Jessica Menasce – Facilitator, Trainer, Relationship Builder, Curriculum Designer, Process-Supporter

Sydney Mitchell:

Hi. My name is Sydney Mitchell.

Matthew Brickman:

Hi, I’m Matthew Brickman, Florida Supreme court mediator. Welcome to the Mediate This! Podcast where we discuss everything mediation and conflict resolution.

Matthew Brickman: 0:05
I got to interview Jessica Menace, and I am so excited to share that interview with you as we discussed mediation, negotiation, and everything conflict resolution. Alrighty. I’m excited to kick off 2026 uh talking with Jessica Menace. Um we’ve known each other, Jessica. I guess I guess we met in 2021. Um we did. Which and then I just I just saw you uh uh 2025 in Turkey.

Jessica Menasce: 00:44
We did.

Matthew Brickman: 00:45
Um but okay, I have to admit, yeah, you and I were sitting just chatting it up, having a great time, like we’ve known each other forever. And I had forgotten that we had done uh the Abraham Path virtual in 2021. And we had such a connection, and I didn’t realize why until after the fact. Yeah, yeah.

Jessica Menasce: 01:07
I like that you you give credit to having a connection to that. I actually felt like we just vibed well because of who you are, Matthew, and how I tend to vibe. And it just happened to be like where we were sitting in this little courtyard in this, you know, town, village in Turkey, and it was just a perfect moment.

Matthew Brickman: 01:24
It it it was the perfect moment. But let’s back up and like, okay, who are you? What have you done? Because I am just fascinated. Um, so you know, I’m in Florida and you grew up, I guess you grew up in Florida. Well, you know, you actually started your career in Florida, right? And like South Florida, Central Florida before going on and working for World Boston, the Abraham Path, which is what we were in Turkey for, but you worked for them for like almost five years. So I’m interested about that. Um, and then um, let’s see, you’ve been a trainer, executive director for pathways, um working with some NGOs, and then um you lived in the Middle East for a number of years, you’re uh back in the states. All right, take us through. Take us through like who is Jessica.

Jessica Menasce: 02:14
Well, seriously, I just want to say for folks who are listening, happy new year. Um, you know, some people feel comfortable saying happy new year. Some people are just saying new year these days. I don’t know what to say as uh as an adjective. Depends where you are in the world.

Matthew Brickman: 02:27
Welcome to the new year.

Jessica Menasce: 02:28
Welcome to the new year. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for having me on your podcast. It’s really an honor to be here. It’s great. And also for this opportunity, I actually that invitation just to be able to say, you know, tell us about yourself and your background, it doesn’t really come often because the nature of the work that I do is really focused on other people and centering other people. So it’s actually really nice, you know, beyond friendships and just like in a professional space, to be able to have that invitation. So it’s really cool for me. It’s great to think about. So the first thing that I’ll name, and it’s not to put you on the spot, it’s actually totally related to the story. Everything that I do for me, it’s really related to my family’s story. In answering the question, where are you from? It’s always been complicated for me to answer, where are you from? Like, well, I was born in Venezuela because I was born in Venezuela, but neither of my parents are Venezuelan. They had just happened to meet there. And my last name, um, pronounced Menis, which sounds funny, a menace. It’s uh it’s actually menace, um, uh, which is uh of of Hebrew origin. And in and my grandparents were Italian, and in Italy the S C is pronounced Sha, so Menace. Um, and so yeah, I come from a very complicated, if you will, family background. And I think that’s just how I explain it to others, but it’s really not complicated in my eyes. It’s just a diaspora of people moving around a lot, especially in the past three to four generations, due to conflict. It just felt like everywhere the family happened to be, there was conflict. And so since I was a kid, I was drawn to conflict. Uh, just yesterday, I was connecting with another friend, and we were asked together in a breakout room the question of what you drew you to this work. In this case, it was dialogue in particular. And we both said that we were like child mediators. So I have this image of myself like being in kindergarten in Venezuela at the time, just like standing on top of a desk when the teacher would step out and like trying to just mediate between arguments between students and fights and like just kids. Um, but I also gravitated toward having friends from different places and different circles. As you remember, like we all remember school can be so hard and clicky, people from different, you know, interested in different things and not talking to each other. And I didn’t particularly have one group. So I was always interested in putting myself in understanding others’ perspectives and seeing the world through their lens. So for me, that was a big driver. Uh, growing up in Miami, we moved to the US when I was seven, and I did elementary school, junior high, and high school in Miami, Florida. Um, I got lucky to go to a public school that also was a magnet school. So I did the IB program, the international baccalaureate program, which was like a perfect fit because it’s an international curriculum. And in hindsight, I really wish there was some sort of negotiation course. Um, my we’ll we’ll get to it, but Pathways, one of the organizations I worked with, has actually been working on bringing some negotiation curriculum into the IB curriculum. And so once I graduated from there, I went to the University of Florida in Gainesville. And, you know, it was a big uh big economic downturn back then. And some of my friends were going to law school, some of my friends were going to medical school. I had done uh political science and chemistry. I had no idea what I wanted to do.

Matthew Brickman: 05:60
Interesting, it’s an interesting dynamic. Interesting political science and chemistry.

Jessica Menasce: 06:04
Yeah, and I think, you know, people consider them opposites, but the way that my mind works, I’m really just drawn to understanding the world and people. And with that, I love the sciences. And I think that for me, school was just a time to learn and be exposed to different ideas and not necessarily related to what I’m gonna do as a career. Um, I think that maybe it’s like a slight difference between, I think they in the US we have that opportunity. Whereas in Europe and a few other places, you kind of have to study what you’re gonna be, what you’re gonna do. And so I knew that I what it was for sure for me was that I did not want to be in a major amount of debt without knowing what I didn’t want to commit to law school or medical school without knowing. And so I decided to explore. Um, and that was my first exposure to first like grassroots organizations and campaigning. I did some work with Environment Florida, uh, focused on conservation of the Everglades, uh, climate and just conservation, environmental conservation has always been really important to me. And then um eventually I, you know, I was interning at a law firm to see if you know law was something that I was actually interested in. And I was working at a restaurant in Miami in Grove, which is a great neighborhood, and I’m sure you know it, Matthew of Florida, in Cocoa Walker, the Grove. But it’s a restaurant where people from all over the world come, they hang out. And I think just having that experience, first as a hostess and then as a waitress, really helped me connect with different kinds of people, but also develop interpersonal skills in a unique way.

Matthew Brickman: 07:43
Yeah.

Jessica Menasce: 07:43
And I said, okay, my best friend at the time was living in Boston, and she was my childhood best friend, and she’s like, come spend some time with me. And I was like, sure, like the rent is free, why not? And that’s what led me to World Boston. And World Boston is still going, it’s an amazing organization. It’s one of uh, for folks who may not know, there’s actually one in South Florida, there’s another one in Pensacola.

Matthew Brickman: 08:04
Okay.

Jessica Menasce: 08:05
One of, I believe, 90 councils. So there’s councils for international visitors that for delegations that come from different countries from all over the world through the State Department on a professional and cultural exchange. So the idea is to link people from all over the world to the local community, depending on what they may be working on. And for me, that was just a gateway to understanding also Boston as a city, and it’s the place with the most universities and colleges per capita in the world.

Jessica Menasce: 08:40
I didn’t know that. Wow.

Jessica Menasce: 08:42
It’s crazy how many there are, and people from everywhere. And so I said, okay, I’m gonna, I’m gonna do this. Like again, it’s a perfect job for someone who’s not quite certain what they want to do, but I knew that I wanted to work with people from all over the world. And it was an excellent experience. And by the time that I was done with that, I knew that it was time for my master’s. And so here’s where the the contentious part comes in. And for me, just to name it openly, it’s it’s hard because uh I made a decision to to go to Israel to do my master’s, and I I focused on uh in at the time it was a master’s in government, but it’s really in international security. And growing up in a Jewish family, uh, four Jewish grandparents, they’re what’s called um Sephardic Jews, which is not very common in the US, but actually three out of four grandparents were Turkish, which is why I was really drawn to going to Turkey and where we got the chance to meet in person. Um I really, you know, I grew up with a very, you know, like like in the in the Jewish family and community, like a benign uh pro-Israel narrative, which was, but it was also benign as in soft, as in, okay, there’s a conflict there, it’s complicated. Nothing was ever raised about, you know, asymmetry or third parties or just the complexities of it. And what led me to make that decision to go to that master’s program was that when I was in college at the at Florida, at the University of Florida, I did take a year-long course, two semesters, on the conflict, and it changed me forever. That changed the the trajectory for me, and I knew ever since.

Matthew Brickman: 10:28
So, what was the course?

Jessica Menasce: 10:29
What was the course you took? Yeah. So the course was just just the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Matthew Brickman: 10:34
Oh, okay. All right, it was it was a course just about that one conflict. It wasn’t about conflict resolution and that that had that. It was specific on that conflict.

Jessica Menasce: 10:44
Yes, exactly.

Matthew Brickman: 10:45
So you did you did two semesters, a whole year of just that conflict?

Jessica Menasce: 10:49
A whole year of just that. The first semester was just historical accounts and readings, very in-depth and and very um, I’d say neutral and and nuanced. And the professor did a really good job. And she lived in the region for 15 years and and worked with different court systems there, actually. And she didn’t have also any personal stake or investment or connection to the region, which I think also made it more trustworthy for me. And the second part of the course was what’s you know, more focused on ideological readings of around, you know, on the Israeli side, around Zionism and on the Palestinian side, um, what would you know, ideas of liberation look like across the spectrum? And that I think the first part of the, you know, the historical accounts was my first exposure to, you know, the Palestinian story, the Palestinian perspective. And as the as a granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, because my grandmother was a Holocaust survivor who I was very close to, and I was always pretty immersed in her story. And for me, it was never, and my family is they’re very much humanists. So it was not about what was done to the Jewish people, it was about what one human can do to another human. And that really stayed with me. I was just um really shaken by what I learned from Palestinians and also the present-day reality. So fast forwarding again to the decision to go to the master’s program there, it was two parts to it. One, um, on the academic level, just really understanding policy creation around the enemy mindset, you know, why counterterrorism and security is just approached the way that it is, especially militaristically, rather than understanding people’s personal grievances, like other what people would call in, and this is a bit triggering for some, but root causes of what can lead people to violence and um also just spending as much time with people on the ground. And so I did that program. It was a great experience. I’m really grateful to Rotary International because it was a Rotary uh scholarship program.

Jessica Menasce: 13:12
Okay.

Jessica Menasce: 13:13
And I went back to Boston for a year and I knew that I had to go back because my heart was just like pulling me there. And toward the end of my stay there, um, I met uh I started to get involved in some civil society initiatives. Like I started to sway from my call my classmates who were just in the security space and intelligence analysis and things like that. And I said, I want to start venturing into other spaces. And that’s actually how I connected with Josh Weiss, who we both know, who’s one of my mentors and really good friends, who was leading a workshop for uh Israel young Israeli and Palestinians in Jerusalem, specifically in in East Jerusalem at the America House, which was part of the American consulate then. And I learned all about the Abraham Path Initiative and I said, this is amazing. I have to get what year is this?

Matthew Brickman: 14:05
What year is this? So give me some context there.

Jessica Menasce: 14:08
I just turned 38 and I was 25. So this was in 2000 and between 2013 and 2014.

Matthew Brickman: 14:17
Okay.

Matthew Brickman: 14:18
Okay.

Matthew Brickman: 14:18
Yeah.

Matthew Brickman: 14:19
And that also gives perspective too, I think, for everyone of like where were we in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict then? What was going on, who was president, the policies that were being made.

Jessica Menasce: 14:30
Um this is actually really important. I’m glad you raised that because 2014 was um the it wasn’t the first round of violence in Gaza. And it’s hard, I’m really cautious about the language. I know that some people don’t like the term war, but it it was like the Israelis refer to it as an operation, the Palestinians as a war. Um, others just say, you know, you use other terminology. Uh and I I take it all and I accept it all and I embrace it all, and I don’t feel a need to choose um because there is space for it all. But the point is, it was I was living in Tel Aviv at the time, and there were it was the first time that the iron dome was used, um, because there were missiles flying into Tel. So it was that it was just like that experience of going there for a master’s program, and somehow you end up in a bunker, and then you’re also seeing what’s happening in Gaza, but then being in that, it was also my first experience with that dissonance because you could be in Tel Aviv or Haifa and be experiencing the rockets coming from Gaza and you’re go into a bunker, but you’re in an environment where no one else is talking about what’s happening in Gaza.

Jessica Menasce: 15:39
Sure.

Jessica Menasce: 15:39
It’s almost like a norm where you’re not, you shouldn’t be talking about it or raising it. And I had a deep yearning to, and I wanted to understand what people were thinking. So it was just like getting my feet wet into understanding the norms there and the dynamics.

Matthew Brickman: 15:56
So you had met you had met Josh quite a while ago and learned about the Abraham Path almost eight years or so before we even met um uh in the virtual Abraham Path. So you had already been introduced to that um before I had even known about that.

Jessica Menasce: 16:19
Yeah.

Matthew Brickman: 16:19
Um, and so and so so you had met Josh, then you I guess um over there or did you meet him in Boston?

Jessica Menasce: 16:29
Yeah, we met in Jerusalem.

Matthew Brickman: 16:31
Okay, because you were both in Boston, because he’s based out of Boston, and you were living in Boston doing world Boston. So I don’t know if you met there, and then you guys ended up going over there. So you met him in Jerusalem. That’s that’s interesting. Okay.

Jessica Menasce: 16:45
I met him in Jerusalem, and we stayed in touch. And and not only did I meet him in Jerusalem, later a lot of us connected the dots that many of us were present at that workshop that went on to work in different initiatives in relation to the conflict because that’s how it works. Those who are really engaged and immersed and committed to working on it um somehow end up not surprisingly in the same spaces, right? Right.

Matthew Brickman: 17:13
And so is that how is that how you eventually then went to work with the Abraham Path Initiative? Is that how then that led to working in those spaces?

Jessica Menasce: 17:24
Yeah, it was very quick. I went back to Boston uh after my master’s, uh, still unsure what I wanted to do full-time, but Josh and I stayed in touch and he he was so lovely. I still remember what he said because he was rather than again labeling my family story complicated, uh, he told uh William, Yuri, and and our other colleague Stefan, who at the time was the executive director of the organization. He was in the Netherlands. He’s like, you know, her, she she kind of is the path. Like she’s like the path herself. That’s awesome. And so they gave me uh, you know, there was a small research grant. And so I started doing some part-time research with them based out of Boston.

Matthew Brickman: 18:07
Okay.

Jessica Menasce: 18:07
And it ended up being that they wanted to expand the organization, and I have dual citizenship. I have my American citizenship and an Italian citizenship.

Jessica Menasce: 18:18
Okay.

Jessica Menasce: 18:18
Grandparents and then my dad. And I as a result, I didn’t need a visa to to work in Europe. And so I moved to the Netherlands to work alongside the executive director of the Abraham. Yes, Stefan. Yes, exactly.

Matthew Brickman: 18:34
Okay, and so I moved to the Netherlands. All right. So what did you do there? Because you worked there for like almost five years, right?

Jessica Menasce: 18:42
So I was in the Netherlands just one year, and within that within a year, Stefan actually said, I think you should go to Jerusalem. Would you move to Jerusalem? And I said, Hell yeah.

Matthew Brickman: 18:53
Really over here.

Matthew Brickman: 18:56
Not a problem.

Jessica Menasce: 18:56
It was like, I don’t, you know, I don’t know how many of your listeners have listened to The Alchemist, or you’ve read The Alchemist. It’s one of my favorite books, but it’s like the main character, his he has like a little internal compass pointing to his north. And for me, like my north was going back to Jerusalem. And I knew that. Um, and the the Abraham Path really has been, and I I told him really openly, like it’s been, and that’s what it is for many of us, right? If you think about the journey that you just had in Turkey, it’s it’s like a platform slash this, it’s like a time warp that you step into and it’s a vehicle for so that we can all contribute, I think, to the region and to the world in different ways. And my work in the Abraham Path initially, they done a really good job by then to to secure a grant from the World Bank. And they had a quite a team in Jerusalem. So when I was based in the Netherlands the first year all of 2016, I was working on a new initiative that they wanted to launch, which is Should still be launched, it’s just hard given the situation in the region, which is to take negotiation courses. Negotiation very much, you know, PON style program, Harvard program on negotiation, which I didn’t mention before, but the initial link to the Abraham Path Initiative and being in in Jerusalem is what linked me to the program on negotiation. And I quickly realized it’s a it’s it’s kind of like a small tribe of people who all know each other and are working on these different initiatives. So it’s like once you’re in, somehow you start meeting everybody else.

Matthew Brickman: 20:33
And and and and with that, that’s how I got in. That’s right. Because because and now I didn’t get in till 2019. And in 2019, you know, I done I’d done all my certifications. I’ve been mediating for years, and and I even got certified as a trainer, wrote the curriculum for the family certification, and then was just so busy mediating. I hadn’t done anything. And I hadn’t educated, and I think it was three or four years, and there was an ad that came up on Facebook for the program on negotiation, and it and it was it was it was virtual, and it and I was like, and my my wife was like, You should do this, this would be really good. I’m like, Oh, I don’t know if I have time. I don’t know. She’s like, It says 20 hours a week. You 20 hours a week. I’m like, I don’t know. And but there was something that just called me to it, and I’m like, okay, fine. So I signed up. There was like 400 and something people in the class, you know, it was all virtual. Harvard did a phenomenal job with it, and how one of the coolest things that they did was when you would log on, you’d have a flat map of the world, and they had all the students where they were with little pins, and then they were either green if they were online at the time, or red if they were not online at the time. So you knew who to talk to. It was very cool.

Matthew Brickman: 21:52
What year was this?

Matthew Brickman: 21:53
This was 2019.

Jessica Menasce: 21:54
Oh, yeah, okay. Right before COVID. Impressive.

Matthew Brickman: 21:57
Yeah, right before COVID. And so this was the beginning of 2019. And I get into it, Jessica, and I find out very quickly. I am out of my element and way over my head.

Jessica Menasce: 22:11
Really? Why? The nature of the content or what?

Matthew Brickman: 22:14
It was the content because it was Harvard Business School.

Jessica Menasce: 22:18
Yes.

Matthew Brickman: 22:19
Um, okay. I don’t do business, I do family primarily. And there’s nothing family, it’s all business related, and I’ve never done business. Yeah, plus I quickly realized there’s a difference, and and I want to get into this when we talk about you know, you writing curriculum. There’s a difference between mediating and really negotiating. Because as a mediator, I’m in the middle, I’m helping, I got, but I got no dog in the fight, right? Really, what I’m doing is I’m empowering the actual people that have a dog in the fight, the two people negotiating. But now all of a sudden, no, I’m in the hot seat. Yeah, and and I I remember my first negotiation. I walked out of it going, nailed it. I nailed it. I won. I did it, I nailed it, right? I won. And um, and I told my wife, I’m like, oh yeah, I kicked his butt, I nailed this thing, right? And so then, and it was interesting because you know, we had to we had to negotiate, then we had to do our notes about how we felt and what we did and whatever. And then the professor would look at both of our stuff. Both myself, I remember my my my first counterpart was in uh Germany, and um, and he said the same thing, nailed it. Like, oh yeah, I can’t. And it was funny because we both thought we nailed it. Jessica, we left $250,000 worth of value still sitting on the table that we did, neither of us even recognized.

Jessica Menasce: 23:44
Do you remember what simulation this was? The name.

Matthew Brickman: 23:46
Um I I don’t.

Jessica Menasce: 23:49
Um I’m I’m I’m sure that if I start going down the list, you’ll be like, oh yeah, it was that one, because there’s just like a handle.

Matthew Brickman: 23:55
I mean, I think I think I think this was a I think this was negotiating a piece of land for a bed and breakfast.

Jessica Menasce: 24:01
Makes sense.

Matthew Brickman: 24:02
One of those right and so and so so quick, but of course I’m coming at it from a hey, we can all win. There’s not a winner and a loser, and it’s like, uh no, you’re negotiating. Well, so that was really good. So I did that course, and all of a sudden I’m like, I’m hungry. Like, and and it finished well. I did well, I really enjoyed it. It was put together so well. Harvard just did such a great job. And then I was like, then, and then after that, I was like, Oh, Harvard Law School’s got a program on negotiation, and that one’s not virtual, that one you actually go there. So I’m like, okay. Um, and that one, that one, it was an app like the first one was like, pay your money, everybody gets to go. Great, fine. The next one, um, you can apply. Okay. You pick 50 people around the world twice a year to fly to Boston and do this program.

Jessica Menasce: 24:54
This is the executive education one, yeah, yeah.

Matthew Brickman: 24:56
Yeah, yeah. And they said, and we’ll see if you get accepted. Now they had their requirements too. You had to have done one of one of Harvard’s program on negotiation programs, which checkbox, I just did it.

Matthew Brickman: 25:08
Yay!

Matthew Brickman: 25:09
Right? Then you also had to have, I think it was 10 to 15 years of negotiation experience. Then you had to submit an application, I think a writing sample, something. I don’t, I don’t remember exactly. And then you could apply. So I so I applied. I’m like, why not? And I remember Jessica, when I got my acceptance letter, I was I actually actually cried. I was so excited. I was like, Wow. So so flew up to Boston, I think it was in October or November of 2019. There was 50 of us, and uh, I was way I I thought I was out of my depth before. Oh no, I am way out of my depth. Like all of a sudden, because I mean, like, we’ve got people from all over the world that are in person, and now now we’re doing what you’re talking about. Now they’re like, here’s an international negotiation. We’re not doing a bed and breakfast. We’re like, you know what, we’re gonna do a power plant in New Jersey. We’ve got okay, we’ve got Congress, we’ve got the lobbyists, we’ve got the environmentalists, is like, oh, okay. And I’m going, I do, I do divorce, I do family law. I’m like, I don’t know what these things are. But it was a both of those were a huge stretching moment, right? Absolutely. And it was in that where you talk about that circle, right? That the professors we had, they’re talking about Batna and Watna, and then talk and then talking about and Zoe. Exactly. And then talking about um talking about then William Murray. And then I find out about the Abraham Path Initiative. And then I’m like, okay, I did Harvard Business School’s executive program on negotiation. I got accepted and did Harvard Law School’s program on negotiation. I’m like, the next logical is I’m doing their experiential because they said we are sponsoring then um then the Abraham Path Initiative in Jordan. And I had then learned that was when I had learned about William and Josh, you know, with the Abraham Path. And it was like, and this is being led by Josh. And I’m like, Josh Wise, like really, like, okay, next best thing to William Uri, Josh Wise. Oh my gosh. And so I was so excited. So I did my application and everything, paid my money, and COVID hit.

Jessica Menasce: 27:32
That’s right. I remember you were supposed to go to Jordan and working with them full-time.

Matthew Brickman: 27:38
And that was, and that was it. And it was like, okay, well, now what? And I was in contact with them all the way through September, and they’re like, Jordan’s not opening, like, we’re done, sorry. And so then it was in uh end of 20, beginning of 2021, they reached out the Abraham Path Initiative reached out to me and said, Hey Matthew, I know you really wanted to go. Would you be interested? We’re thinking about putting together a virtual path. And I’m like, Nope, not interested. And they’re like, What? I’m like, not interested. Yeah, Jessica. They reached out to me three times asking. They’re like, Matthew, are you sure we’re like we’re almost there? Are you sure? And I’m like, fine.

Jessica Menasce: 28:17
I’m part of that, I’m part of that.

Matthew Brickman: 28:18
That they’re so I was like, fine, I’ll do it. And then what was interesting, so when we when I was when when we were in Turkey, I was having a conversation with Josh, and I’m like, and I’m like, Josh, that was so amazing. Have you done it since? He’s like, nope, that was one and done. That’s it. And I told so so Jessica, I told him, I said, you know, I really think you need to really focus on that because I think that’s a great gateway to getting people to walk in the path because they get the introduction to here’s the path, here’s negotiation, you know, here’s here, here’s people that have walked the path. That’s when I met you. That’s when I met Oliver, and I and and it was and it was good. Now, most people don’t know this part, which is really interesting. And you you will appreciate this being that you did, you know, Josh is your mentor, okay. So I thought, like, Abraham, I mean, like, so I thought it was a great course. I I I was really fascinated by it. I I was I really liked it. So the final cave. Um, do you remember our final negotiation? What we had to do?

Jessica Menasce: 29:24
I actually designed it with Max and I I’m blinking on it because we someone wrote a case.

Matthew Brickman: 29:29
Yeah, so so we had to actually negotiate a part of the actual path with one of the partners, with one of the partners, right?

Jessica Menasce: 29:36
So what was the Abraham Path’s eternal negotiation, I have to say.

Matthew Brickman: 29:42
Yeah, so what was interesting was the last day of class, a couple of people didn’t show up, so there was an odd number, and so Josh paired everybody up, and I had nobody to be paired to, so I negotiated it with Josh.

Jessica Menasce: 29:54
Okay, and how was that?

Matthew Brickman: 29:56
Not knowing, not knowing who exactly Josh Weiss was and what he did with the with the organization. And it was and so and so no, it was it was it was really fun and got great feedback. And him and I, I felt like we we had really connected, had no idea that I was actually negotiating what he had actually negotiated.

Jessica Menasce: 30:17
Yeah.

Matthew Brickman: 30:17
Um so in hindsight, again, it was just going, oh my gosh, like, but I was so like there was a connection with Josh, I was like, wow.

Jessica Menasce: 30:27
So when I had the opportunity for people who are listening, and they’re like, Who’s this Josh Weich character? Josh is one of the most down-to-earth, like easy to talk to, and and everyone I think associated with the Abraham Path Initiative is, and it’s it’s part of why I admire them and I stay in touch, absolutely.

Matthew Brickman: 30:46
One of the things that one of the things that really drew me um to the path, and then it was absolutely confirmed meeting the board of directors, um, everybody, and this is I’ll I’ll say this even to you as well. Um, you know, being part of it is, you know, I have sometimes you’re like, oh my gosh, I I can’t wait to meet my hero in life, whether it’s meet a band, meet a writer, meet somebody, right? And you meet them and they’re gone, okay. They’re an ass. Yes, like so full of themselves, so egotistical, like, and it sort of shatters your image of who these people are. And I will tell you meeting just like you said, meeting Josh, oh, he exceeded my virtual expectations. Like he was great virtually, but in person, like you said, so kind, so humble, so everything. You amazing. Um, William Urey, amazing. Like, just the I mean, and and and I mean everyone, David Baum and Oliver, and I mean, everybody, you know, Mohanet. I mean, everybody connected with the path was uh just as kind, open, generous, Christopher. I mean, I could just go on just listing the names, just I mean, like the best human beings you could put together collectively and go, how is this possible? But but here’s what I learned um going to the program negotiation at Harvard and even going to the program negotiation at Columbia, because I went to Columbia last year. Um and what I found doing those, um, and then of course, you know, meeting everybody in in Turkey was um how do I put this? The arrogance and egos when you’re dealing with conflict resolution, the biases and the prejudices when you’re dealing with conflict resolution, they get checked at the door. They don’t exist because if they do, you can’t be in the same room, you can’t talk, you can’t resolve conflict. Because what conflict resolution is, is it’s people coming together, checking all of that at the door, going, I don’t care where you’re from, what you believe, who you are, I don’t care about your upbringing, I don’t care about your past, dysfunctional, functional, religious upbringing, I don’t care. We’re here on one mission, and the one mission is how do we resolve this conflict? And I have found that to be amazing because when you collectively bring people like Harvard or like Columbia or even, you know, even in Turkey, when you bring people from all over the world, different cultures, different belief systems, and you put them there for one united thing, none of that exists. It’s fascinating.

Matthew Brickman:
Occasionally Sydney and I will be releasing Q&A bonus episodes where we’ll answer your questions and give you a personal shoutout.

Sydney Mitchell:
If you have a comment or question regarding anything that we discuss, email us at info@ichatmediation.com that’s info@ichatmediation.com and stay tuned to hear your shout out and have your question answered here on the show.

Matthew Brickman:

For more information about my services or to schedule your mediation with me, either in person or using my iChatMediation Virtual Platform built by Cisco Communications. Visit me online at www.iMediateInc.com. Call me at 561-262-9121, Toll-Free at 877-822-1479 or email me at MBrickman@iChatMediation.com.