Ursula Duncan's Bio
Ursula is passionate about helping people achieve their goals and live their dreams.
She is a Professional Coach, Counselor, Mediator, and Workshop Facilitator, who works with everyone from teens and singles, to business leaders and CEO's. She gives empathy by phone, does telephone coaching, private sessions, mediations, organizational interventions, and conducts workshops for 5 to 500 participants. Her organizational client list ranges from non-profits and schools to small start-ups and Fortune 500s. Stanford University, the YMCA, Apple, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and Xerox are some of the most recognizable.
Ursula began her "non-academic" study of communication mediating between family members and people of diverse races and cultures. She grew up in a family with four nationalities and lived in five countries by the time she was 14. She got a lot of practice understanding different values, cultures, and communication styles.
Ursula continued her education at UCSB where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa and earned a B.A. with High Honors (magna cum laude) in Communication Studies and with Distinction in German Literature and Language (1984).
After working as a Marketing Manager in two publishing companies, she returned to school to get an MBA from Stanford, with an emphasis on Organizational Psychology (1994). For three years after graduate school she worked as a Coach and Organizational Consultant in author and Stanford Graduate School of Business Professor, Dr. Jerry Porras' consulting company (see Built to Last, Collins and Porras, Harper Business).
In 1994, she was introduced to the Nobel Peace Prize Nominee and international mediator, Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, and began to intensively study his model of communication called Compassionate/Nonviolent Communication (NVC; see www.cnvc.org). Three years later she began using NVC as a Volunteer Life Skills Facilitator in a halfway house in San Francisco and as a Volunteer Community Mediator.
After she had applied NVC professionally for two years, she was asked to be Dr. Rosenberg's personal assistant. She had to decline for serious health reasons. At a recent workshop, Dr. Rosenberg joked with the crowd: "Ursula has gone to more of my workshops than I have!"
She is grateful to have studied so much with this world-renowned peacemaker, and is delighted to have found her life purpose through coaching and practicing NVC, both personally and professionally.
To date, she has mediated 500+ cases (from two-party to multi-party cases), with 97% ending in resolution. She thinks NVC makes the difference between mediations, where parties feel heard and come to a durable, mutually beneficial agreement, and those where there is an impasse.
Ursula finds NVC brings similar benefits to meeting facilitation and system interventions whether these are in couples and families or organizations. All this contributes to her passion, not only to apply it in her professional services, but to teach it to others as well.
She regularly conducts NVC workshops for the general public and facilitates follow-on weekly Practice Groups. She also offers trainings to corporations, non-profits, and schools.
One attendee enthused: "Ursula's workshop gave me hope that there are high quality trainers who can spread NVC long after Marshall (Rosenberg) is gone."
Another said: "Ursula hovers on a level near Marshall (Rosenberg)."
_____________________________________
Additional Information
Ursula is currently coaching clients with one of the world's most preeminent coaches, Dr. Marshall Goldsmith. He is author of many books on the NY Times best-seller list. His current book, What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There is currently #1 on the Wall Street Journal and the USA Today best-seller list in the business category. She is learning Dr. Goldsmith’s model of coaching which has a strong track-record in getting robust, long-term results.
She is certified as a Meyers-Briggs test administrator.
She is qualified as a FIRO B test administrator (from the Business Consultants Network).
Her approach is informed 350+ personal growth seminars, trainings and retreats over the last 19 years. Some of the most influential programs have been with Phoenix II Seminars (a spin-off of Life Spring), the Human Awareness Institute, Appreciative Inquiry, Byron Katie's book The Work, Collins and Porras' book Built to Last.
She serves as an active Senior Mediator at Peninsula Conflict Resolution Center and City of Mountain View Mediation where she has done pro-bono work for 12 years.
Twice a year for 12 years she has been a coach in a forty-hour mediation class at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills.
_____________________________________
.