Voices of Change: A Community Mediation Training Documentary

Gina Tinker Williams, Executive Director, Community Dispute Resolution Center and Austin Bunn, Associate Professor, Cornell University

Premiere of an original documentary capturing the transformative impact of mediation training on community volunteers, featuring intimate interviews and behind-the-scenes footage from basic mediation training sessions. The presentation will include a live role-play excerpt from the training to give participants a sense of both the mediation experience and the documentary's storytelling approach.

About Gina Tinker Williams

Gina Tinker-Williams, Executive Director, has served Community Dispute Resolution Center (CDRC) as staff member since 1999. She has mediated, conflict coached and facilitated multi-party cases in a wide variety of settings, including workplace, home, public forums, faith communities, nursing facilities, schools, and social service centers. Gina provides Mediator & Conflict Resolution Skills Trainings and a coach for Conflict Coaching Training on a local, and state level. As a veteran mediator/trainer/conflict coach and the recipient of intensive and advanced trainings, Gina holds a deep belief in the power of alternative dispute resolution skills to transform conflict interaction, strengthen relationships, and build community. In January 2023, Gina Tinker Williams was selected by the CDRC Board of Directors to be the fourth person in the agency history to serve as CDRC Executive Director.

About Austin Bunn

Austin Bunn is an Associate Professor in the Department of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University and Director of the Milstein Program in Technology and Humanity. As a filmmaker, he co-wrote Kill Your Darlings (Sony Pictures Classics), which debuted at Sundance and won the International Days Prize at the Venice Film Festival. His award-winning short films have screened internationally at festivals including Sundance, OutFest, Brooklyn Film Festival, and Provincetown International Film Festival. Austin is also an accomplished author whose short story collection The Brink was selected as a Lambda Literary Award finalist. A former journalist, his work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. He holds an M.F.A. in Fiction & Playwriting from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and brings extensive experience in documentary storytelling and community-based narratives to this mediation training project.