Guest Trainers

Bill Eddy is a therapist (12 years as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker), lawyer (15 years as a Certified Family Law Specialist), and mediator (15 years as the Senior Family Mediator at the National Conflict Resolution Center in San Diego). He is the co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer of the High Conflict Institute based California and Arizona. Mr. Eddy provides training worldwide on the subject of high-conflict personalities to lawyers, mediators, judges, mental health professionals, human resources, and others. He has presented in over 35 states and ten countries, and has trained over 200,000 professionals on understanding and managing high conflict disputes.

Bill is the author and co-author of twenty books, including the instant classic BIFF: Quick Responses to High-Conflict People and the newly-published Mediating High Conflict Disputes. He is the developer of the New Ways for Families® method for potentially high-conflict families, which is being implemented in several family court systems. He is also the developer of the New Ways for Mediation® method, which emphasizes more structure by the mediator and more negotiation skills for the parties.

He serves on the faculty of the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at the Pepperdine University School of Law in California and is a Conjoint Associate Professor with the University of Newcastle Law School in Australia.

Bill has a popular blog on the Psychology Today website with over 3.5 million views and is the author and co-author of twenty books (as of 2022) on high conflict issues, including two award winners (see all books here). His books include:

• 5 Types of People Who Can Ruin Your Life
• High Conflict People in Legal Disputes
• Managing High Conflict People in Court
• Mediating High Conflict Disputes (co-author Michael Lomax)
• It’s All YOUR Fault! 12 Tips for Managing People Who Blame Others for Everything
• It’s All Your Fault at Work (award winner) (co-author Georgi DiStefano)
• BIFF: Quick Responses to High Conflict People, Their Personal Attacks, Hostile Email and Social Media Meltdowns
• BIFF for CoParents (co-authors Annette Burns and Kevin Chafin)
• BIFF at Work (co-authors Megan Hunter and Shiv Martin)
• Why We Elect Narcissists and Sociopaths and How We Can Stop (award winner)
• SPLITTING: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder (co-author Randi Kreger)
• So, What’s Your Proposal?
• Don’t Alienate the Kids
• The Future of Family Court

He is also the developer of the New Ways series of methods, including:

• New Ways for Families (divorce/separation)
• New Ways for Work
• New Ways for Mediation
• New Ways for Life (for teens/adolescents)

For more about Bill visit www.highconflictinstitute.com

Christina McGhee, MSW, is an internationally recognized divorce parenting expert, coach, trainer, and author. In the early part of her career, she was dubbed the “divorce coach” by the UK press, gained worldwide attention for her work with three British families in the Channel 4 documentary “How to Divorce Without Screwing Up Your Children.”  

In addition to her work in the US, Christina also played a leading role in developing Parenting After Parting, an educational initiative aimed at providing high-quality, stigma-free support to separating parents throughout England. She has also had the extreme honor of speaking to Members of the Scottish Parliament as an advocate for children of divorce.

Her diverse background and combined experiences have helped her cultivate a unique perspective regarding how family law professionals engage with clients, what it takes to be effective and keep parents focused on their children instead of each other.   

Christina currently offers customized training for family lawyers, collaborative professionals, and mediators designed to be interactive, engaging, and thought-provoking. Her programs focus on creating a comfortable space for practicing skills that maximize learning while providing strategies participants can use right away.

Christina also maintains an active coaching practice working with parents by phone. As a coach, she addresses a wide variety of divorce-related challenges, including coparenting in high-conflict situations, minimizing conflict for children, dealing with personality disorders, child rejection/alienation, and late-in-life divorce involving older children.

In addition to training and coaching, Christina has extensive experience developing resources for children of divorce and their parents and has contributed to several media projects as a featured expert, a content consultant, and a writer/producer.

Some of her ventures include writing PARENTING APART: How Separated and Divorced Parents Can Raise Happy and Secure Kids, “Coparenting with Purpose,” an online course for separating parents, and most recently being a subject matter expert for the documentary film “SPLIT” and the upcoming sequel to SPLIT.  

She has been featured on television, podcast, radio, and in print around the US and abroad. Some places you may have seen her include The Times, Parents Magazine, The Guardian, the Dr. Laura Berman Radio Show/Oprah Network, GMTV, BBC, SKY NEWS, Fox Family, LA Talk Radio, and NYU Doctor Radio.

You can find out more about Christina at www.divorceandchildren.com.

Kathleen Zumpano, MA, MFT works as a child development specialist, mediator and parent coach who has focused her practice on assisting families during and after divorce. She has been providing therapeutic services to children and families for over 15 years. She graduated from Lewis & Clark Graduate School with a degree in Counseling Psychology, Marriage and Family Therapy, with a specialization in Children in the Context of Families. She holds two bachelor’s degrees; one in Psychology and the other in Human Development and Family Sciences, graduating Magna Cum Laude.

Kathleen’s work history has included working as a Child and Family Advocate, a Treatment Counselor for juveniles in residential treatment facilities and group homes, a Child Development Specialist for county services, and a Child and Family therapist in a community-based agency as well as private practice.

Kathleen has presented at panels and workshops for the last 11 years on a variety of topics related to families and divorce in Oregon, Washington, California and British Columbia, including for Lewis & Clark Law School, the Oregon Counseling Association, the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals, and the Oregon State Bar Family Law Conference. 

Kathleen currently serves on the Oregon Statewide Family Law Advisory Committee’s subgroup on Parent Involvment and Outreach. This group researches and provides guidance to judges, attornesy and other professionals on a variety of topics. Recent projects included birth through three co-parenting guidelines, as well as supervised parenting time. Current project is on resist/refuse dynamics in separation/divorce.

Kathleen is a contributing author in Mosten and Cordover’s 2018 ABA Published book Building Successful Collaborative Law Practice (2018). Kathleen authored a chapter on use of child specialists in collaborative law. She is also a co-author of “Commentary on Interdisciplinary Team Work in Family Law” published in the July 2018 Issue of the Family Court Review