As a Chartered Mediator, a facilitator, and dialogue process designer, Sarah sees collaboration as a vital tool for bringing the voices of people into decision making on challenging issues. Sarah specializes in consensus building in workplaces, in the natural resource, energy and extractive sectors, in sports organizations, and in environmental, community, health sector issues. After her parents immigrated to Canada, Sarah and her sister were brought up in Northern Canada, first in Nunavut, and then in Treaty 8 and Métis homelands in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories.
Sarah is the founder and principal of a small consultancy, Daitch & Associates, and a Senior Associate with MASS LBP. Her business has delivered on mandates in cross cultural settings in Canada, the US, Europe and Latin America for sub national and national governments, for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), for tribal governments, companies, NGOs and for Canadian sports federations – resulting in wiser, better decisions for the future on public issues.
Sarah is trained in and uses a range of approaches to facilitation and public participation to allow groups to jointly realize their ideas and goals, with dignity at the core of the process; these include the Art of Hosting, World Café, Appreciative Inquiry, Open Space, Mutual Gains Approach, and the Thinking Environment amongst others. With teams and independently, in person and online, Sarah has designed and facilitated engagement, dispute resolution services, and multi-stakeholder collaborative processes on social, environmental and workplace issues through hundreds of dialogues and challenging issues in 19 countries.
Sarah is a graduate of the University of Calgary and holds an MA in Dispute Resolution from the University of Victoria; she holds a Collaboration Certificate in Environmental Dispute Resolution from University of Utah S.J Quinney College of Law. She is a Chartered Mediator with the Alternative Dispute Resolution Institute of Canada, a Certified Facilitator of the Thinking Environment, a member of the Sport Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada’s mediation roster, and on the facilitator-mediator roster for the Ontario Energy Board. Sarah is an Action Canada Fellow (2013), and a former Canadian national team cross country skier; she was inducted into the NWT Sport Hall of Fame in 2016, and served until 2023 on the Board of Directors of Nordiq Canada. In 2013, Sarah was awarded a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for service to Canadians.
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