The Dana Advisory

Dan Dana, PhD
Psychologist - Mediator - Educator - Author
Speaker - Poet - Ethicist - Investor
Your Surrogate Grandfather
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Bio

Retired from professional practice since 2011. Additional autobiographical content is contained in memoir A Life Mostly Lived and in Diary of a Young Man: 1967-1968 (synopsis).


Education

PhD (Counseling Psychology), University of Missouri, 1977

Dissertation: Categorial Intergroup Bias in Natural Groups, a study of conflict in healthcare workplaces

Clinical internship specializing in systems-oriented marriage and family therapy

Intern with NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science (Bethel, Maine), 1972-75

Teaching

Full-time professor of organizational behavior and conflict management, University of Hartford (Connecticut) Graduate School of Business, 1978-1985. Continued as adjunct professor until 2007.

Adjunct professor of conflict management, Syracuse University, 1996-2001

Visiting lecturer at other institutions, including Middle Eastern Technical University (Ankara, Turkey), Bond University (Gold Coast, Australia), University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa), Strathmore University (Nairobi, Kenya), and Younsei University (Seoul, Korea)

Enterprise Development

Founded the Mediation Training Institute International in 1985 and guided its development to being the world's most prominent provider of training and certification in managing and mediating workplace conflict. Retired December 31, 2011, when MTI was acquired by Eckerd College, St Petersburg, Florida.

Established the "Elect Mediators to Public Office" Project, seeking "better government through non-adversarial resolution of differences" by supporting the campaigns of political candidates who publicly advocate interest-based approaches to political conflicts. (No longer maintained on this website.)

Developed the Dana Trading System in 2013.

Established Five Palms Press, publisher of haiku quintets and other sunset musings (private press)

Author and thought-leader

Originator of Managerial Mediation (1979)

Developer of the Dana Measure of Financial Cost of Organizational Conflict, the first and most widely cited instrument of its kind, based on an article published in 1981 in Organization Development Journal

Author of Managing Differences: How to Build Better Relationships at Work and Home (1988-2006), published worldwide in six languages and used as a seminar sourcebook by Mediation Training Institute at Eckerd College

Author of Talk It Out: Four Steps to Managing People Problems in Your Organization (1996), HRD Press

Author of Conflict Resolution: Mediation Tools for Everyday Worklife (2001), featured book in McGraw-Hill's Briefcase Books series, published worldwide in many languages

Author of The Promise of Mediation: Managing the Conflicts that Disrupt Our Lives, keynote address for a mediation conference at Swarthmore University, Nairobi, Kenya, 25 July 2018. Published by the Professional Speechwriters Association (2018). Adapted for general audiences under the title Interpersonal Peacemaking: Quelling the Conflicts that Disrupt Our Lives, available for delivery worldwide by associates of Mediation Training Institute at Eckerd College.

In retirement, the originator of the "haiku quintet" poetic form and author of a series of books using that form.

Mediator-consultant

Recipient of contract to establish one of the first Employee Assistance Programs in the United States Government, 1977-78, Washington, DC (Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, in the office of Secretary Joseph Califano)

Workplace mediator, 1975 to 2013 (no longer in active practice)

Selected life experiences

Born 1945, reared on a family farm in northwest Missouri

Vietnam veteran (non-combat), 1966-68; returned as tourist in 2015

Woodstock Festival, August 1969; participant in the counter-culture, 1969-1973

Speaking tour in the USSR, June 1990 (shortly before the Soviet collapse); events organized by group who translated Managing Differences to Russian language; accompanied by 17-year-old daughter Susan.

Present in South Africa on the occasion of Nelson Mandela's first election as President, April 1994

Democratic Party candidate for the United States House of Representatives, 1998, running the "first non-adversarial campaign in the history of American politics"; lost primary election to Congressman Dennis Moore (D-KS)

Conducted mediation training in Israel, October 2001, less than one month after the World Trade Center attack

Resides with wife Susan in Sarasota, Florida.

Father of one, grandfather of two.

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