ADR Center Academy

Hon. Ann Claire Williams (Ret.) is Of Counsel at Jones Day, where she leads its efforts in advancing the rule of law in Africa. Devoted to promoting the effective delivery of justice worldwide, Judge Williams has partnered with judiciaries, attorneys, NGOs and the U.S. Departments of Justice and State to design and lead training programs in Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. In November of 1999, Judge Williams became the first and only judge of color appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Before she became a circuit judge, she served as a U.S. District Court judge for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago from 1985 to 1999. During her tenure on the trial bench, Judge Williams mediated thousands of cases. She retired from being a judge in early 2018. While on the bench, she was chair of the Court Administration and Case Management Committee of the U.S. Judicial Conference from 1993 to 1997, served on the Supreme Court Fellows Program Commission from 2005 to 2011, and served on the Judicial Branch Committee from 2009 to 2018. She was treasurer, president-elect, and president of the Federal Judges Association, which has a membership of more than 1,200 federal judges. In each of these positions, she was the first judge of color to serve. Committed to public interest work throughout her life, Judge Williams helped found Just The Beginning–A Pipeline Organization, the Black Women Lawyers’ Association of Chicago, Minority Legal Education Resources, Inc., and the Public Interest Fellowship Program of Equal Justice Works. A lifelong educator, she has conducted training on mediation skills in the Caribbean, Kenya, Zambia, and the United States. She earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Education from Wayne State University and an MA in Guidance and Counseling from the University of Michigan. She taught in the Detroit Public Schools before obtaining her JD from the Notre Dame 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".

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.

Hon. Ann Claire Williams (Ret.) is Of Counsel at Jones Day, where she leads its efforts in advancing the rule of law in Africa. Devoted to promoting the effective delivery of justice worldwide, Judge Williams has partnered with judiciaries, attorneys, NGOs and the U.S. Departments of Justice and State to design and lead training programs in Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. In November of 1999, Judge Williams became the first and only judge of color appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Before she became a circuit judge, she served as a U.S. District Court judge for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago from 1985 to 1999. During her tenure on the trial bench, Judge Williams mediated thousands of cases. She retired from being a judge in early 2018. While on the bench, she was chair of the Court Administration and Case Management Committee of the U.S. Judicial Conference from 1993 to 1997, served on the Supreme Court Fellows Program Commission from 2005 to 2011, and served on the Judicial Branch Committee from 2009 to 2018. She was treasurer, president-elect, and president of the Federal Judges Association, which has a membership of more than 1,200 federal judges. In each of these positions, she was the first judge of color to serve. Committed to public interest work throughout her life, Judge Williams helped found Just The Beginning–A Pipeline Organization, the Black Women Lawyers’ Association of Chicago, Minority Legal Education Resources, Inc., and the Public Interest Fellowship Program of Equal Justice Works. A lifelong educator, she has conducted training on mediation skills in the Caribbean, Kenya, Zambia, and the United States. She earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Education from Wayne State University and an MA in Guidance and Counseling from the University of Michigan. She taught in the Detroit Public Schools before obtaining her JD from the Notre Dame Law School.