Susan M. Jeghelian, Esq., Executive Director
susan.jeghelian@umb.edu 617-287-4047
Susan leads MODR’s work with government agencies, businesses, non-profit organizations, public interest groups and private citizens to foster public deliberation, civic engagement, collaborative problem-solving, resolution of public disputes and consensus agreements on complex public issues. Susan directs policy and program development; public information, education and training; administrative functions; and business and revenue development for MODR, and supervises the recruitment and qualification of neutrals who serve as MODR affiliates. For the past fourteen years, she has overseen the design and operation of state agency and court-based dispute resolution programs, has delivered numerous conflict resolution trainings for public officials and employees, and has served as a mediator and facilitator for public disputes and public involvement processes. Susan led the implementation of Executive Order #416, the Governor’s initiative to integrate dispute resolution into state government, and co-chaired the Executive Legal Counsel Professional Development Group on ADR. She also served for many years as a member of the Supreme Judicial Court Standing Committee on Dispute Resolution and in that capacity assisted with the development and implementation of the Uniform Rules on Dispute Resolution in the MA Trial Court. Susan has a B.A. from Mount Holyoke College and a J.D. from Boston College Law School. Prior to working at MODR, she practiced law with a concentration in civil litigation and mediation.

Loraine M. Della Porta, Esq., Deputy Director
loraine.dellaporta@umb.edu 617-287-4048
Loraine is an experienced mediator, arbitrator, trainer, and facilitator, specializing in labor/management issues and workplace conflict management. She directs MODR’s Agricultural Mediation Program and Agricultural Mediation Clinic, which provide mediation and other conflict resolution services for a variety of issues affecting MA agriculture, including agribusiness, land use, natural resource conservation, rural housing and credit issues. Loraine also directs MODR’s Kettering Public Policy Institute, a program that holds deliberative dialogues for communities on important public issues, trains dialogue moderators and frames issues for public deliberation. Loraine is President of the New England Chapter of the Association for Conflict Resolution (NE-ACR), and serves on the Board of Directors of the Community Mediation Center of Rhode Island (CMCRI), where she also serves as Chair of the Ethics Committee. Loraine received a B.S. with honors from Providence College, and a J.D. from Roger Williams University Law School in Bristol, RI. She completed a portion of her graduate studies at Pepperdine University Law School’s Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution.

Kevin Dye, Acting Director of Research
kevin.dye@umb.edu 617-287-4045
Kevin is a reflective practitioner of process science. He has over twenty five years of experience in collaborative action planning and decision support with special expertise in large-group facilitation and computer-supported methods. Through team-based approaches, Kevin has designed inter-organizational, multi-stakeholder collaborative processes for initiatives engaging twelve to sixty organizations. This includes work in the healthcare and environmental sectors. In healthcare these initiatives include projects for the World Health Organization, the biotech sector of Northern Ireland, the FDA, and the National Patient Safety Foundation. Environmental initiatives included addressing the Future of Energy Efficiency, the USDA Forest Service, Green Chemistry, and Salt Marsh Restoration. Kevin co-founded two decision support systems companies. In between these ventures he served on the executive council on process improvement and knowledge-based systems for United Technologies Corporation, which sponsored him as a Sloan Visiting Fellow at MIT.

Mette Kreutzmann, Practice Research Administrator
mette.kreutzmann@umb.edu 617-287-4041
Mette coordinates mediations for MODR’s Housing Appeals and Agricultural Mediation Programs, provides project management for trainings, facilitations, and other dispute resolution projects and assists with MODR research projects. Mette’s work has involved co-facilitation of public meetings for environmental projects involving the Emerald Necklace park system and Nomans Land Island; trainings for the Department of Mental Retardation and the Office of the Attorney General, stakeholder assessments and facilitation of working groups for implementation of court-connected ADR, and design and delivery of court ADR conferences. She has provided research assistance to the Trial Court Standing Committee on Dispute Resolution and the Coalition of Community Mediation Programs on data supporting strategies for public funding and assisted with an evaluation of peer mediation programs at four local high schools. Mette graduated with an M.A. in Dispute Resolution from the University of Massachusetts Boston and received the Donald Paulson Award for distinguished service to the Graduate Programs in Dispute Resolution. She interned with The Mediation Group, where she assisted with the establishment of an arbitrator panel, and worked as a research assistant to Professor David Matz. She is Danish and holds a B.A. in Computational Linguistics from University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Mary Jean ("MJ") Shultz, Program Coordinator
maryjean.shultz@umb.edu 617-287-4040
MJ administers the affordable housing mediation program sponsored by the Housing Appeals Committee of the Department of Housing and Community Development to resolve comprehensive permit disputes under MGL. Ch. 40B. She coordinates mediations and other projects for MODR’s Agricultural Mediation and Municipal Programs. MJ assisted in the development of an ADR guidebook for municipal officials as well as other outreach materials on MODR’s land use mediation programs. MJ helped to institute MODR’s Deliberative Dialogue Program and she serves as a trainer of dialogue moderators. For over 20 years MJ served as the zoning administrator for the Town of Hingham, where she aimed to provide rational and collaborative approaches to land development, expeditious interpretation of regulations, and support as a resource for other town officials. MJ has a B.A. from Wellesley College and an M.S. from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. She has a Certificate in Dispute Resolution from the University of Massachusetts Boston, which included a 30-hour mediation training internship, and she has completed advanced land use mediation training at the Consensus Building Institute. Outside of her work for MODR, MJ maintains a private consulting practice to assist clients in zoning and land use permitting applications.