It’s the people who make a field.

This book draws on the thought-provoking, diverse, delightful, sometimes painful, and ultimately beautiful personal histories of some of the thinkers, inventors, influencers, reformers, disrupters, and transformers who have created—and continue to create—the field of conflict resolution. The authors of the essays in this book play a variety of roles: mediator, facilitator, arbitrator, ombuds, academic, system designer, entrepreneur, leader of public or private conflict resolution organization, researcher, advocate for conflict resolution, critic of conflict resolution. They represent the various waves of people who have populated our field, the founders, the institutionalizers, and the leaders of change.