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".