IDRS has assembled a team of experienced Indian and non-Indian practitioners who specialize in processes that bring people together and build partnerships that solve critical local problems. Today, IDRS offers Indian leaders and organizations an extensive interactive training program and a full complement of technical services.
Steven Haberfeld, (916) 802-0243, email
Mark Thompson, (916) 803-7550, email
Steven Haberfeld, Ph.D. serves as the Executive Director and the Senior Mediator/Facilitator on the staff of Indian Dispute Resolution Service, Inc. Along with a consortium of five Indian organizations, he is one of the founders of IDRS in 1989 and the principle designer of its training and service delivery program.
Dr. Haberfeld has forty years experience as a community organizer, mediator, facilitator and trainer in multi-cultural and multi-ethnic settings. He has worked in Mexican farm-worker, African American, low-income White, and American Indian communities. Dr. Haberfeld has been working with Indian tribes since 1976, assisting leaders to resolve internal differences and to effectively negotiate their interests in complex transactions with governmental, political and private sector interests.
Dr. Haberfeld has also been involved as an intermediary facilitating dialogues and increasing collaboration between tribes and local, state and federal agencies, political jurisdictions, and public institutions (public school districts) and their constituents. In January 2000, he was recognized by the Sacramento Bee in a front page article for having been the “driving force” in securing the historic agreement between the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe in California and the National Park Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the Bureau of Land Management in the Department of Interior. The negotiated agreement called for the creation of a 10,000 acre land base, specific ground water allocations, and environmental resource management and economic development opportunities for the Tribe in its ancestral homeland, inside and outside the Death Valley National Park in California and Nevada.
Dr. Haberfeld has also served as IDRS’ leader trainer and has participated during this time in over 200 three-day training workshops for Indian organizations and public agencies. Since 1980, Dr. Haberfeld has maintained a private mediation practice specializing in resolving workplace conflicts. He has extensive experience training and resolving disputes between labor and management in over fifteen different public and private hospitals. Dr. Haberfeld’s private practice has included work in Cuba as a member of a small team that trained the Cuban foreign diplomatic corps in negotiation skills and processes, and in Guatemala where he provided negotiation training to representatives of the military, government and guerrilla forces as part of the country’s national reconciliation effort.
Prior to working with IDRS, Dr. Haberfeld served (1978-1982) was a senior planner at the National Economic Development & Law Center (NED &LC) assisting tribes and local development corporations design and implement economic, employment and community development strategies in their communities . He also served as the editor and contributor to the Center’s quarterly Economic Development Report. From 1982-1984, he served as the Director of the Center for Indian Economic Development.
Dr. Haberfeld has a BA in Economics and Labor Relations from Reed College in Portland Oregon. He has a MA in International Relations, a Ph.D. in Public Law & Government and a Certificate in African Studies from Columbia University in New York.
Mark Thompson, JD, serves IDRS in several capacities. He is the IDRS Business Manager, a small business development expert, and has also served as an arbitrator.Mr. Thompson’s has an exceptionally strong background in business and business law. He has specific skills and background in fiscal accounting and controls, personnel management, information systems, accounting software, costs and income projections and analysis, bidding government contracts, marketing services, etc.
Mr. Thompson provides training and technical assistance to tribes in business planning, development and operations, conducting feasibility studies, developing business plans, working with tribal staff in setting up the books and internal accounting procedures, establishing systems for accounts receivable and payable, and other systems of internal management, control and reporting. He has built, owned and operated several small businesses himself, is a licensed real estate broker and operates a real estate business of his own. He teaches business economics and accounting at the Community College level, and in near completing an MA in Economics and a Masters of Business Administration. Mr. Thompson completed the Juris Doctorate degree from the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento in 2009.
Mark Thompson has serve IDRS clients as an arbitrator and financial expert when the successful resolution of the conflict requires the assistance of a person who has mastered mathematics and accounting to help unravel the issues.
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Ms. Joyce Burel (Picayne/Chukchansi) LMFT has served IDRS as a Senior Trainer, Facilitator and Mediator since 1997. She serves as a lead trainer in IDRS Workshops on Cross-Cultural Communication and Negotiation Skills and Processes, and in IDRS Workshops on Introductory and Advanced Mediation/Peacemaking. She brings an unusual combination of experience to IDRS. On one hand, she is an astute practitioner and trainer schooled in a range of conflict resolution disciplines. At the same time, she has accumulated a wealth of practical experience as a tried and tested Indian leader. Ms. Burel has served as the elected Chairperson and later as Tribal Council Secretary of the Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi Indians in Coarsegold, CA. Prior to these positions, she served on the Tribe’s Housing Board of Commissioners for four years. Working in these roles, she has the opportunity to be integrally involved in the entire range of her Tribe’s internal matters. In addition, she has shepherded her Tribe through extensive external negotiations with federal, state and county government agencies, local political jurisdictions, and private interests in the non-Indian community regarding economic development and land use and acquisition issues. Ms. Burel earned her BA Degree in Anthropology with a special focus on Native American Studies, and her MA Degree in Counseling from Sonoma State University (Rohnnert Park, CA). She is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT). She received training and was certified as a mediator by IDRS and was placed on the IDRS Panel of Professional Mediators in 1996.
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Stanley Sitnick, JD, has served as a Senior Associate of Indian Dispute Resolution Services for the past twelve years. He has conducted over a hundred training workshops in Cross-Cultural Communication and Negotiation Skills and Processes, and has helped train and certify new Mediators, and provided mediation services to IDRS clients
Mr. Sitnick currently serves as an Associate Professor at Portland State University in Portland Oregon where he teaches core courses in Conflict Resolution in the Graduate Program. He also maintains a very active private mediation practice.
Mediator / Facilitator in private practice where he provides a broad range of mediation and conflict resolution services primarily in domestic relations, civil litigation, family, workplace and public policy settings.
Mr. Sitnick serves as a Trainer in private practice, providing training to governmental units, businesses and organizations in conflict resolution, interest-based negotiation, mediation, team-building and intercultural communication.
Mr. Sitnick formerly served as the Program Coordinator of the Clackamas County Dispute Resolution Center (CCDRC) where he directed community-based mediation program serving county residents in a wide variety of cases involving neighborhood, community, landlord/tenant, governmental, workplace, family, school and criminal disputes. He was responsible for program management and development, training and supervision of staff and volunteers, mediation of sensitive and complex cases and professional trainings in conflict resolution and mediation.
He formerly served as the U.S. Speaker with the U.S. Department of State, working on a special grant from the U.S. Department of State, Office of International Information Programs, to provide mediation training for school administrators and government officials in Windhoek, Namibia.
As a private Attorney in practice of general civil law he as served as a Consultant and Developer of public-interest law projects, including Oregon State Bar and Interest on Lawyer Trust Accounts (IOLTA) Program. He also served as the Litigation Director for Oregon Legal Services and Multnomah County Legal Aid Service, Consultant to National Legal Services Corporation in the areas of lawyer training and program evaluation, andAdjunct Professor: Northwestern School of Law at Lewis and Clark College in Portland Oregon.
He earned his B.A. at Georgetown University and his J.D. at the University of Chicago Law School
Brett KenCairn, MA is a Senior Consultant to IDRS and serves as our Value-Added Business Development Specialist and Business Trainer. Brett provides Tribes assistance in developing comprehensive economic development strategies, performing feasibility analyses of “value added’ businesses, developing and implementing business plans, conducting marketing analyses, initiating “start-ups”, etc. He also assists Tribes explore the use of bio-mass conversion as an alternative energy resource to sell on the electrical grid and to reduce costs of heating tribal housing and other facilities. Brett currently serves as the President and co-owner of Community Energy and is a partner in Restoration Technologies Group. Brett earned his BA in Cultural Anthropology, graduated cum laude, from Princeton University, Princeton, N.J. He earned his Masters Degree in Community & Regional Planning, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR. His focus was on: Community Economic Development, Regional Resource Planning, Environmental Planning and Assessment, and business and entrepreneurial training.