Influencing Virtually: Strategies to Effectively Navigate a Virtual Work Environment

Reserve Your Square

We all find ourselves in unchartered territory as we acclimate to virtual work environments, and even the skillful among us are seeking new approaches that will have more traction in our current workplaces. In this interactive program, PDC Trusted Advisor Audrey Lee and Georgetown Conflict Transformation Lab Director Rachel Milner Gillers will share key strategies drawn from research in psychology and negotiations that you can start using immediately to optimize your virtual influence. Specific topics include overcoming virtual communication challenges, addressing implicit bias and influencing from any role. Participants will be invited to share topics and scenarios of interest beforehand with the facilitators. 

About our Speakers:

Audrey J. Lee is the founding Principal of Perspectiva LLC, a Senior Mediator at Boston Law Collaborative, LLP, and Executive Director of the BLC Institute, a non-profit dedicated to providing education and training in all areas of dispute resolution. She is also faculty for the Harvard Negotiation Institute course, Advanced Mediation: Mediating Complex Disputes.

As a facilitator, trainer and coach, Audrey works with clients to develop their skills to engage more productively in difficult workplace conversations and negotiations. Her private sector clients include The Cambridge Group, Exponent Failure Analysis Associates, Jenner & Block LLP, Ropes & Gray LLP, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP. In the public sector, she has led advanced mediation, diversity and bias programs for the Australian Fair Work Commission, the Office of the UN Ombudsman and Mediation Service, the League of American Orchestras, the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism, and the Office of the IL Attorney General. She has also taught Negotiation courses as Adjunct Faculty at Northwestern University School of Law, DePaul University College of Law, and U Mass Boston’s McCormack Graduate School’s Department of Conflict Resolution.

As a mediator, Audrey specializes in workplace, employment, harassment, and discrimination disputes. She is Chair of BLC’s ADR Panel and serves on the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission mediation panel, among other neutral panels. Previously, Audrey served as a mediator for the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination where she mediated harassment, disability, age, race, and gender discrimination cases. Audrey is also a member of a pool of Title IX Adjudicators for Harvard Law School.  

Drawing on her experience as a mediator and conflict management consultant, Audrey leads interactive workshops on implicit bias for attorneys, mediators, law enforcement, executives and other professionals. She has also taught employment discrimination and harassment prevention programs for a range of audiences including ironworkers, mental health professionals, bank executives, and teachers. In the diversity context, Audrey has partnered with the Institute for Inclusion in the Legal Profession and the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program on a study of law firm communication practices regarding diversity issues.

Rachel Milner Gillers is an Affiliate of Boston Law Collaborative, LLC and Director of the Georgetown Baker Negotiation Network, an interdisciplinary program for graduate students working at the intersection of law, politics, and public policy. She is an Adjunct Professor of Negotiation and Mediation at Georgetown University’s Law School and McCourt School of Public Policy and has trained mediators at the Harvard Mediation Program.

Rachel has served as mediation faculty at the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Advocacy Center, where she worked with attorneys from a range of divisions, geographic areas, and professional levels. Her other federal clients include the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, the U.S. Department of the Interior, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She has also led interactive conflict management and negotiation skills workshops for corporate clients including Procter & Gamble, Pfizer, Merck, Bridgestone, Eversheds Sutherland (US) LLP and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP. 

Rachel’s areas of special interest and expertise include international development, commercial negotiations, and gender and negotiation. She has worked extensively within the United Nations system to prepare senior staff for negotiation with peer agencies, host governments, and donors. She has assisted the International Monetary Fund with conducting an organization-wide conflict management assessment and providing conflict resolution capacity building for managers in both U.S. and foreign mission contexts.

Rachel specializes in designing and facilitating multi-stakeholder consensus building processes, including the U.S. Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, a cross-sector effort driven by representatives from U.S. federal and state government, extractive industries, and civil society. She holds joint Master’s degrees from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and Harvard Divinity School, where she focused on international negotiation and conflict resolution. A native of the Washington, D.C. area, she has lived in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.