Michele Ferenz

Michele Ferenz is a Senior Mediator at the Consensus Building Institute with over 15 years of experience as a facilitator, mediator and trainer helping resolve conflict and build consensus. Her primary practice areas are in natural resource management and international development, with a focus on fragile states and post-conflict societies. Previous to her current work with CBI, Michele was the founding director of the Food, Water and Energy Nexus program at the East West Institute, working with senior political and business leaders to address complex nexus tensions in Central Asia and the Middle East. From 2007 to 2012, Michele worked at UNICEF covering post-crisis and transition countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East as well as environmental sustainability. In early 2012, as Acting Country Director in Libya, she managed all programmatic and operational aspects of establishing a new UNICEF country presence in Tripoli. Michele's previous work at CBI spanned a decade from 1997 to 2007. In that period, she oversaw CBI’s Middle Eastern portfolio and worked on global multi-stakeholder consultations on environment and development issues. Michele has taught International Environmental Policy and Negotiation Theory & Practice at Columbia University, the University of Massachusetts, and the Pratt Institute of Design. She started her career in the Rome bureaus of CBS News and The New York Times.