Selina J. Shultz

Executive Director, Professional Training Programs

A highly experienced conflict and organizational consultant, Selina has spent thirty years serving as a mediator, trainer, facilitator, and coach. She is currently the Executive Director of Professional Training Programs at the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution, Pepperdine Caruso School of Law.

She has mediated hundreds of cases in the course of her career and worked with organizations such as FedEx, Home Depot, Greenpeace International, Carnegie Mellon University, The University of Pittsburgh, AMG Research, and Allies for Children. She has  provided training, conflict culture interventions, and leadership development to corporations and nonprofits that are struggling with conflict.

Selina’s strength is successfully navigating conflict with ongoing relationship dynamics.  She has worked with deeply divided and traumatized communities on long term projects, including: the memorialization and rebuilding of The Tree of Life Synagogue after the 2017 mass shooting, the memorialization of the victims of the Ghost Ship Warehouse Fire, reconciliation between the Board and Executive Directors in a large international NGO, and bringing together congregations which are deeply divided over the war in Gaza.

Her years of practical hands-on work in mediation are further supported by her academic work in both Decision Making, Neuroscience, and Negotiation. Her process and approach to all of her work, including the space she created at The Conflict Lab, are constantly mindful of how to bring about everyone’s best thinking.

Selina is a leader in the field of conflict navigation and dispute resolution, active both locally and internationally in supporting efforts to promote thoughtful approaches to conflict. As part of the work of Pepperdine’s Sudreau Global Justice Institute, she has trained members of the Ugandan Judiciary, as well as a cohort of Supreme Court Justices from 13 African countries.

Passionate about teaching, Selina provides both basic and advanced mediation and conflict competency trainings, having provided trainings both locally and internationally for organizations and corporations, as well as at the law school level at The Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine University School of Law, Duquesne University School of Law, and The Saltman Center at The UNLV School of Law.

Although from the outside her work may appear quite varied, to her it all fits neatly within her personal mission of empowering individuals, organizations, and communities  “do conflict better” so they can reach their full potential.