Bio
Susan L. Podziba is the Founder and Principal of Podziba Policy Mediation. She has designed and mediated scores of cases across the policy spectrum including international relations, governance, environment and natural resources, land use and development, transportation, security, labor standards, public health, and education. Her clients have included the U.S. Departments of Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, and Transportation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Institute of Peace, and the United Nations.
Ms. Podziba is listed on credential-evaluated rosters including the United Nations Mediation Roster and the National Roster of Environmental Dispute Resolution and Consensus Building Professionals of the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution.
As a Fulbright Senior Specialist in Peace and Conflict Resolution at the Amsterdam Centre for Conflict Studies at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, Ms. Podziba consulted to local, regional and national government officials on consensus processes for sustainable development and to the Dutch Inter-Ministerial Task Force on Terrorism and Radicalization.
As Visiting Lecturer and Lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Department of Urban Studies and Planning from 1996-2002 and Faculty Associate at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School from 1999-2002, Ms. Podziba taught graduate seminars on public policy mediation and negotiations. She currently lectures and consults internationally.
Ms. Podziba is author of Civic Fusion: Mediating Polarized Public Disputes (2012). She has published numerous articles on negotiation, mediation and consensus building. Her book, The Chelsea Story: How a Corrupt City Re-Generated its Democracy (Bruno Mondadori 2006), is used in university courses throughout Italy. Media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, The Boston Globe, FastCompany, National Public Radio; and affiliates of all major U.S. television networks have reported on her projects.
Ms. Podziba holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania and a Master in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her master’s thesis, The Dynamic of Needs and Interests: A Mediator’s Response to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, was published by the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.