Rachel Eryn Kalish, M.C.    Principal, Workplace Connections

Rachel Eryn Kalish, M.C., Founding Principal of Workplace Connections, is a consultant with over 28 years of experience working with individuals, teams, organizations, couples and community leaders needing to increase their capacity to listen deeply, navigate differences, repair broken relationships, create and implement effective, wise, collaborative decision making strategies.

Using tools from the disciplines of consulting, coaching, psychology, training, meditation, mediation and facilitation, Rachel Eryn's clients have made major and lasting changes that have transformed the energy of conflict into relationships of increased trust and wise decision making.

Rachel Eryn has worked effectively with all levels in the private sector (union and nonunion), government organizations and non-profits, intensely conflicted couples and communities. One of her greatest strengths is being able to facilitate collaboration when conflict is heated. Her deep grounding in psychology and spiritual practice help her to retain a calming presence while her openness, strength, and creativity help clients facilitate new and practical solutions to old, seemigly intractable problems.

Rachel Eryn was the Founding Editor of N.E.T.working* magazine for five years, was the Founding Chair of the Violence Prevention Committee for the American Society for Training and Development/Boston Chapter, and has presented training for trainers in the area of violence prevention and conflict resolution in the U.S., Russia, and the Middle-East. She has a Master's degree in Counseling Psychology from Arizona State University (one of two programs in the U.S. accredited by the American Psychological Association) and a Bachelor's degree in Psychology from the University of Denver.

Rachel Eryn started Workplace Connections under a different name in 1986 after working for several east coast corporations. She is the founder of the Blessing Hands Project which raised money to help the children of the war in Sierra Leone, is the Past-President of the Board of The Compassionate Listening Project where she trained Israelis and Palestinians in using the tools of Compassionate Listening as a certified facilitator using their methodology.

She was the Founding Facilitator of Project Reconnections and key thought leader and the facilitator in the Year of Civil Discourse pioneering intra-Jewish and interfaith dialogue projects that transformed the capacity of the Bay Area community for handling widely divergent views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Both projects have inspired several other projects around the country.

She has presented at many conferences and has attended hundreds of leading edge workshops for her own continuing education, including the Harvard Negotiation Project’s Insight Initiative. She was on the Advisory Board of The Jewish Dialogue Group and is a member of the National Council for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD) and was in the first Meditation Teacher's Certification program at Chochmat Ha Lev (Wisdom of the Heart). Her life’s mission is to bring an integrative approach to transform how conflict is dealt with in every realm of life.

*New England Trainers Working, Published by Boston ASTD, currently ATD