Michele Ferenz

Michele Ferenz is currently a Senior Associate at the Consensus Building Institute, where she has focused on the development and implementation of consensus processes in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. She served on the management team of the Joint Environmental Mediation Service (JEMS), a Jerusalem-based center for training and intervention in environmental disputes in Israeli and Palestinian communities and spearheaded a multiyear effort to mediate land claims between the government of Israel and the country’s Bedouin population. Building on her work in the Middle East, Ms. Ferenz has also worked on informal or “back-channel” mediation efforts in situations of cross-boundary and internal violent conflict.

Ms. Ferenz has developed and conducted negotiation trainings and facilitated workshops for a broad range of government, business and voluntary sector clients, including the Board of Directors of Amnesty International/USA, UNICEF, UNDP, UNITAR (the United Nations Institute for Training and Research), the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the University of the Middle East, the Israeli Justice and Environment Ministries, the Palestinian Environment Ministry, the New Israel Fund, the American Cancer Society (ACS), NISH (an association that represents not-for-profits that participate in a federal contract set-aside for handicapped workers), and Hewlett Packard.

Ms. Ferenz holds a B.A. from Brown University and a master’s degree in environmental policy from Harvard. Her doctoral studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology focus on the representation of the poor in agricultural trade and policy making.