Biography
Ike Lasater, J.D., MCP, Author, Mediator, Trainer, and Speaker, helps organizations and individuals develop the capacity to collaboratively clarify and achieve their objectives. He also acts as a private mediator, facilitating conversations and connection among people in conflict.
He received a Master's in City Planning from UC Berkeley studying global energy policy. A former civil trial attorney, Lasater co-founded a 20-person law firm, litigating complex, multi-party commercial and environmental cases for more than two decades in California’s state and federal courts. Lasater trained intensely with psychologist Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D., founder of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) for approximately a decade. He grew to see conflict as an opportunity for connection and shifted his focus from law to NVC, finding Rosenberg’s approach congruent with his values and in alignment with his long-term practices of Zen meditation, aikido and yoga (he co-founded The Yoga Journal with Judith Lasater in 1975). He and colleague John Kinyon co-developed the Mediate Your Life year-long NVC immersion training program, now offered in five countries.
He is the author of:
- Collaborating in the Workplace: A Guide for Building Better Teams (2019)
- Words That Work in Business: A Practical Guide to Effective Communication in the Workplace (2010, Second Edition 2019)
- When Your Mind Sabotages Your Dreams: Turning Your Critical Internal Voices into Collaborative Allies (2017)
- From Conflict to Connection: Transforming Difficult Conversations into Peaceful Resolutions (2015)
- Mediate Your Life Training Manual, 5th Edition (2014)
- Choosing Peace: New Ways to Communicate to Reduce Stress, Create Connection, and Resolve Conflict (2014)
- What We Say Matters: Practicing Nonviolent Communication (2009)
Lasater has served on the boards of the Center for Nonviolent Communication the Association for Dispute Resolution of Northern California, the California Yoga Teachers Association, The Lawyers Club of San Francisco, the Yale Humanist Community, and on the mediation panel for the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
He has been a guest speaker at Fontys University of Applied Sciences and The HAN University of Applied Sciences in The Netherlands, The University of California, Berkeley, and The Yale School of Management. Lasater has facilitated workshops in more than 20 countries in North and South America, Europe, Africa, Australia, and Asia, for such groups as the Dongfeng Nissan car manufacturing plant in Guangzhou, China, BNI in South Korea (with participants from Hyundai and Samsung), Decathlon in Italy, Glynwood in Cold Spring, New York, and in Cleveland, Ohio, the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association, The Center for Principled Family Advocacy and The Mediation Association of Northeast Ohio. His mediations include large-scale projects with the University of California, Santa Cruz involving 100 administrative leaders, and a departmental faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles.
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, in early 2002, Lasater and his Mediate Your Life co-founder John Kinyon traveled to Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan to offer conflict resolution skills training to elder leaders. And with colleagues at Ayeish, in Spring 2016, he worked with Syrian political opposition leaders of the Etilaf National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces in Istanbul to offer tools for connection and communication in the midst of intense conflict and negotiation.