Mark Gerzon, leadership trainer and mediator, and best-selling author, is a former EWI Distinguished Fellow. He spearheaded EWI's Global Leadership Consortium, which harnesses talent from around the world to address threats to global peace and security.

Gerzon is the author of "Leading Through Conflict: How Successful Leaders Transform Differences Into Opportunities," Harvard Business School Press. Using the "mediator's toolbox" described in his book, he coaches leaders in both the private and public sectors on how to bridge the divisions in their companies and communities. Called an "expert in civil discourse" by The New York Times, for the past 20 years Mark has been President of the Mediators Foundation, a non-profit incubator of conflict resolution projects.

Mark is co-founder and co-director of the Global Leadership Network, an international organization whose members are leadership trainers from every region of the world. Among the Network's projects are a book on the global dimensions of leadership, and a Global Leaders program being designed in partnership with Outward Bound International. He has also served as a consultant to the United Nations Development Program and its Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery.

Since designing and facilitating the first and second United States House of Representatives' Bipartisan Congressional Retreats, he has continued to conduct dialogue trainings for Chiefs of Staff from both parties in the United States House and Senate, and to facilitate "cross-spectrum" dialogues between Left, Center and Right. Both in the private as well as the public sector, his goal is to support leaders who can build bridges across their differences in order to find common ground and solve critical problems.