Our Advisory Team

Mark Carson, CPA, JD
Business Analyst

Mark Carson is the principal owner of a highly successful accounting firm in Boulder, Colorado. Mark has provided steady leadership as the Mediators without Borders Business Analyst since 1994. Mark has degrees in both Accounting and Law but has chosen to practice law as a CPA. Mark’s brings his legal training and business experience to his role as a business analyst advisor to MwB. His years of experience help MwB by adding valuable understanding of the complex relationship between legal, taxation and economic issues.

Mark enjoys being a grandpa, hiking in the Rocky Mountains and shares deeply the mission of Mediators without Borders: Sustainable Peace

Ambassador Joseph Ayalogu
Development Officer ~ Nigeria

Ambassador Ayalogu is currently Nigeria's ambassador to the United Nations as well as Nigeria’s ambassador to Switzerland, spending much of his time between Geneva and Nigeria. He brings a steady and highly experienced hand to the MwB expansion into his homeland of Nigeria. Ambassador Ayalogu has over 35 years experience in international diplomacy and negotiation and is the Executive Director of the Ken Nnamani Centre for Leadership and Development.

The Ambassador brings a high level of expertise in multilateral diplomacy and negotiation, financial management and oversight, peace building and conflict resolution, and policy planning, development, and implementation to his role as Development Officer for Nigeria. He plays a key leadership role in the assembling of a working group in Nigeria which is collaborating with Mediators without Borders to bring MwBconflict resolution clinics to the country.

Dr. Jonathan F. Ormes

Dr. Jonathan F. Ormes Jonathan Ormes is a Research Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and recently retired from a position as Director of the Denver Research Institute at the University of Denver. He was appointed Director of DRI on Feburary 1, 2005. Formerly Dr. Ormes was the Director of Space Sciences at the Goddard Space Flight Center from 2000 until 2004. He was responsible for planning, organizing, and implementing the Center’s programs and research in space science. He retired from the government in July 2004 to assume his current position of Research Professor at the University of Denver.

Recently Dr. Ormes has turned his attention to understanding the issues involved in our stewardship of the planet, including global warming, species extinctions, land and water issues and how these issues are driven by increasing population and affluence. He joins MwB as a research advisor for grants and other relevant issues for the MwB Research Center planned for Boulder, Colorado.
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Barbara McCombs, PhD
Research and Organizational Advisor

Barbara shares a passion for creating learner centered environments for students and their teachers of all ages. Her work with human motivation, learning, and development has contributed more than 35 years of research evidence of the power of these classroom and school practices to transform education for all. Along with directing research and evaluation activities throughout her 40 year professional career, Barbara's vast experience and knowledge, grounds the Mediators without Borders Research Center on sound empirical and theoretical foundations. This will carve the way forward on instructional frameworks for learner centered education, staff development strategies and community empowerment models. On a personal level, Barbara enjoys music, gardening, cooking, and loving all our kids!

Durham McCauley
Business and Operations Advisor

Durham is the President of McGard Wheel Lock. The company’s locks are recognized by automobile companies and car owners worldwide. McGard GmbH, McGards European facility located near Stuttgartt, Germany was opened in 1994- the year RMA; Mediators without Borders parent company was founded. 1999 brought McGard into the Asian marketplace with the opening of McGard Japan located in Oomiya City. Today, McGard Locks are sold the world over.

Durham brings his success and expertise in world markets to the Mediators without Borders mission. Durham has a love for adventure, including scuba diving and racing.

Mike Carper, JD
Business Advisor

Mike Carper formerly led the corporate development and international legal functions for Cogent Communications, a publicly traded multi-national Internet and data communications service provider. He joined Cogent in 2002 following its merger with Allied Riser Communications Corporation, a venture-backed fiber-optic-based Internet communications company, which Mike helped found and build. For Cogent, Mike negotiated a successful series of acquisitions more than doubling the size of its business in Europe and North America (Cogent was named the fastest growing business in the D.C. area for 2001-2003 by the Washington Business Journal). He worked with the Cogent team to establish the international legal and corporate functions as well as doing continuing mergers and acquisitions work to expand business.

Mike has extensive general corporate executive and legal experience involving complex groups of companies in multiple international jurisdictions including negotiation and documentation of mergers and acquisitions, licensing and management of intellectual property rights, negotiation and structuring of finance agreements (public and private), structuring of complex independent contractor and employee contracts and compensation plans, litigation management, documentation and management of vendor, financing and operating agreements for and between affiliate companies. He has also managed regulatory compliance including technology transfer, intellectual property registration, Digital Millennium Copyright Act, cross-border content transfer, international marketing, business registration and licensing as well as Sarbanes-Oxley requirements

His corporate experience includes senior executive roles with Nextel Communications (now Sprint/Nextel), OneComm Communications, Shared Technologies of Canada, Allied Riser Communications and numerous affiliates of these companies. He practiced law with the international law firm Jones Day. He holds a Doctor of Law degree from Emory University and a Master of Laws degree from The George Washington University.

Michael Herrick, JD
Business Planning Advisor

Michael embodies the mission for Mediators without Borders and has the competency and training to bring this to fruition. Following law school, Michael served as a contract lawyer for Wicken’s, Herzer, Panza, and Batistia CO. His combined legal and financial perspective gives MwB a heightened awareness of the business ramifications of certain decisions.
Michael is guided by the Native American seven generation principle; which informs his decision making process. In this principle, one is to honor the work of the seven generations prior who served as the inspiration forward, considering how decisions he makes today will impact the next seven generations. Michael is an avid tennis player; All American at Kenyon College and a graduate of Case Western Reserve Law School. He has a passion for his horse, Noche, and enjoys African drumming

Alison Taylor, MA

Alison will be providing online teaching services through Mediators Without Borders as of 2010 and acting as an MwB advisor. She has over 30 years of experience performing divorce mediation in the public and private sectors, and has served for ten years as the Training Coordinator at the Clackamas County Family Court Service, supervising professionals and graduate students in the only on-going internship program in Oregon.

Ms. Taylor was formerly an associate faculty member and instructor for the Master's in Conflict Resolution program at Antioch University. She has taught classes on ethics and law, and clinical counseling supervision at Lewis & Clark College, as well as general mediation classes at Marylhurst University. She has also taught all the required minimum qualifications courses for Basic/Civil and for Domestic Relations Custody and Parenting mediators, plus negotiation and other classes for business applications through Portland State University.

Alison has been the Executive Director for the Oregon Family Institute, a think-tank for innovative programs for courts and families, since 2003. Alison is a Licensed Professional Counselor, and since January 2006 she has offered couples counseling, mediation, parent coordination and collaborative custody evaluation services in a limited private practice from her Hawthorn Farms offices in Hillsboro, Oregon. She also provides consultation and supervision with other professionals.

MwB Advisor Values

We share a common passion for peacemaking in the world,

We recognize that the dissemination of knowledge and skills in Mediation and conflict resolution will advance the cause of mankind for peace and prosperity,

We are called with individual purpose for a collective well-being and to exert our best individual and collective professional capacities to promote the vision of MwB in all nations and continents,

We recognize that the eradication of poverty is an essential foundation for peace in the world and,

We pledge and commit ourselves to the following principles:

• Do No Harm
• Aspire to the Unity Principle
• Honor our Commitments
• Create and Deliver an Educational Model for the Purpose of Global Conflict Resolution
• Teach with Reverence and Intention