & Mediation Clinical Program. He continues to teach the Harvard Program on Negotiation Global executive education program. He previously taught as a Visiting Clinical Professor at Boston University’s School of Theology. Throughout his career, Bob has received international recognition and has been the recipient of numerous awards. 

Bob has served on a variety of advisory boards that include the Dartmouth College Center for Social Impact and the Harvard Law School Mediation Program.  He has served as Associate Editor of the Negotiation Journal and as a member of its Editorial Advisory Board, as well as a member of the Program on Negotiation Executive Committee, and as faculty adviser to the Harvard Mediation Program, the Harvard Negotiation Law Review,and Harvard Negotiators. Bob currently serves on the Board of Directors for Seeds of Peace, on the Advisory Board for the Catholic Common Ground Initiative, on the Board of the Systemic Justice Project at Harvard Law School, and on the Board of Advisors for the Center for Empathy in International Affairs.

Bob’s current research and writing interests include the assessment, reform, design, and implementation of dispute handling systems and developing and testing methods of effective public dialogue on issues that cut to the core of identity, meaning, belonging, and belief. He is the co-author of two books: Designing Systems and Processes for Managing Disputes, 2d. Edition (Wolters-Kluwer, 2019) and The Handbook of Dispute Resolution (Jossey-Bass, 2005). The Handbook of Dispute Resolution. He has also published articles in leading dispute resolution journals including the Harvard Negotiation Law Review, the Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution, the Journal of Dispute Resolution, Negotiation Briefings, Dispute Resolution Magazine, and Negotiation Journal.

Bob received his J.D.,cum laude, from Harvard Law School, and his A.B.,summa cum laude,from Dartmouth College where he majored in Government. After graduating from law school, Bob clerked for The Honorable George A. O’Toole, Jr. of the United States District Court for Massachusetts. In addition to Harvard Law School, Bob has also worked at the Washington D.C.-based law firm of Crowell & Moring, the New York-based law firm of Cravath, Swaine, & Moore, CBS News, the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the Boston Consulting Group. You can follow him on Twitter with the handle @bobbordone.