Jon R. Townsend, M.A. (Creek) is a Senior Training Associate with Indian Dispute Resolution Services, Inc. Mr. Townsend has played a central role, since IDRS' inception, in designing and delivering the IDRS training program in cross-cultural communication, negotiation and mediation/peacemaking. He has led the IDRS Training Team in over two hundred and fifty engagements throughout the United States. In the course of this extensive involvement, Mr. Townsend has inspired and trained numerous trainers who have apprenticed with him.

Mr. Townsend has worked as a certified professional mediator for over twenty-seven years. He has a thriving private practice in the Pacific Northwest, and has successfully mediated literally hundreds of disputes. In January 2000, Mr. Townsend received the “Mediator of the Decade Award” from Indian Dispute Resolution Services in a ceremony commemorating its Tenth Anniversary.

Mr. Townsend is nationally known as an effective, personal, and innovative trainer in mediation and negotiation with a specialization in cross-cultural communication, negotiation, and work-place diversity issues. He has taught dispute resolution throughout the United States and abroad, both in the public and private sectors. Mr. Townsend's clients include the U.S. Postal Service, U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, a host of state agencies, and the governments of Russia, Poland, Australia, Costa Rica, Honduras, Cuba, Guatemala, Ecuador, and Nicaragua. During the past four years, Mr. Townsend has provided negotiation training and coaching to labor union and management negotiation teams prior to and after contract bargaining in over fifteen different hospitals in the Pacific Northwest.

Mr. Townsend has a MA Degree in Psychology and has taught courses in conflict resolution and cross-cultural communication in formal academic settings as well, including Antioch University (Seattle), Washington State University (Spokane), Portland State University (Portland), Lewis and Clark (Portland), Willamette (Salem) and Concordia College (Portland). He is a member of the Adjunct Faculty at the USA/Russian Institute of Conflictology, and of the Adjunct Faculty at Sonoma State University, D-Q University, and Humboldt State University in California.