ADR Center Academy

Leonardo D’Urso is a full-time mediator, co-founder and CEO of ADR Center, Adjunct Professor at the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at the School of Law of Pepperdine University (CA, USA) a mediation expert at CEPEJ - Council of Europe and Board Member of the Weinstein International Foundation. With more than 20 years’ experience in the field of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), he has mediated more than 1.200 national and international complex civil and commercial mediations.

He is an ADR policy advisor for Governments and has been a team leader and senior expert in several international projects in countries like Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Barbados, Jamaica, Jordan, India, Moldova, Oman, Tunisia, Turkey, Pakistan, Serbia and most of Europen Union Member States.

Author of several publications on negotiation and mediation, he is the co-organizer of the Italian editions of the workshop “Negotiation for Executives” of the Program on Negotiation (PON Global) at Harvard Law School.

Adi is a full-time professional mediator with extensive experience since 2002 in supporting individuals, groups, companies, governments and international organizations to resolve a wide variety of disputes, both domestic and international. Adi has trained more than 1000 mediators and has provided consultancy services to beneficiaries and governments from more than 20 countries to design and develop mediation programs.

He is also an active mediator in the development space, working with the Office of the Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman (CAO) and Independent Project Accountability Mechanism, the IFC/MIGA (World Bank) and EBRD accountability mechanisms, to facilitate dialogue processes between the bank clients and communities concerned about the environmental and social impacts of bank financed projects.

Adi is the first president of the Romanian Mediation Centers Union and served as Co-Chair of the Independent Standards Commission convened by the International Mediation Institute (IMI). He is a Ph.D in constitutional law with emphasis on "Mediation and Access to Justice".

Hon Judge Mahmoud Mourad is a Chief Judge at the Egyptian Courts of Appeal seconded to the Legal Affairs Department at the Rulers Court to serve as a Legal Counsel for Dubai Government. He is the Head of the Amicable Settlement Committee “Mediation Committee” in English. He is a qualified mediator from the International Mediation Institute (IMI), and a certified trainer of legal skills with the American Bar Association. Moreover, He is a mediator within the Global Mediation Panel, at the Office of the Ombudsman in the United Nations (UN) and a mediator in the Arab Mediation Center in Cairo. In 2010, He first learned about conflicts from the social perspective by receiving intensive courses from the UN Mandated University of Peace (UPEACE). Those included conflict analysis, conflict resolution, negotiation, mediation and conflict transformation. In 2013, he earned his second master’s degree (LLM) from Dickenson School of Law at Penn State University in the US, with specialized studies in Alternative Disputes Resolutions (ADR). His studies included, but not limited to, negotiation, mediation, environmental negotiation, conflict resolution among different cultures, judicial conferences, neutral evaluation, and many other unique dispute resolution forums used around the word. Throughout the years, Hon. Judge Mourad has conducted hundreds of complex mediations some of worth billions of dollars. The disputes he mediated includes but are not limited to: ethnic groups disputes, international commercial transactions, construction, infrastructure projects, workplace disputes, employment/labor disputes, torts, aviation/transportation disputes and civil disputes. In 2012, Judge Mourad started his career as a Certified Trainer by being trained and qualified by the American Bar Association (ABA) as a trainer for legal subjects and skills. He built many training manuals and delivered thousands of training hours as the ABA ROLI Expert trainer to Egyptian judges and lawyers. Some of the courses he delivered included Conflict Resolution, Alternative Dispute Resolution, Mediation, Emotional Intelligence, and many other legal skills. Recently, he is delivering with the ADR Center the IMI internationally accredited mediation training in Dubai in Arabic. Mediation is his passion; it is more than just an alternative for resolving commercial disputes. It is, rather, a way of living, a tool for providing community tolerance. From his multi-level of expertise within disputes’ different disciplinaries as a former police officer, Judge, prosecutor, legal counsel, litigator, and mediator he reached the conclusion that mediation is the ultimate solution. He believes with all his heart and mind in mediation. Hence, he is fully dedicated to advancing Alternative Dispute Resolution methods in the MENA Region and beyond.