Directors

Vic Schachter is the founder and president of FSRI.  He has served extensively as a mediator, and as an advocate representing clients in numerous mediations and arbitrations over his fifty year career.  He has led and participated in rule of law initiatives promoting judicial reform and alternative dispute resolution and judicial case management in India, Brazil, Turkey, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Republic of Georgia and Malaysia, among other countries.  In collaboration with the High Courts of India, he served as a Project Director for legal reform programs in New Delhi, Bangalore, and Kerala.  In 2008, Mr. Schachter was recognized as a California Lawyer Attorney of the Year for his service in judicial reform, rule of law and mediation building.  His work has been reported and cited in numerous publications.  Previously he was a litigation partner at Fenwick & West LLP for 17 years, where he was Chair of its Employment Practices Group.

Claudia L. Bernard Until 2018, Claudia served as Chief Circuit Mediator for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where she led a staff of eight mediators, mediated cases on appeal, mediated workplace disputes and provided organizational development assistance within the Circuit. She served as a Ninth Circuit Mediator for eighteen years before becoming the Chief Circuit Mediator. Currently Claudia presents trainings for community and religious organizations, courts, law firms, and educational institutions, nationally and internationally on mediation, effective communication, conflict resolution, mindful leadership, bridging differences, and addressing implicit bias. She also co-leads “Effective Communication Across Differences,” a national program aimed at helping law students communicate with those with whom they disagree. Prior to her 30 years at the Ninth Circuit, Claudia practiced civil litigation and clerked for a federal judge.

Jennifer Brandt is an attorney, mediator and arbitrator dealing with complex Federal and State court cases involving commercial, business, insurance, family law, and bankruptcy issues.  As a FSRI mediation ambassador, she has traveled to India to facilitate and assess mediation programs.  She has participated in international dispute resolution studies in  Brazil, Bulgaria. Croatia, Georgia Republic, Ethiopia, Sudan and Cyprus.  In addition to her Juris Doctor degree she holds an M.A. in International Relations with a focus on international dispute resolution.

Dana Curtis is a pioneer and leader in the ADR field. She was among the first attorneys in the country to devote her career exclusively to mediation. She has designed and facilitated hundreds of mediation programs throughout the United States and internationally, including at Stanford Law School for ten years and, more recently, at Harvard Law School, where she teaches Mediating Disputes for the Program on Negotiation. Ms. Curtis has served as a member of the board of directors of the California Dispute Resolution Institute and the California Dispute Resolution Council and as a consulting member of the San Francisco Zen Center’s Ethics and Reconciliation Council. She is a a co-founder of the RockRose Institute.

H. Jay Folberg has authored articles and books on dispute resolution and mediation. He was dean of the USF School of Law from 1989 to 1999. In 1998, Mr. Folberg was appointed by the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court to chair a state wide task force on alternative dispute resolution, and to chair the Judicial Council's Blue Ribbon Panel on arbitration ethics. He was honored in 2003 with the Judicial Council's Bernard Witkin Amicus Curiae Award for his leadership in the field of alternative dispute resolution and his contributions to California courts. He now serves as a mediator and arbitrator with JAMS, and is chair of the JAMS Foundation Board. 

Howard A. Herman has been a mediator and a developer of the court-annexed ADR programs since 1985. He currently mediates through JAMS in San Francisco. For more than 23 years, he led the highly regarded ADR Program of the Northern District of California in San Francisco. Mr. Herman frequently teaches negotiation and mediation related courses at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, where he also co-leads an annual seminar for international judges and lawyers entitled “Envisioning, Designing and Implementing Court ADR.” In addition, Mr. Herman has developed numerous ADR training courses for lawyers and judges throughout the United States and internationally. Mr. Herman was Chair of the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution in 2015-16, and has served on that Section’s Quality of Mediation Task Force, the Ninth Circuit ADR Committee, the California Judicial Council’s working group for the development of ethical standards for court-connected mediators, the ADR Committee of the California State Bar, and the California Trial Court Budget Commission’s Subcommittee on ADR. In 2019, he received the Ninth Circuit’s Robert F. Peckham Award for Excellence in Alternative Dispute Resolution.

Pamela Merchant is a Human Rights Attorney and the former President and Executive of the Center for Justice & Accountability, an international human rights organization dedicated to deterring torture and other severe human rights abuses around the world and advancing the rights of survivors to seek truth, justice, and redress. She has served on numerous nonprofit boards and is currently a member of the Advisory Council to the ABA International Human Rights Center. She has testified before Congress on human rights issues.

Officers

Vic Schachter is the founder and president of FSRI.  He has served extensively as a mediator, and as an advocate representing clients in numerous mediations and arbitrations over his fifty year career.  He has led and participated in rule of law initiatives promoting judicial reform and alternative dispute resolution and judicial case management in India, Brazil, Turkey, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Republic of Georgia and Malaysia, among other countries.  In collaboration with the High Courts of India, he served as a Project Director for legal reform programs in New Delhi, Bangalore, and Kerala.  In 2008, Mr. Schachter was recognized as a California Lawyer Attorney of the Year for his service in judicial reform, rule of law and mediation building.  His work has been reported and cited in numerous publications.  Previously he was a litigation partner at Fenwick & West LLP for 17 years, where he was Chair of its Employment Practices Group.

Jan Schachter, Secretary and Treasurer, has served on the Board of Directors of the Palo Alto Art Center Foundation, the Craft Emergency Relief Fund, and the Association of Clay and Glass Artists of California. She is a member of the National Council on Education in the Ceramic Arts.

Advisory Council

Hon. Charles R. Breyer is a Senior District Judge for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.  He has participated in rule of law initiatives in India. Prior to his judgeship, he was a partner in the law firm of Coblentz, Cahen, McCabe & Breyer, and he served as Counsel at the Legal Aid Society of San Francisco, and as Chief Assistant District Attorney in San Francisco.

Hon. Edward M. Chen is a federal judge for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and former U.S. Magistrate Judge. Prior to that, he practiced law with the firm Coblentz, Cahen, McCabe & Breyer, and was a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. He has participated in rule of law initiatives in Malaysia, and has lectured extensively on case management and mediation systems.

Hiro N. Aragaki, FCIarb, is an international arbitrator and mediator at JAMS, with over twenty years of experience in business and commercial dispute resolution.  He is also a Professor of Law at Loyola Law School (Los Angeles), where he teaches and writes on ADR and international business transactions, and a Professorial Research Associate at SOAS School of Law (London).  He is the Director for the Center For Negotiation and Dispute Resolution, UC Hastings College of the Law and holds degrees from Yale, Stanford, and Cambridge, and is dual qualified in the U.S. and U.K.  He is a Fellow of the College of Commercial Arbitrators and of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. hiro.aragaki@lls.edu

 Laila T. Ollapally is an attorney and founding mediator and Senior Coordinator at the Bangalore Mediation Center, the first lawyer-driven, court-annexed mediation center in India. Ms. Ollapally has also been a leading figure in training mediators and promoting expansion of alternative dispute resolution processes throughout India.

Rajiv P. Patel is a partner in Fenwick & West’s Intellectual Property/Patent Group.  From 2005 to 2011 he was on the Board of International Technology Law Association (ITechLaw) and from 2005 to 2011 he served on the Planning Committee for the Annual ITechLaw Asia Legal Conference.   Mr. Patel is on the Board of Trustees of the University of New Hampshire School of Law.  He has been repeatedly recognized as a Northern California "Super Lawyer" in the area of Intellectual Property.

Hon. Richard Seeborg is a federal judge for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and former U.S. Magistrate Judge. Earlier, Judge Seeborg was an Assistant United States Attorney and a partner at the law firm of Morrison & Foerster. He has participated in rule of law initiatives in India and elsewhere, and lectured extensively on case management and alternative dispute resolution.