Action-oriented mediation and facilitation services for land use planning, natural resource management, and organizational change management.
You want progress toward achieving your goals.
To do that, you need a clear path from distracting and unsettling roadblocks and delays.
Internal and external conflicts can slow momentum and leave everyone feeling stuck and unsure of how to move forward.
We believe there are ways to improve most situations.
Trying to navigate contentious or complex situations without a collaboration specialist to help identify potential paths forward is exhausting.
For 30 years, our mediators have helped organizations, nonprofits, and government agencies manage their differences in ways that enable everyone to move forward.
It’s really possible to find common ground.
Here’s how we do it:
- Learn About Your Conflict – First, we take the time to learn about your situation and the challenges at hand by actively listening and asking good questions that help us identify ways we can help you work toward solutions.
- Facilitate Discussions – Next, we invite key stakeholders to the table to introduce all perspectives, help all parties gain greater mutual understanding, and look for areas of consensus.
- Find Solutions – After learning, listening, and facilitating open communication between all stakeholders, we’ll help all parties proceed with new approaches toward common ground.
Our promises to all parties
Mediation and facilitation can only succeed when the people involved respectfully express their views and also feel respected and heard. We approach every relationship—partners, clients, and stakeholders alike—with these shared values.
“I am deeply grateful to have Rich as a mentor and coach. His thoughtful questions consistently challenge my thinking, helping me gain new perspectives and clarity. His guidance has been instrumental in building my confidence and shaping my approach to strategic planning and organizational effectiveness.”
“Richard is a very thoughtful and objective facilitator with both broad and deep knowledge of conservation, legal, business, and facilitation matters. I have not met another facilitator with the unique skill set that Richard has. He is also easy to work with, highly trustworthy, and genuinely interested in forging lasting solutions to conservation challenges.”
Partners
Confluence Collaboration is an informal partnership of specialized team facilitators and conflict management and resolution experts practicing in Colorado, Wyoming, and the Washington, D.C. metro area.
Richard Alper
Principal
Confluence Collaboration was founded in 2012 under the driving vision of Richard Alper. Richard has a continuing interest in how communities function and thrive together within their particular landscapes and cultures.
Richard has years of professional experience as a mediator and team facilitator, especially in resolving complex and dynamic disputes relating to natural resources, land use, transportation, real estate, and change management. He is moved by the power of constructive conversation between people of differing perspectives to discover practical solutions for their common challenges.
Richard has mediated, facilitated, and arbitrated 200+ cases in federal and state courts and agencies as well as for non-profits and business clients. All of the facilitated, multi-party cases have included multiple meetings over many months or quarters. In addition, he has designed, taught or trained 2000+ hours of conflict management, arbitration, negotiation, commercial real estate, land use, and environmental law courses. He currently serves on the facilitator roster of the John S. McCain III National Center for Environmental Conflict Resolution (NCECR).
As an adjunct instructor, Richard has taught for 20+ years at the University of Wyoming, the University of Maryland Law School, Montgomery College, and the Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business. He is currently teaching environmental conflict resolution at the University of Northern Colorado.
Karina Branson
Graphic Recorder
Karina listens to conversations and uses hand-drawn images and text to synthesize ideas into a large-scale map, in real-time. These maps help stakeholders visualize new futures, see systems and patterns, and synthesize information to help groups better collaborate and find solutions.
Seeing ideas and how they relate to one another allow participants to let go of the details so they can think creatively and divergently to create solutions and inspire innovation.
Karina’s goal is to help groups be more productive, collaborative, and have fun co-creating and acting on ideas through custom, hand-drawn illustrations and videos.
Martin Carcasson, PhD
Professor
Martín Carcasson is a professor in the Communication Studies department of Colorado State University and served as past chair of the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation Board of Directors.
His research, which has been published in well-known journals such as the International Journal of Conflict Resolution and the Quarterly Journal of Speech, focuses on helping local communities address “wicked problems” more productively through improved public communication, community problem solving, and collaborative decision-making.
Martín is also the founder and director of the CSU Center for Public Deliberation (CPD), which is a practical, applied extension of his work, and functions as an impartial resource dedicated to enhancing local democracy in Northern Colorado. The CPD was recently awarded a Civvy Award in Washington, D.C., as a national example of a best practice in civic collaboration and collective action.
Steve Smutko, PhD
Professor
Steve Smutko is a recently retired professor in the Haub School of Environment & Natural Resources and the Department of Agricultural & Applied Economics at the University of Wyoming.
Steve is an expert in participatory decision-making, negotiation and decision analysis, and natural resources problem solving. His outreach work is conducted through the Ruckelshaus Institute at UW where he works with local governments, state and federal agencies, and the private and non-profit sectors to enhance participatory decision-making on complex environmental and natural resource policy issues.
John Sanderson, PhD
Professor
John Sanderson is the Director of Colorado State University’s Center for Collaborative Conservation and an experienced facilitator. At the Center, John and his staff work to build the capacity of organizations, communities, and future leaders to achieve conservation impact, while applying CSU’s world-class research and education. He has been doing conservation work in the West for over 25 years, including at the Colorado Natural Heritage Program and at The Nature Conservancy, where he led a staff striving to protect land, manage rivers, restore forests, and mitigate and adapt to our changing climate.
John earned a B.S. in engineering from Purdue University, an M.S. in botany from the University of Vermont, and a Ph.D. from the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology at CSU.
