Our Team

Leadership Team

Jacob is a visionary strategist and consensus builder. He is a leader in stakeholder engagement and collaborative strategy in the public and nonprofit sectors.
Some of the project topics he's led at the local, state, and national levels include climate, climate justice, outdoor recreation, environmental conservation, water policy, behavioral health, affordable housing, firearm death and injury, and education.
He is the Principal of Wellstone Collaborative Strategies and a founding board member of the Civic Consulting Collaborative. After 22 years of working with businesses, state and local government, nonprofits, and foundations, he specializes in uncovering the invisible threads that bind diverse and divergent stakeholders together to solve a challenge.
Prior to consulting, Jacob was focused on western water for nearly a decade and a half. This included being the executive director of the Colorado Watershed Network and developing and facilitating Colorado's Water Plan for the Department of Natural Resources.

Jake has been a member of Mediator’s board since 2018 to provide a perspective on environmental impact, sustainable finance, and armed conflict.
Professionally, Jake works for the Nature Conservancy, the largest environmental nonprofit globally, and leads TNC’s Sustainable Financial Advisory team which develops new business, finance, and market interventions to solve conservation challenges. An Army veteran, Jake has an MBA from the University of Colorado, Boulder where he focused on sustainability and finance.
Jake lives in Evergreen, Colorado, and spends his time skiing, mountain biking, trying to keep his garden alive, and babysitting numerous nieces and nephews.

Mark Gerzon, president and founder of Mediators Foundation, has specialized in leadership that bridges divides. As an experienced facilitator in high-conflict zones, he has advised a wide variety of organizations including the US Congress, multinational corporations, and the United Nations Development Program. He is also a leading author of books in the field of conflict transformation, including A House Divided (1996), Leading Through Conflict (2006) and Global Citizens (2010).
His concern about the increasing polarization in America led him to devote the past three decades to working on the ideological frontier between Left and Right. He co-designed and served as the head facilitator for the US Bipartisan Congressional Retreats in the late 1990s, and has spent the following years participating in a wide variety of efforts to deepen dialogue across the political spectrum. This work led to his most recent book The Reunited States of America, which inspired the film The Reunited States, now playing on Amazon Prime.
Mark lives with his wife Melissa in Boulder, Colorado, and has three sons and eight grandchildren.
To hear Mark speak, check out his TedTalk in Vail and TedTalk in Saltillo, Mexico.

Kathy Gschneidner has managed the foundation’s finances for almost a decade. Growing up on the prairie and earning an accounting degree from Iowa State University, Gschneidner is at home in the mountains and with her spreadsheets.
She has also owned and operated a financial services company, Mountain Accountin’, for 23 years, where she builds bookkeeping and accounting systems for small businesses and organizations.
Kathy has served as a Board Member of Mediators for five years.

Ron Kertzner is a facilitator, mediator, executive coach, and leadership development teacher with over 30 years’ experience working with non-profit organizations, Fortune 500 businesses, educational institutions and government. He worked closely with Mediator’s Founder, Mark Gerzon, on two Bi-Partisan Congressional Retreats and the United Nations Democratic Dialogue Project. More recently, he served as an executive coach for leaders involved in both Presidential and Congressional campaigns. Companies he’s worked with include Google, Intuit, PayPal, Ancestry, Namaste Solar and General Electric.
In recent years, Ron shifted his focus to the Inner Dimensions of Leadership. This involved a deeper understanding of neuroscience, cardio-physiology, cognitive psychology and mindfulness. He is a certified NeuroChange Solutions trainer as well as a HeartMath practitioner. He now helps individuals, teams and organizations see the connection between how their brain and heart work and their ability to enhance their individual and collective impact.
Ron is a graduate of Boston University School of Law and Duke University, where he majored in public policy. His post-graduate work included working at the Harvard Program on Negotiation and with the MIT Dialogue Project.
Ron lives in Longmont, Colorado with his wife-and business partner, Sue, his daughter, Elisa, three dogs, two horses and one hedgehog!

Riley joined Mediators Foundation in 2022 as the Project Manager and Assistant to the President. She brings many years of admin experience, along with a creative background, including a BFA in Musical Theatre from the Boston Conservatory.

Mesa Sebree is a researcher, community-builder, and nonviolence practitioner based in Boulder, Colorado. She graduated from Indiana University in 2021 with degrees in Political Science and International Studies specializing in Human Rights and International Law. Her research focused on multi-tiered approaches to peacebuilding wherein international and state agencies work alongside community leaders to create locally-driven restorative practices to promote reconciliation and healing after instances of mass civil division.
Following this, Mesa obtained her M.Sc. from Ghent University in Belgium where she studied Conflict and Global Development, focusing on decolonization and degrowth. Her dissertation analyzed social organizing strategies for transforming popular conflict and achieving democratic reforms, specifically focusing on coalition-building, nonviolent civil resistance, and deliberative dialogue.
Mesa’s impulse to “think global and act local” has led her to work with multiple national support networks committed to uplifting community-based collective action. Her research on the polycrisis/metacrisis heavily informs her theory of change, which is that only by collaborating across sectors and perceived lines of differences can we hope to co-create a people-powered, resilient democratic republic. Personal mindfulness practice and deep connection to community are cornerstones that provide important grounding for her peace work.
In addition to her role with Mediators Foundation, Mesa is the Membership Enhancement Facilitator at the National Association of Community Mediation and Fundraising Chair at Better Together America.

John Steiner, with his wife and working partner of forty years, Margo King, is a networker, mesh-weaver, convener, and field builder, working to further develop and serve the transpartisan/cross-partisan/bridging divides/healthy democracy movement.
They are two of the co-founders of the Bridge Alliance, on whose board John sits. His extensive experience continues with a variety of projects: he was a co-founder (and now senior strategist) to YOUnify, is an adviser to Living Room Conversations and to BridgeUSA, was a founding board member of Search for Common Ground, is part of the Leadership Council of the Convergence Center for Policy Resolution, and has long worked with Dr. Robert Fuller to help further the Dignity Movement.
With their grown children, Elizabeth King, Michael Steiner, and Mara Tasker, John and Margo support the power of film to change our culture and to raise environmental consciousness, largely through Impact Partners, and such films as Chasing Ice, Chasing Coral, The Human Element, The Biggest Little Farm and The Social Dilemma. They are all trustees of the Steiner King Foundation.
John and Margo’s work and life are animated by a long-term commitment to the timeless, non-dual wisdom traditions, the demystification of enlightenment in everyday life, and to planetary awakening.