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Employment Mediation Institute 2025 Speakers

Phyllis Cheng, Esq. 

Phyllis Cheng is a neutral at ADR Services, where she mediates employment, civil rights,and other matters. She also serves on the mediation panels of the California Court ofAppeal (Second and Sixth Appellate Districts), and the U.S. District Court, Central District of California, where she led its mediation practice group for four years.

Ms. Cheng served in the administrations of four California Governors. She was Director of the Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH, now renamed the Civil Rights Department), where she oversaw hundreds of historic settlements and judgments. She was in private practice on both the plaintiff and defense sides, Partner at DLA Piper,Deputy Attorney General in civil rights enforcement at CalDOJ, and Vice Chair of the Fair Employment and Housing Commission. For more than 20 years, Ms. Cheng has been a regular columnist on cases pending before the California Supreme Court for the California Labor & Employment Law Review, where she was also Managing Editor, and is responsible for a daily employment case law alert. She is author of the Rutter Group’s California Fair Housing and Public Accommodations book, and was a contributing editor on various chapters of its Employment Litigation practice guide. She is a Fellow of The College of Labor and Employment Lawyers and was the State Bar’s 2012 Ronald M.George Public Lawyer of the Year.

Bill Eddy, LCSW, Esq.

William A. (“Bill”) Eddy is an attorney, therapist, mediator, and the Chief Innovation Officer of the High Conflict Institute based in San Diego, California. He provides training to professionals on the subject of managing high-conflict personalities and all forms of disputes. He has presented in 40 states in the U.S., 7 provinces in Canada, and 12 other countries. He served on the adjunct faculty of the Straus Institute of Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine University School of Law for the past 16 years.

Mr. Eddy is the author of several books, including: Mediating High Conflict Disputes (2021); High Conflict People in Legal Disputes (2016); and BIFF at Work: Your Guide to Difficult Workplace Communication (2021). He is the developer of the New Ways for Work® Coaching method for potentially high conflict employees. He developed the New Ways for Mediation® method based on his forty years of mediation experience. His blog on the PsychologyToday.com website has over 6 million views. His website is www.HighConflictInstitute.com.

Dr. Clare Fowler

Executive Vice-President of ODR.com

International Woman of Peace Award, 2024

Author of Rising Above Office Conflict: the light-hearted guide for the heavy-hearted employee

Dr. Clare Fowler received her Doctorate on designing dispute resolution systems for small businesses from Pepperdine University Graduate School of Education/Organizational Leadership and her Master’s of Dispute Resolution from the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at the Pepperdine University School of Law. Dr. Fowler also works as Managing Editor and with Caseload Manager at Mediate.com. She teaches at Pepperdine Straus Dispute Resolution Department and University of Oregon. Clare mediates and trains, focusing on workplace disputes. Dr. Fowler’s dissertation was a phenomenological study of Workplace disputes. Her 2023 book, Rising Above Office Conflict, is a guidebook for HR directors dealing with high conflict behaviors. Her motto for the dispute resolution field? Rising Tides Raise All Boats.

Lonnie Giamela, Esq.

Lonnie Giamela is a partner in the LA and Irvine offices of leading national L&E firm Fisher Phillips.  He has handled a full range of labor and employment matters, from single-plaintiff to multi-plaintiff, in all federal and state courts in California.  He has extensive experience in PAGA and wage-hour matters and has taken several of them to trial. Utilizing experiences from his family's restaurants in the San Fernando Valley, Lonnie prides himself on providing advice to the companies he represents. His prior business experience enables him to find practical, compliant legal solutions to clients’ everyday employee relations issues.  Lonnie has presented over 350 seminars to management, executives, human resources professionals and employer groups on every imaginable employment law topic.

Kelly Hanker, Esq.

Kelly Hanker is a Trial Attorney with Trial Lawyers for Justice as well as a trial consultant through her own firm Hanker Law PC. A graduate of the Gerry Spence Method trial college, Kelly is often associated into high-stakes trials around the country. In addition to her outstanding legal work, she has been honored by numerous organizations for her non-profit board service and philanthropic work, including by the Los Angeles Business Journal as a finalist for Philanthropist of the Year. She has served on the Women in Law Committee for the Consumer Attorneys of Los Angeles (CAALA), is the Chair of the Consumer Attorneys of California’s (CAOC) Women’s Caucus; and is a leader in the California Employment Lawyers Association (CELA), Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles (WLALA), Western Trial Lawyers Association (WTLA), and Justice Headquarters (JHQ).

Stacie Hausner, Esq.

Stacie Hausner, Esq. has mediated full time since 2015. She has successfully mediated thousands of cases in the areas of employment, real estate, personal injury, civil rights, business, insurance coverage, construction defect, malpractice, entertainment, and intellectual property law. She has an exceptionally high settlement rate due to her tenacity, calm and friendly demeanor, creative “out of the box” thinking, and keen insight. Ms. Hausner draws on her broad mediation experience, as well as her extensive study and understanding of the fields of negotiation and mediation. After an extensive career as a litigator, practicing law at both defense and plaintiff firms, Ms. Hausner launched her mediation practice because she understood the perspectives and interests of the opposing sides to a dispute, as well as the benefits of alternative dispute resolution. She received an LL.M. in Dispute Resolution from the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine University School of Law, and prior to joining ADR Services, Inc., she successfully conducted settlement conferences for the Los Angeles Superior Court, the Central District of the United States District Court, the Department of Fair Employment and Housing, the Department of Consumer and Business Affairs, and the Center for Conflict Resolution.

Ms. Hausner is enthusiastic in her passion for mediation. When she is not mediating, she teaches mediation skills to practitioners, attorneys, and law students. She is an Adjunct Professor teaching “Mediation Theory and Practice”, “Advanced Mediation”, and “Mediating the Litigated Case” at the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution, where she has been regularly teaching since 2016. She also trains mediators for the United States District Court’s Pro Bono mediation program. Ms. Hausner presents frequent CLE trainings to law firms, bar associations, and mediation organizations on various topics involving the optimization of settlement and negotiation outcomes. She is a Distinguished Fellow of the International Academy of Mediators, a selective organization comprised of top mediators from around the world. She has also been a Board Member for the California Lawyers Association’s (CLA) ADR Executive Committee and an Executive Committee Member for the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s (LACBA) ADR Section.

Counsel have consistently praised Ms. Hausner for settling disputes in an empathetic, caring, and tenacious manner, and for showing the intelligence and skills needed to guide parties toward settlement, regardless of the emotional or legal complexity of the matters in dispute. Counsel appreciate her use of effective tools and creative resolutions to reach settlement, even when impasse seems imminent. Ms. Hausner is praised for remaining invested in the process even after the time allotment for the mediation, and for diligently following up on cases that do not initially settle through the final resolution of the case.

Colin Rule

Colin Rule is CEO of Mediate.com and ODR.com, which became for-profit subsidiaries of the American Arbitration Association/International Centre for Dispute Resolution in June 2024.  In 2011 Colin co-founded Modria.com, an Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) provider based in Silicon Valley, which was acquired by Tyler Technologies in 2017.  From 2017 to 2020 Colin served as Vice President of ODR at Tyler.  From 2003 to 2011 Colin was Director of ODR for eBay and PayPal. Colin co-founded Online Resolution, one of the first ODR providers, in 1999 and served as its CEO and President. Colin is the author of Online Dispute Resolution for Business (2002) and co-author of The New Handshake: ODR and the Future of Consumer Protection (2017). He has lectured and taught at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, UC Law, Pepperdine, Texas A&M, Southern Methodist University, UMass-Amherst, and Santa Clara University. Colin received two awards from the from the American Bar Association: the D’Alemberte Raven Award in 2023 and the Frank Sander Award in 2019, as well as the Mary Parker Follett Award from the Association for Conflict Resolution in 2013. Colin also worked with the National Institute for Dispute Resolution in Washington, DC and the Consensus Building Institute in Cambridge, MA.

Patrick Tatum

Patrick Tatum is currently a Business Development/Outreach Vice President in the  Employment Division with American Arbitration Association at the Western Case Management Center (WCMC) located in Fresno, CA.   He has been with the AAA since 2000 serving as a case manager in WCMC; Assistant Vice President of Neutrals Education with focus on conducting and observing AAA Training programs; Supervisor of Finance and National Customer Service; Supervisor of the Labor and Employment caseloads in WCMC and Vice President of Operations for the Labor, Employment and Elections Division. 

Patrick has a B.S. in Business Administration with option in Legal Environment from California State University, Fresno