World's Top 30 Negotiation Professionals for 2021

Guru #1

Chris Voss

Chris Voss is the CEO & Founder of the Black Swan Group Ltd
Author of Never Split The Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It.

He has used his many years of experience in international crisis and high-stakes negotiations to develop a unique program and team that applies these globally proven techniques to the business world.

Prior to 2008, Chris was the lead international kidnapping negotiator for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as the FBI’s hostage negotiation representative for the National Security Council’s Hostage Working Group. During his government career, he also represented the U.S. Government at two (2) international conferences sponsored by the G-8 as an expert in kidnapping. Prior to becoming the FBI lead international kidnapping negotiator, Christopher served as the lead Crisis Negotiator for the New York City Division of the FBI. Christopher was a member of the New York City Joint Terrorist Task Force for 14 years.  He was the case agent on such cases as TERRSTOP (the Blind Sheikh Case – Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman), the TWA Flight 800 catastrophe and negotiated the surrender of the first hostage taker to give up in the Chase Manhattan bank robbery hostage taking.

During Chris’s 24 year tenure in the Bureau, he was trained in the art of negotiation by not only the FBI but Scotland Yard and Harvard Law School. He is also a recipient of the Attorney General’s Award for Excellence in Law Enforcement and the FBI Agents Association Award for Distinguished and Exemplary Service.

Chris has taught business negotiation in the MBA program as an adjunct professor at University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business and at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business.  He has taught business negotiation at Harvard University, guest lectured at The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, The IMD Business School in Lausanne, Switzerland and The Goethe School of Business in Frankfurt, Germany. Since 2009 Christopher has also worked with Insite Security as their Managing Director of the Kidnapping Resolution Practice.

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Guru #2

Brian Tracy

Brian Tracy is Chairman and CEO of Brian Tracy International, a company specializing in the training and development of individuals and organizations. Brian’s goal is to help you achieve your personal and business goals faster and easier than you ever imagined. Brian Tracy has consulted for more than 1,000 companies and addressed more than 5,000,000 people in 5,000 talks and seminars throughout the US, Canada and 70 other countries worldwide. As a Keynote speaker and seminar leader, he addresses more than 250,000 people each year. He has studied, researched, written and spoken for 30 years in the fields of economics, history, business, philosophy and psychology. He is the top selling author of over 70 books that have been translated into dozens of languages. He has written and produced more than 300 audio and video learning programs, including the worldwide, best-selling Psychology of Achievement, which has been translated into more than 28 languages.

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Guru #3

Deepak Malhotra

Deepak Malhotra is the Eli Goldston Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He has won numerous awards for his teaching & research on negotiation, and was listed among the “40 under 40” Best Business School Professors in the World by Poets & Quants.

Deepak is the best-selling author of:

>> Negotiating the Impossible: #1 Business Book of 2016 by KnowSquare; Top 10 Business Books of 2016 by The Globe and Mail.

>> I Moved Your Cheese: Wall Street Journal Bestseller; translated in >20 languages.

>> Negotiation Genius: Outstanding Book Award by the International Institute for Conflict Prevention & Resolution.

Deepak’s professional activities include training, consulting & advisory work for firms & governments across the globe.

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Guru #4

Daniel Shapiro

​Named one of the top 15 professors at Harvard University, Daniel Shapiro, Ph.D., is founder and director of the Harvard International Negotiation Program, associate professor in psychology at Harvard Medical School/McLean Hospital, and affiliate faculty at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.  He consults regularly for government leaders and Fortune 500 companies, and has advised everyone from hostage negotiators to families in crisis, disputing CEOs to clashing heads of state.

He has launched successful conflict resolution initiatives in the Middle East, Europe, and East Asia, and for three years chaired the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Conflict Resolution.  Through non-profit funding, he developed a conflict management program that now reaches one million youth across more than twenty countries.   He has published extensively in the field of conflict resolution, and is author of Negotiating the Nonnegotiable and coauthor of the classic Beyond Reason: Using Emotions as You Negotiate.  Dr. Shapiro also has contributed to The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and other popular publications, and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Psychological Association’s Early Career Award and the Cloke-Millen Peacemaker of the Year award.  The World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader.

His life’s joy is spending time with his wife and three young boys—who have proven to be his greatest teachers in how to negotiate the nonnegotiable.

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Guru #5

Roger Dawson

Roger Dawson was born in England and came to this country in 1962. He became a US citizen in 1972. His business background includes being president of one of California’s largest real estate companies, with 28 offices, five hundred and forty sales associates, and a volume of over $400 million dollars per year.

As a full time speaker since 1982, he has trained managers and salespeople at the top companies and business associations throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Taiwan, China, New Zealand and Australia. He was inducted into the Speaker Hall of Fame in 1991.

Business executives love Roger Dawson for his ability to teach their people how to improve profits and make more sales with Power Negotiating tactics.

Meeting planners love Roger Dawson for his ability to put on a terrific presentation that is custom-tailored to their audiences and filled with content and humor. Roger is the author of “Secrets of Power Negotiating” and founder of the Power Negotiating Institute. He is full time speaker and author and travels around the world giving seminars to corporations and associations.

His audio programs can teach you the business skills you need to compete and win in today’s challenging business environment. His audio program “Secrets of Power Negotiating” has sold over $38 million worth and is the best selling business audio program ever published.

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Guru #6

Linda Byars Swindling

Linda Swindling is a thought-leader in the areas of negotiations, communications, influence and leadership. Linda is CEO of Journey On, a Dallas-based professional development organization which offers speaking, training, consulting and executive coaching services.

Linda first addressed employment and workplace communication issues as a successful attorney and mediator. In 2000, Linda left a ten year legal practice and a partnership to give her full-time efforts to Journey On, a professional development company. In addition to running Journey On, Linda spent five years with Vistage, the world’s largest CEO development organization. During her role as a Chair, she advised and mentored CEOs and key executives both in one-to-one settings and in groups.

Linda earned a BA degree in Broadcast Journalism with a JD degree from Texas Tech School of Law. An ICF Accredited Coach, Linda is certified in the COREMAP assessment, the RAMP method and as a ToPS facilitator. She has received training from the University of Houston’s A.A. White’s Institute for Dispute Resolution, the Attorney Mediators Institute and the Coach Academy International. In addition, Linda completed “Teaching Negotiation in the Corporation” through the Program on Negotiation, an inter-university consortium of Harvard University, MIT and Tufts University. A Certified Speaking Professional, Linda is the past president of the National Speakers Association/North Texas and served as a national officer and the dean of the Speakers Academy for the National Speakers Association.

A TEDxSMU presenter, she is the author of the books: Ask Outrageously! The Secret to Getting What You Really Want, Stop Complainers and Energy Drainers: How to Negotiate Work Drama to Get More Done, The Manager’s High Performance Handbook: How to Drive Winning Performance with Everyone on Your Team, and Wintegrity: Win with Ethics, Trust & Integrity. Linda has authored or co-authored more than 20 books and is the creator of the popular Passports to Success book series. Find out more at www.AskOutrageously.com and www.StopComplainers.com.

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Guru #7

Deborah M. Kolb

Deborah works with today’s top executives on the challenging issues of negotiation, leadership, and gender in ways that to secure wins for individuals and their organizations. Foremost authority in the fields of negotiation, leadership, and gender, she is the Deloitte Ellen Gabriel Professor for Women in Leadership (Emerita) and co-founder of the Ford Foundation funded Center for Gender in Organizations at Simmons College School of Management.

Deborah was Former Executive Director and is currently Co-Director of the Negotiations in the Workplace Project at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. She is a strategic advisor and mentor to many of today’s most successful executive women and also served as Faculty Research Fellow at Stanford’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research in 2008-2009, and is Adjunct Faculty at INSEAD.

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Guru #8

Greg Williams

Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator and Body Language Expert, has studied and practiced negotiation tactics and strategies for more than 30 years. He’s spent over 20 years studying the way body language can affect negotiation outcomes. Greg’s education and experience come from formal negotiation settings, universities, governmental municipalities, seminars, and the school of hard knocks. He’s served on numerous corporate, business, and governmental boards. Greg’s experience and proven results in negotiation skills and body language, combined with his knowledge of emotional intelligence, make him a sought-after speaker and coach. Greg is a member of the National Speakers Association and a trusted media resource. He has appeared on numerous TV and radio programs, discussing reading body language and negotiation tactics and strategies.

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Guru #9

Ed Brodow

Ed Brodow is the bestselling author of eight books, keynote speaker, negotiation expert, and political commentator. He has enthralled more than 1,000 audiences in Paris, Madrid, Athens, Milan, Frankfurt, Warsaw, Singapore, Bangkok, Tokyo, Nairobi, Bogota, Sao Paulo, Montreal, Washington, and New York with his charismatic stage presence, infectious humor, and practical ideas on the art of business negotiation. Cambridge University Press in the UK selected Ed’s signature “Meatball Sandwich Negotiation” story as the paradigm for excellent storytelling. Ed’s international client list includes Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, Starbucks, Learjet, Raytheon, Philips, Ritz-Carlton, The Gap, McKinsey, Google, Zurich Insurance, Exxon-Mobil, British Aerospace, the IRS, and the Pentagon.
 
SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt dubbed Ed “The King of Negotiators.” Forbes Magazine agreed, ranking Ed as one of the nation’s leading dealmakers. His most popular book is the business classic Negotiation Boot Camp: How to Resolve Conflict, Satisfy Customers, and Make Better Deals. A nationally recognized television personality, Ed has appeared as negotiation guru on PBS, ABC National News, Fox News, Inside Edition, and Fortune Business Report. Followed by hidden TV cameras in New York, Boston, and San Francisco, Ed proved to American consumers that they have the power to negotiate better deals in department stores and retail malls. His innovative negotiating strategies have been showcased in The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, The Globe and Mail, Entrepreneur, Business Week, Smart Money, Forbes, and Selling Power.

 

For more than two decades, Ed’s acclaimed Negotiation Boot Camp® Seminars have set the standard for “how to make a deal” in Corporate America.  A true “Renaissance Man,” Ed has been a Fortune 500 sales executive (IBM, Litton Industries), US Marine officer, and Hollywood movie actor with starring roles opposite Jessica Lange, Ron Howard, and Christopher Reeve.

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Guru #10

William Ury

William Ury, co-founder of Harvard’s Program on Negotiation, is one of the world’s leading experts on negotiation and mediation. He is currently a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Harvard Negotiation Project.

He is co-author with Roger Fisher and Bruce Patton of Getting to Yesa fifteen-million-copy bestseller translated into over thirty-five languages, and the author of Getting Past NoThe Power of a Positive NoThe Third Side, and, most recently, the award-winning Getting to Yes with Yourself.

Over the past thirty-five years, William has served as a negotiation adviser and mediator in conflicts ranging from Kentucky wildcat coal mine strikes to ethnic wars in the Middle East, the Balkans, and former Soviet Union, and most recently in Colombia, where he serves as a senior advisor to President Juan Manuel Santos. With former president Jimmy Carter, William co-founded the International Negotiation Network, a non-governmental body seeking to end civil wars around the world. He has taught negotiation and mediation to tens of thousands of corporate executives, labor leaders, diplomats, and military officers around the world.

During the 1980s, he helped the U.S. and Soviet governments create nuclear crisis centers designed to avert an accidental nuclear war. In that capacity, he served as a consultant to the Crisis Management Center at the White House. William is co-founder of the Climate Parliament, which offers members of congress and parliament across the world an Internet-based forum to address practical solutions for climate change. Time magazine described the organization as a “Google for global politics.”

William is founder of the Abraham Path Initiative, which shines a light on the ancient path of Abraham, the legendary common ancestor of over half of humanity, celebrated for his kindness and hospitality toward perfect strangers. The initiative supports trails along this path and inspires walks that create unlikely connections across cultures, fostering local livelihood and global understanding. Christiane Amanpour calls the Abraham Path “an unprecedented initiative to break down barriers and foster communication in the most divided region of the world.” He has a popular TED talk about the Abraham Path, entitled “The Walk from No to Yes.”

William is the recipient of the Whitney North Seymour Award from the American Arbitration Association and the Distinguished Service Medal from the Russian Parliament. His work has been widely featured in the media, including The New York TimesThe Financial Times, CNN, and the BBC.

Trained as a social anthropologist, with a B.A. from Yale and a Ph.D. from Harvard, William has carried out his research on negotiation not only in the boardroom and at the bargaining table, but also among the Bushmen of the Kalahari and the clan warriors of New Guinea.

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Guru #11

Sheila Heen

Sheila Heen has been with the Harvard Negotiation Project for twenty years, teaching negotiation and difficult conversations at Harvard Law School and in Harvard’s executive education programs.

She is also CEO of Triad Consulting in Harvard Square, where she specializes in working with executive teams on issues where there is strong disagreement and emotions run high. She has worked with corporate clients on six continents, with the US White House, the Singapore Supreme Court, and with theologians with disagreements on the nature of truth and God.

Visit Sheila and Doug’s author page at www.stoneandheen.com, and Triad Consulting at www.triadconsultinggroup.com.

Sheila’s husband, John Richardson, also teaches negotiation — down the street at MIT. He is the author of “Negotiation Analysis” with Howard Raiffa and of “Getting it Done” with Roger Fisher and Alan Sharpe. They are both schooled in negotiation daily by their three children.

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Guru #12

Mark Raffan

Mark Raffan is the founder of Negotiations Ninja Training, a training and coaching business dedicated to developing and delivering the most engaging training and coaching in the world. Having spent many years in c-suite negotiations, Mark decided to start his own firm to educate and train executives, M&A teams, sales teams, and procurement teams how to execute better negotiations and get more value out of their deals. Utilizing his extensive experience speaking to executives and their employees on the topics of negotiation, Mark leverages the data and teams that already exist in businesses to drive more value by providing them with the tools they need to succeed. He coaches executives and their teams how to “do more with less” by teaching them how to use their existing resources to drive up profitability. Mark teaches businesses how to reduce the cost of acquisition and increase the volume of sales to the business to increase performance, profitability, and make more efficient use of time and assets.

Mark Raffan is the host of the Negotiations Ninja Podcast, the number 1 negotiation podcast on Google Play. Mark started Negotiations Ninja Podcast because he noticed a MASSIVE negotiation knowledge gap in the market. Mark interviews FBI negotiators, influential executives, world leading sales gurus, legal masterminds, and expert communicators to draw out what works in negotiation, what doesn’t work, and what we can do to get better.

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Guru #13

George J. Siedel

George J. Siedel is the Williamson Family Professor of Business Administration and the Thurnau Professor of Business Law at the University of Michigan. He teaches courses on negotiation, public policy, and business law at Michigan’s Ross School of Business. He has also taught seminars around the world to business leaders, entrepreneurs, attorneys, judges, physicians, and athletic directors. In conjunction with his courses and seminars, he developed several free negotiation planning tools and a free app, which are available at http://www.negotiationplanner.com.

Professor Siedel completed graduate studies at the University of Michigan and Cambridge University. He served as a visiting professor at Stanford University and Harvard University and as a Visiting Scholar at Berkeley. As a Fulbright Scholar, he held a Distinguished Chair in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Professor Siedel has received several national research awards, including the Maurer Award, the Ralph Bunche Award, and the Hoeber Award. He has also received many teaching awards, including 2014 and 2018 Executive Program Professor of the Year Awards from a consortium of 36 leading universities committed to international education. In 2018, he received the Distinguished Career Achievement Award from the Academy of Legal Studies in Business.

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Guru #14

Herb Cohen

For more than three decades, Herb Cohen has been a practicing negotiator, intimately enmeshed in some of the world’s headline dramas from hostile takeovers to hostage negotiations. His clients have included business executives, entrepreneurs, sports and theatrical agents plus large corporations – as well as governmental agencies, such as the Department of State, FBI, CIA, The US Conference of Mayors and US Department of Justice.

Unlike some theorists, he was actively involved in the negotiations that settled the NFL players’ strike and the General Motors Chevy mobile litigation and also participated in the START Arms Control Negotiations with the Soviet Union.

He started formally teaching the subject of negotiations during a two week course for attorneys in 1963 sponsored by Allstate Insurance Company. It was then he first used the terms “Win-Win. Win-Lose, Lose-Lose”.

Herb Cohen’s analysis, insights and humorous view of many of these high-level happenings have appeared in many international publications, and he himself has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, People, The Economist, The New Yorker, Esquire, Readers Digest, Good Housekeeping, Newsweek, Rolling Stone and even Playboy Magazine.

He is the author of You Can Negotiate Anything which was on the New York Times best-seller list for almost one year and has been translated into thirty languages. His latest book, Negotiate This! By Caring But Not T-H-A-T Much was published in mid-September 2003.

During the Cold War, Herb Cohen served with the U.S. Army, 14th Armored Cavalry Regiment on the East-West Border in Bad Kissingen, Germany.

While attending university and law school he worked in many business and governmental organizations and ultimately became a faculty member at the University of Michigan’s Graduate School of Business. Since then he has lectured at many educational institutions and enterprises such as The Harvard Negotiating Project, Yale Law School, The Kellogg School, Wharton, the University of Wisconsin, the University of California-San Diego, McGill University, UBC and the Columbia and Chicago University School of Business.

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Guru #15

Robert Mnookin

Robert H. Mnookin is the Samuel Williston Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and for twenty-five years served as the Chair of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. He directs the Harvard Negotiation Research Project. A leading scholar in the field of conflict resolution, Professor Mnookin has applied his interdisciplinary approach to negotiation and conflict resolution to a remarkable range of problems; both public and private.

A renowned teacher and lecturer, Professor Mnookin has taught numerous workshops for corporations, governmental agencies and law firms throughout the world and trained many executives and professionals in negotiation and mediation skills. On behalf of the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva, he designed and has taught annual workshops for intellectual property professionals. Professor Mnookin has served as a consultant to governments, international agencies, major corporations and law firms. As a neutral arbitrator or mediator, he has resolved numerous complex commercial disputes.

Professor Mnookin has written or edited ten books and numerous scholarly articles. His most recent books include Kissinger the Negotiator (with James K. Sebenius and R. Nicholas Burns); The Jewish American Paradox: Embracing Choice in a Changing World (Public Affairs November 2018) and Bargaining with the Devil: When to Negotiate, When to Fight.

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Guru #16

Steve Gates

Steve Gates is the founder and CEO of The Gap Partnership, the world’s leading negotiation consultancy. Founded in 1997, the company now has office worldwide. Steve and his team of negotiation consultants have advised and developed some of the world’s leading organizations with their most difficult negotiations, dealing with everything from retail trade terms to mergers and acquisitions, oil prices and trade union disputes.

Steve is the author of The Negotiation Book, this Book is an indispensable and practical guide for anyone who wants to improve their negotiation capability.

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Guru #17

Alexandra B. Carter

Alex is a Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Mediation Clinic at Columbia Law School. She has spent the last eleven years helping thousands of people negotiate better, build relationships and reach their goals. In 2019, Alex was awarded the Columbia University Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching, Columbia University’s highest teaching honor.

Alex believes that negotiation is for everyone. She is a world-renowned negotiation trainer for groups and individuals from all over the world—including the United Nations, Fortune 100 companies, the U.S. government, foreign governments, not-for-profit organizations, universities and private law firms. Through the Mediation Clinic at Columbia Law School, Alex and her students provide free conflict resolution services and training to many people and organizations who otherwise would not be able to afford it.

Prior to joining the Columbia faculty, Alex was associated with Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP. She also worked at Goldman Sachs in the Principal Investment Area. She spent a year in Taipei, Taiwan as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar.

Alex received her Juris Doctor degree in 2003 from Columbia Law School, where she earned James Kent and Harlan Fiske Stone academic honors. She won the Jane Marks Murphy Prize for her mediation work and the Lawrence S. Greenbaum Prize for oral advocacy. She graduated cum laude from Georgetown University, where she won the Lena Landegger community service award.

Her first book, Ask for More: Ten Questions to Negotiate Anything, was published May 5th by Simon & Schuster and became an instant Wall Street Journal bestseller — the first negotiation book solo-authored by a woman to make that list.

Alex lives in Maplewood, New Jersey, with her husband Greg and their daughter Caroline. In her spare time, she enjoys cooking and practicing yoga.

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Guru #18

Keld Jensen

Keld Jensen has more than 30 years experience in international management, negotiation, and communication from his post as managing director of a listed Scandinavian company. As Former Chairman of the Centre for Negotiation at the Copenhagen Business School, one of the top business schools in the world, he teaches Business Administration, Management, and International Negotiation. He also teaches at other prominent Executive MBA schools worldwide as a guest lecturer in negotiation, trust, behavioral economics and impression management.

A prolific author, Keld has written and published 24 books in 36 countries. His internationally-acclaimed book “Negotiating Partnership” has been translated into four languages and published in more than 28 countries. He also writes feature articles for the national and international news media and appears in broadcast as a highly-regarded commentator on international business issues. Jensen is a frequent speaker at conferences around the world and has worked with numerous global businesses in a training and consulting capacity.

Jensen is the founder and CEO of CENTER FOR NEGOTIATION, a consulting and training organization that has worked with private industry and governmental bodies in Europe, Asia, North America, and Africa. Among his clients is; Lego, B&O, Mercedes, ThermoFisher, Canadian, British and Danish Governments, NOVO Nordisk, LEGO, Johnson & Johnson, Vestas, Maersk, Rolls Royce, UNICEF, several governments and NGO´s.

His company has subsidiaries in Scandinavia, USA and the U.K. Professor Jensen is considered one of the “Leading Business Minds” by the Financial Times, alongside individuals from Wharton, INSEAD, London Business School, Oxford, and other prestigious programs.

In May 2017 his Latest book Honest Negotiation was released in the US and quickly won the #1 New Release on Amazon award. In 2020 he released two books to help and support during the pandemic.

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Guru #19

E. Lynn Price

Lynn is an author, speaker, and consultant with over twenty years of experience providing creative business solutions to clients and executives.
She is the author of the book “Negotiate It! How to Crush Your Fears, Develop Your Negotiation Muscle, and Gain Power in the Workplace.”
Lynn has worked for a national engineering firm, a top-four telecommunications company, a mergers & acquisition firm, and even had a stint with an award-winning advertising firm.
As the leader of a corporate legal department of a national company, her department was awarded the “Top Corporate Department” multiple times from surveys of the company’s business leaders. Although legal departments are sometimes referred to “The Place that Deals Go to Die,” Lynn’s team offered timely, creative, and thorough legal services in a high-paced environment. Lynn adopted a “Be a Resource, Not a Roadblock” philosophy for both herself and her department.
Her unique background allows her to communicate complex issues in a relatable, accessible and often humorous way.
In 2014, Lynn was selected as a “40 Under 40” by Ingram’s Business Magazine in Kansas City, which recognizes up-and-coming leaders in the business community. She currently resides in the beautiful Boston Mountains near Fayetteville, Arkansas, and enjoys traveling to meet new clients, speaking to a variety of groups and providing applicable & engaging training seminars.

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Guru #20

Mary Redmond

Speaker, Negotiator, Coach, Consultant

With over 30 years of experience working for the world’s largest companies and a passion for body language, Mary Redmond now shares her expertise at workshops, via webinars and through individual coaching sessions.

Mary can help you with everything from closing more sales to asking for a raise to knowing what other people are thinking. Greater confidence, self control and success are often the results of her teachings. Businesses come to Mary because she brings valuable negotiation lessons from experience, not books. Mary also negotiates complex financial contracts acting as the “secret weapon” for clients. Her unique negotiation techniques result in savings and cost reductions.

Stay 2 steps ahead of the competition and save money with an experienced negotiator! www.maryaredmond.com

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Guru #21

Michael Wheeler

Michael Wheeler is the MBA Class of 1952 Professor of Management Practice at the Harvard Business School where teaches Negotiation as well as a variety of executive courses. In previous years he served as faculty chair of the first year MBA program and headed the required Negotiation course. He has also taught The Moral Leader; Leadership, Values, and Decision Making; and, as Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, Mediation & Consensus Building. At HBS he has received the Greenhill Award for his contributions to the School’s mission.

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Guru #22

G. Richard Shell

G. Richard Shell is the Thomas Gerrity Professor of Legal Studies, Business Ethics, and Management at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. The latest (3rd) edition of his award-winning Bargaining for Advantage: Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People (Penguin) appeared in 2019. In addition, his book Springboard: Launching Your Personal Search for Success (Portfolio 2013) was named both Business Book of the Year and Personal Development Book of the Year by the largest business bookseller in the United States and was short-listed for Management Book of the Year by the British Library. He is also author of The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas (Portfolio 2007) (with Mario Moussa) and Make the Rules or Your Rivals Will (Crown Business 2004). He serves as Director of Wharton’s Executive Negotiation Workshop and Strategic Persuasion Workshop. He has won multiple teaching and scholarly awards, had his work cited by the United States Supreme Court, and taught people from all walks of professional life, from Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and Fortune 500 CEOs to FBI hostage negotiators, Navy SEALs, and United Nations peacekeepers.

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Guru #23

Stuart Diamond

Stuart Diamond is one of the world’s foremost experts on negotiation. His negotiation course at top-ranked Wharton Business School has been the most sought-after by MBA students there over the past 20 years. Diamond and his team of 25 have trained more than 12,000 Googlers in his innovative model of human interaction.

Professor Diamond has trained more than 5,000 Special Ops soldiers, the elite of the U.S. military: Navy SEALs, Green Berets, Marines, Special Forces and others in finding better ways to negotiate – from collecting better intelligence to dealing with the chain of command to meeting more family needs. “Saves lives,” was the comment written about his model by U.S. Special Operations Command.

Professor Diamond’s book on negotiations, Getting More: How To Be A More Persuasive Person in Work and Life, is a New York Times bestseller and #1 U.S. business bestseller on the Wall Street Journal and USA Today lists. Worldwide it has sold more than 1.2 million copies and has been translated into 19 languages. The Wall Street Journal’s career site calls Getting More “#1 book to read for your career.” Lawyers Weekly called it “phenomenal.” The Commander of U.S. Special Ops has placed it on his read list of 15 books; it is only one of two books on military science.

Professor Diamond has a law degree from Harvard, an MBA from Wharton. In a prior career he was a journalist for The New York Times, where he won a Pulitzer Prize as part of a team investigating the 1986 crash of the Space Shuttle Challenger. He was Associate Director of the Harvard Negotiation Project at Harvard Law School and directed its outside negotiation consulting firm.

He used the innovative Getting More process, which focuses on emotional intelligence, perceptions and collaborations — while insisting on fairness — to solve the 2008 Writer Strike in Hollywood; a multibillion dollar electronic trading rights dispute among exchanges in New York, and numerous international political and financial issues. They include coordinating the largest foreign-sourced commercial financing in Ukraine history, advising the President and ministers of Nicaragua in solving public image and insurgency issues, and developing an international strategy for a $14 billion petrochemical company in China.

Among the 30,000 people Diamond has taught or advised in 50+ countries, more than 220 are managers and executives from the Fortune 500 companies. Another 25% are of the Global 1000 community. He has trained school children in South Africa, bankers in Dubai, art dealers in Arizona and car dealers in Russia. He has also headed or managed companies in various industries. He has been chairman of a publicly-traded U.S. high tech company in the wireless space, convinced 3,000 farmers in Bolivia to forsake coca for bananas, operated a medical services company performing laser eye surgery and worked on Wall Street as an energy futures executive.

Besides Wharton, Professor Diamond has also taught at Penn Law School, Penn Engineering, Harvard, Oxford, Columbia, NYC, UC Berkeley and USC. He is also an expert in cross-cultural negotiation and diversity and has advised on the subject to the United Nations, World Bank and many companies. He has written 3 books, 2 documentary films and more than 2,000 articles, including dozens on page 1 of The New York Times.

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Guru #24

Max H. Bazerman

Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration
www.people.hbs.edu/mbazerman

In addition to being the Straus Professor at the Harvard Business School, Max is formally affiliated with the Kennedy School of Government, the Psychology Department, and the Program on Negotiation.

Max’s research focuses on decision making in negotiation, and improving decision making in organizations, nations, and society. He is the author, co-author, or co-editor of eighteen books (including Negotiation Genius [with Deepak Malhotra], Bantam Books, September 2007) and over 200 research articles and chapters. He is a member of the editorial boards of the American Behavioral Scientist, Journal of Management and Governance, Mind and Society, Negotiations and Conflict Management Research, and The Journal of Behavioral Finance. Also, he is a member of the international advisory board of the Negotiation Journal.

From 2002-2008, Max was consistently named one of the top 40 authors, speakers, and teachers of management by Executive Excellence. He was ‘Teacher of the Year’ by the Executive Masters Program of the Kellogg School. In 2003, Max received the Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. In 2006, Max received an honorary doctorate from the University of London (London Business School), the Kulp-Wright Book Award from the American Risk and Insurance Association for Predictable Surprises (with Michael Watkins), and the Life Achievement Award from the Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program. In 2008, Max was named as Ethisphere’s 100 Most Influential in Business Ethics, was named one of Daily Kos’ Heroes from the Bush Era for going public about how the Bush Administration corrupted the RICO Tobacco trial, received the International Institute of Conflict Prevention and Resolution (CPR) Outstanding Book Award, and received the Distinguished Educator Award from the Academy of Management.
His former doctoral students have accepted positions at leading business schools throughout the United States, including the Kellogg School at Northwestern, the Fuqua School at Duke, the Johnson School at Cornell, Carnegie-Mellon University, Stanford University, the University of Chicago, Notre Dame, Columbia, and the Harvard Business School.

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Guru #25

Dan Oblinger

Dan Oblinger is the sole proprietor of Leadercraft, a private company devoted to excellence in speaking and corporate training. He is a refreshingly unique voice in corporate retreats and keynotes. He is a father, husband, philosopher, and lawman. He has been successful in his professional life as a hostage negotiator, undercover investigator, human resources consultant, chicken rancher, drug recognition expert, ditch digger, grocery bagger, onion ring maker, and beat cop. Dan has used his unique experiences and high energy humor to educate audiences since 2008. He has carved out a niche as a leading expert in providing speaking, training, and executive consulting for all industries and all across the country. His passion is sharing listening, negotiating, and leadership skills so everyone can become more authentic leaders and lovers

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Guru #26

Guhan Subramanian

Guhan Subramanian is the Joseph Flom Professor of Law and Business at Harvard Law School, the H. Douglas Weaver Professor of Business Law at Harvard Business School, and Faculty Chair of the Harvard Program on Negotiation. He is the only person in the history of Harvard University to hold tenured appointments at both HLS and HBS. At HLS he teaches courses in negotiations and corporate law. At HBS he teaches in several executive education programs, such as Strategic Negotiations, Changing the Game, Managing Negotiators and the Deal Process, and Making Corporate Boards More Effective. Prior to joining the Harvard faculty he spent three years at McKinsey & Company in their New York, Boston, and Washington, D.C. offices.

Professor Subramanian’s research explores topics in negotiations, corporate dealmaking, and deal process design. He has published articles in the Stanford Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Harvard Business Review, and the Harvard Law Review, among other places. His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal’s “Heard on the Street” column, the New York Times, the American Lawyer, The Deal, and Corporate Control Alert. His new book Negotiauctions: New Dealmaking Strategies for a Competitive Marketplace (Norton 2010) synthesizes the findings from his research and teaching over the past decade.

Professor Subramanian has been involved in major public-company deals such as Oracle’s $10.3 billion hostile takeover bid for PeopleSoft, Cox Enterprises’ $8.9 billion freeze-out of the minority shareholders in Cox Communications, the $6.6 billion leveraged buyout of Toys “R” Us, and Exelon’s $8.0 billion hostile takeover bid for NRG. He also advises individuals, boards of directors, and management teams on issues of dealmaking and corporate governance.

Professor Subramanian holds degrees in Economics, Law, and Business, all from Harvard University. He lives in Newton, Massachusetts with his wife and two children.

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Guru #27

Kimberlyn Leary

Kimberlyn Leary has taught courses and seminars on negotiation, clinical technique, and public policy and mental health. She has also served as a tutor to third-year medical students. She sits on the editorial boards of Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, Psychoanalytic Psychology, the Harvard Mental Health Letter, and Negotiation Journal. She is currently a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Women and Public Policy Program and New America’s International Security Program, a senior advisor to the CEO at the National Math and Science Initiative, and a trustee of Amherst College.

In 1997, Leary published a paper on race and self-disclosure that won the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Karl Menninger Prize, and in 2007 she received the Ernest and Gertrude Ticho Award of the American Psychoanalytic Association. In 2010 she received the American Psychological Association’s Division of Psychoanalysis award for clinical scholarship and was selected as a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow in 2014. From 2015 to 2016, she served as an advisor to the White House Council on Women and Girls for one year, developing the “Advancing Equity” initiative for improving life outcomes for women and girls of color, and as an advisor to the White House Office of Management and Budget’s Health Division.

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Guru #28

James K Sebenius

James K Sebenius specializes in analyzing and advising corporations and governments worldwide on their most challenging negotiations. He is the Gordon Donaldson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, where he founded the Negotiation unit and teaches advanced negotiation to students and senior executives. He also directs the Harvard Negotiation Project at Harvard Law School.
With co-author and business partner, David Lax, he originated 3D Negotiation TM,a uniquely powerful approach for analyzing and advising on complex negotiations. He is a founder and partner in Lax Sebenius LLC, a 3D negotiation strategy firm with an extensive global client list.
Since 2001, he has chaired the annual Great Negotiator Award program, which has intensively engaged with negotiators such as Richard Holbrooke, James Baker, George Mitchell, and Bruce Wasserstein. He also co-directs a project that has conducted lengthy videotaped interviews seven former U.S. Secretaries of State, from Henry Kissinger through Hillary Clinton, about their most challenging negotiations. PBS/WGBH has committed to produce a three-part television series on this project. Jim often speaks to senior executive audiences about negotiating lessons from the Great Negotiators and Secretaries of State.
Sebenius’s private sector career included years with the Blackstone Group; he also served in the U.S. government’s Commerce and State Departments. He is the co-author or editor of five books including 3D Negotiation (Harvard Business School Press), The Manager as Negotiator (Free Press), and, most recently, Kissinger the Negotiator: Lessons from Dealmaking at the Highest Level (HarperCollins). Together with these books, his published output includes more than 250 items including articles, case studies, and negotiation simulations.
He holds a B.A., summa cum laude, from Vanderbilt, an M.S. from Stanford’s Engineering School, and a Ph.D. in business economics from Harvard. He is married to Nancy Buck; their children are Zander, Alyza, and Isaac

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Guru #29

Peter B. Stark

Peter Barron Stark is a consultant, speaker, and author. As the president of the Peter Barron Stark Companies, a management consulting firm based in San Diego, CA, Peter has partnered with clients such as the NFL, Gibson Dunn, Wells Fargo, Pacific Life, VANS, Sony, Sempra Energy, Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse, MetLife, Qualcomm, WD-40, Farmers Insurance, and over 200 other leading organizations.

Over the past twenty-five years, organizations around the world have called upon Peter to transform their cultures and maximize the effectiveness of their leaders. He has coached more than 400 executives, managers and supervisors on the art of leading people. Peter specializes in helping leaders to improve their communication skills, build stronger relationships, hold direct reports accountable and build a reputation for delivering superior results. Peter’s career takes him around the world as he helps leaders build organizations where employees love to come to work and customers love to do business.

His speaking repertoire includes an impressive lineup of programs in the areas of employee engagement, leadership skills, leading change, customer service, and negotiation skills. His firm is also a leader in employee opinion surveys and 360 Leadership Development Assessments. Peter is one of only a handful of speakers to hold the prestigious dual designation of Accredited Speaker from Toastmaster’s International and the Certified Speaking Professional from the National Speaker’s Association.

He has been published worldwide in over 400 articles, has written ten books, and created The Manager’s Toolkit, a subscription-based resource website that helps managers turn into leaders. Peter’s expertise has been featured by The New York Times, Newsweek, Inc.com, Fast Company, CNN, Bloomberg, U.S. News & World Report, Monster.com, and USA Today.

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Guru #30

John Patrick Dolan

John Patrick Dolan

John Patrick Dolan, CSP, CPAE, and Attorney at Law, is a recognized expert in the field of negotiation. He travels throughout the world presenting lively keynote speeches and in-depth training programs for business and legal professionals.

Mr. Dolan does not just teach negotiation. In his long, successful career as a trial lawyer he has “mastered” negotiation. In fact, through his firm LawTalk™, he trains other legal professionals how to excel in this crucial courtroom skill.

As a California Criminal Trial Lawyer with 30 years of courtroom experience, John Patrick Dolan has handled everything from traffic tickets to death penalty murder cases. He is a recognized Certified Specialist in Criminal Law by the State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization and a true courtroom veteran.

A communications veteran, John Dolan is a Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) and a member of the National Speakers Association (NSA). The NSA has honored him as a member of the Professional Speakers Hall of Fame, established by the Council of Peers Award for Excellence (CPAE). His other memberships include the State Bar of California, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, Desert Bar Association, California Public Defenders Association, and National College for DUI Defense. In addition to his professional communication and legal experience, he served as CEO of LawTalk™MCLE, Inc., a continuing legal education company from 1992-2004

As a Certified Specialist in Criminal Law by the State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization, Mr. Dolan is a radio broadcaster and television legal news analyst, appearing frequently on Fox News Channel, MSNBC, Court TV, CNN International, and KMIR 6.

As an author, John Patrick Dolan has written twelve, best-selling books, including his classic Negotiate like the Pros™. He is a recognized international authority on negotiation and conflict resolution. His book on negotiations and his audio/video programs are all-time best sellers. Yet, just to show that he does not take himself too seriously, he is also the co-author of the wildly popular Lawyer’s Joke Book

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