Sandy Heierbacher, Conference Director

Sandy Heierbacher has worked as a consultant in the dialogue field since 1998, primarily researching the needs, strategies and best practices in the field on a national basis. She has worked for organizations like the Center for Living Democracy, the Corporation for National Service and the Village Foundation's Race and Cultural Relations Institute. She is currently working with the Center for Disease Control's National Immunization Program, researching relevant dialogue and deliberation methods and writing case studies on some of the most promising public participation models.

For the last several years, Sandy has also been independently running the Dialogue to Action Initiative. Dialogue to Action provides an extensive website geared towards organizers, facilitators and researchers in the dialogue community and, in the past year especially, has become a popular and well-used resource.

The nearly 70-page site provides dialogue leaders with regularly-updated news, resources and events relating to dialogue, intergroup relations and community building; an extensive resource section with lists and descriptions of hundreds of organizations, books, videos and links; and a popular email discussion list for dialogue leaders. The website also provides information about the basics of dialogue, steps for organizing a dialogue program and strategies for integrating dialogue with effective community action. Dialogue to Action's Community section is the only place online where people can find out what's new and what opportunities are coming up specifically for dialogue leaders and throughout the dialogue community.

Sandy has experience facilitating dialogue groups and has been trained as a facilitator by the Public Conversations Project of Watertown, Massachusetts and the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding of Leverett, Massachusetts. She has also been trained as a mediator by The Mediation & Training Collaborative of Greenfield, Massachusetts. She lives with her husband and two cats in Brattleboro, Vermont.

For more information about Sandy, visit the About Us section of the Dialogue to Action Initiative website (www.thataway.org/dialogue).