About Us
Daitch & Associates
We work with governments, non-profits, communities, financial institutions and companies to navigate social, environmental, and natural resource issues. Through facilitating and engaging thoroughly and constructively, our approach improves relationships and builds trust. We help parties collaboratively solve problems and build consensus on tough issues.
We offer professional third party neutral services including mediation, facilitation, stakeholder engagement, grievance mechanism design, capacity building training, research, participatory evaluation, and multi-party negotiation support. Specializing in sustainable development and collaborative problem solving for company-community issues, we work with parties to build consensus and navigate disputes constructively. To meet the needs of our clients at home and abroad, we partner with top dispute resolution experts and organizations from several global regions.
Sarah Daitch is a mediator, facilitator, trainer and researcher, specializing in public dispute resolution, social, environmental and natural resource issues.
Raised in Inuit, Dene and Metis communities in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, Sarah has six years professional experience in mediation and consensus building in Canada, the US and Europe. She has also supported dispute resolution initiatives in Latin America, Asia and Africa. Sarah works with governments, non-profits and companies on collaborative problem solving for public policy and natural resource challenges. Sarah has served as a consultant to US organizations The Consensus Building Institute and RESOLVE. Previously, Sarah worked as Program Manager for ACCESS Facility in The Hague, the Netherlands. ACCESS Facility assists companies, communities and governments in finding better ways of working together to prevent and resolve conflict.
Sarah holds a BA in International Relations and an MA in Dispute Resolution, and is a qualified mediator with the Alternative Dispute Resolution Institute of Canada. She has helped parties to build consensus on a range of issues including health, education and natural resources, as well as handling dispute resolution cases for small businesses and for sport organizations. A former Canadian national team cross country skier, Sarah loves sport and adventure in the outdoors. In 2010, she founded a leadership development program for young NWT women together with Fast and Female Supporting Women in Sport. In 2013-2014, Sarah was an Action Canada Fellow. In 2013, Sarah was awarded a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee medal, and in 2016 she was inducted into the NWT Sport Hall of Fame.
- Qualified Mediator, Alternative Dispute Resolution Institute of Canada
- Member, Mediate BC Civil Dispute Roster
- Member, British Columbia Arbitration and Mediation Institute
- Member, Global Community of Practice of Dialogue Facilitators
- Associate Faculty, International Programme on the Management of Sustainability (2016)
What Clients & Colleagues Say About Our Founder
“Sarah is a talented mediator, with excellent process design applied knowledge. Sarah’s ability to see the entirety of a process and realize the needs of the parties through different phases has impressed me. As a trainer, Sarah brings warmth and creativity to coaching participants, ensuring thorough development of their mediation and negotiation skills. Her informed and constructive feedback to participants helped them prepare to create shared value in innovative ways in mutual gains negotiations simulations. Beyond her strong capacity building skills, I was delighted by the sense of fun Sarah brought to our work.”
– Barbara Oliveira, Executive Director, EcoSynergy
“Sarah has provided mediation and arbitration to the sport sector for years and has a very successful and positive track record. I will continue to seek Sarah as an arbitrator and mediator in the future.”
– Steven Indig, Managing Director, Sport & Law Strategy Group
To help our clients navigate complex issues, you can rely on us to engage a team of global professionals with deep subject matter, regional and process expertise. Our partner organizations include experienced professionals that we have collaborated with previously, and look forward to partnering with again to best meet our clients’ needs.
Our Partner Organizations
The Consensus Building Institute
WesselinkVanZijst
Conflict Resolution Group Foundation Inc. (CoRe Group)
Futuro Sostenible
Collaborative Global Initiative
Ecosynergy
The Consensus Building Institute
(CBI) is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1993 by leading practitioners and theory builders in the fields of negotiation and dispute resolution. CBI’s experts bring decades of experience brokering agreements and building collaboration in complex, high-stakes environments. CBI shares their approach with others through partnership, research, and teaching at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, MIT, and other leading institutions (www.cbuilding.org).
Wesselink VanZijst
WesselinkVanZijst is a specialized Dutch consultancy for professional issue and stakeholder management. We are convinced that professional management of all stakeholder issues strongly enhances the result of projects, programs, policies and multi-stakeholder cooperation. Our practical results back this statement. Our goal is to bring stakeholders of major projects together and search for lasting solutions that benefit all. We are active in infrastructure, energy, water, harbor and airport development, health care and public order and security. Assignments are given by public and private organizations. (http://www.wesselinkvanzijst.nl/en/)
The Conflict Resolution Group Foundation, Inc. is a non-profit, non-stock foundation based in Manila, Philippines. It envisions peaceful communities where human diversity is celebrated and bridged through non-adversarial processes. The CoRe Group’s mission is to create, nurture and sustain institutionalized mechanisms imbued with the spirit and skills of non-adversarial processes across the country. In the Philippines, as it is the world over, mediation results show that disputes are addressed effectively and swiftly, with durable and mutual-satisfying outcome while saving expensive time, effort and resources. The prime goal of the CoRe Group in advocating mediation is to promote empowerment and recognition, responsibility-taking and non-violent communication. (http://www.coregroup.org.ph)
Futuro Sostenible is a Peruvian non-profit organization dedicated to research, training and assistance in environmental negotiation, consensus building and mediation processes. Antonio Bernales is the Executive Director, lead consultant and founder of Futuro Sostenible. He has been an independent mediator and facilitator since 1990. Among other areas, Futuro Sostenible has worked extensively on collaborative problem solving for issues in the extractive industries in Latin America, where projects affect Indigenous Peoples. (http://www.futurosostenible.org)
Collaborative Global Initiative (CGI) is an international network of professionals. CGI focuses on creating effective engagement and decision processes that value diversity and the interests that arise when local governments initiate planning activities and solicit public input. CGI is made up of a collaborative network of public involvement professionals; public policy and environmental; regenerative design facilitators; mediators and systems design professionals. Services include assessment, training, planning, decision support, process design, facilitation and mediation services to assist multiple parties in their effort to work together to achieve common goals. (http://www.collaborativeglobalinitiative.com)
Ecosynergy is a boutique consultancy specialized in multi-stakeholder negotiations and process facilitation for complex problem solving. Ecosynergy fosters a culture of dialogue and collaboration for sustainable development among multiple parties: governments, private parties, communities, academia and international organizations. Ecosynergy has facilitated multi-stakeholder processes across Latin America, Africa, Asia and Europe impacting more than 2000 leaders worldwide that led to relationship development, capacity building and decision making on climate change, sustainable mining and sustainable agriculture, among others. At Ecosynergy, organizations are coached in their development of a strategic sustainability agenda, change management and collaborative innovation, using consensus building, collaborative decision-making and interest based mediation and negotiation tools as a foundation.