About the Authors

Victoria Pynchon is a mediator, author, speaker, negotiation trainer, consultant, and attorney with 25 years of experience in commercial litigation practice. She’s the co-founder of She Negotiates Training and Consulting with her business partner, Lisa Gates. A graduate of the University of California, San Diego, Victoria received her Juris Doctor degree from UC Davis School of Law (King Hall) and her Master of Laws degree in dispute resolution from the internationally acclaimed Straus Institute at the Pepperdine University School of Law.

Since earning her LL.M, she has served the mediation community as a member of the California State Bar’s Standing Committee on Alternative Dispute Resolution, as a board member of the Southern California Mediation Association, as chair of the ADR Committee of the Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles, and as chair of the Federal Bar Association’s ADR Section.

Currently, she mediates and arbitrates complex commercial disputes with ADR Services, Inc., in Century City and the American Arbitration Association in downtown Los Angeles. She continues to serve as a Party Select Panel Mediator for the Los Angeles Superior Court and as a settlement officer with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. Victoria has taught deposition and trial practice for the National Institute of Trial Advocacy for more than a dozen years, business law to undergraduates at California State University at Northridge, and Employment ADR at the Straus Institute. She is a frequent speaker and lecturer at law firms, nonprofit organizations, universities, and in-house legal departments.

Victoria is also a prolific writer and author of The Grownups’ ABCs of Conflict Resolution. She writes the thrice-weekly She Negotiates blog at ForbesWoman and is a contributor to Forbes’s On the Docket legal blog. For more about Victoria, visit her website at VictoriaPynchon.com.

Joe Kraynak is a professional writer who specializes in teaming up with experts in various fields to produce top-notch trade publications. Joe has coauthored numerous For Dummies titles, including Flipping Houses For Dummies, Bipolar Disorder For Dummies, and Food Allergies For Dummies. For more about Joe, visit JoeKraynak.com.