Who We Are

Daniel Shapiro, Ph.D., Founder and Director of the Harvard International Negotiation Program, serves as associate professor in psychology at Harvard Medical School / McLean Hospital and affiliate faculty at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.  He consults regularly for government leaders and Fortune 500 companies, and has advised everyone from hostage negotiators to families in crisis, disputing CEOs to clashing heads of state. 

Dr. Shapiro teaches conflict resolution at Harvard College; instructs psychology interns at Harvard Medical School/McLean Hospital; and leads executive education sessions at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, Harvard Kennedy School, and Harvard Medical School/McLean Hospital. He also has served on the faculty at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, and at the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  

Named one of the top 15 professors at Harvard University, Shapiro specializes in practice-based research—building theory and testing it in real-world contexts. He has launched successful conflict resolution initiatives in the Middle East, Europe, and East Asia, and for three years chaired the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Conflict Resolution. Focusing extensively on the emotional and identity-based dimensions of negotiation and conflict resolution, Shapiro led the initiative to create the world’s first Global Curriculum on Conflict Management for senior policymakers as well as a conflict management curriculum that now reaches one million youth across more than 20 countries. 

Dr. Shapiro has published widely in the field of conflict resolution, and is author of Negotiating the Nonnegotiable and coauthor of the classic Beyond Reason: Using Emotions as You Negotiate.  Dr. Shapiro has contributed to The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and other popular publications, and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Psychological Association’s Early Career Award and the Cloke-Millen Peacemaker of the Year award.  The World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader.  He is recipient of Harvard’s Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the oldest of the teaching awards given out by the Undergraduate Council.

Selected publications

• Negotiating the Nonnegotiable: How to Resolve Your Most Emotionally Charged Conflicts. Penguin, 2017.
• With Roger Fisher. Beyond Reason: Using Emotions as You Negotiate. Penguin Books, 2006.
• “Before Your Next Fight, Read This.” O, The Oprah Magazine, October 2006.
• “Negotiating the Nonnegotiable: 4 Keys to Resolving Conflict with Your Kid.” Brightly.
• “Of Dating and Diplomacy.” New York Times, May 10, 2016.
• “Why We Are Addicted to Divisive Politics.” TIME, April 18, 2016.

ZeSean Ali serves as the Head Teaching Fellow and Research Assistant for Harvard’s popular undergraduate negotiation course, Conflict Resolution in a Divided World, taught by Professor Daniel Shapiro. He has studied politics, philosophy, race, and religion at Harvard, where he received a master’s degree (’22).

His academic interests revolve mostly around religion’s role in shaping politics and public policy and the ways in which racial and religious minorities have pushed for progressive change in the United States. This past summer, having been awarded a fellowship by Harvard’s Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative, ZeSean conducted research for the United Nations OCHA in Jerusalem. ZeSean conducted research at Harvard’s Bloomberg Center, Belfer Center, and Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, supervised by Professors Jorrit de Jong, Erica Chenoweth and Melani Cammett, respectively. ZeSean is a Resident Proctor for First-Year Harvard College students, served as a course assistant for Religion, Politics, and Public Policy in America (taught by Professor Richard Parker at Harvard Kennedy School), was Vice President of Harvard Divinity School’s Muslim Student Association, and was a member of the Harvard Graduate Council.

Before coming to Harvard, ZeSean received a degree in chemistry at Reed College (’20), where he also played club basketball, gave campus tours, served on the Honor Council, presided over the college’s American Chemical Society Chapter, and wrote an undergraduate senior thesis about the active compounds in Lion’s Mane mushrooms. He has experience in humanitarian affairs, finance, research, and grassroots political advocacy. In his free time, his life is consumed by basketball, coffee, hip hop, and bringing race education to Oregon’s public schools.

Børge Brende is the President and member of the Managing Board of the World Eonomic Forum.  He previously served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of the Environment, and Minister of Trade and Industry of Norway.  He has worked at every level of national and international governance.  He served as the Chairman of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development and as a member of the UN High-level Advisory Group for Every Woman Every Child. 

He has worked in the private sector and education as well, as Chairman of the Board of Mesta (Norway’s largest company in infrastructure maintenance), member of the Board of the  Norwegian School of Economics.  He is the recipient of several awards and honors for his work, including: Order of the Aztec Eagle, Mexico (2018); Grand Cross of the Order of San Carlos, Colombia (2018); Commander, Royal Norwegian Order of St Olav (2005); Cavaliere Di Gran Croce, Italy (2005); Grand Cross of the Order of the Phoenix, Greece (2004); “Gift to the Earth”, WWF (2004).

Howard W. Buffett serves as Chair of the Advisory Council for the Harvard International Negotiation Program. He is an adjunct Associate Professor and Research Scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. He was previously the executive director of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and coauthored the New York Times best-seller 40 Chances: Finding Hope in a Hungry World (2013). Prior to that, Buffett oversaw economic stabilization programs in Afghanistan and Iraq for the U.S. Department of Defense. He also served as a policy advisor for the White House Domestic Policy Council, where he coauthored the president’s cross-sector partnership strategy.

Eura Choi (‘24) is a sophomore at Harvard College studying the social sciences. As co-president of the Harvard College International Negotiation Program, she played an integral role in reviving the undergraduate sector of the INP and currently directs its Senior Training, Civil Discourse, and Research initiatives. Eura also worked with Dr. Daniel L. Shapiro on modifying Harvard’s General Education 1033 course on conflict resolution and co-authored a Negotiating the Nonnegotiable training workshop for the Harvard Alumni Association.

Ruth Foster is a Teaching Fellow for the Harvard College course: Conflict Resolution in a Divided World, taught by Professor Daniel Shapiro. She was born and raised in Northern Ireland and holds her MTS in Religion, Ethics and Politics from Harvard Divinity School and an MA (Hons) from the University of Edinburgh. Prior to coming to Harvard she worked in the non-profit sector in London. Ruth has spent time living, working and studying in Jerusalem, and was a Kathryn Davis Fellow for Peace in Modern Hebrew at Middlebury College as well as a Frank Knox Memorial Fellow at Harvard University.

Lior specializes in designing and leading human-centered processes in seemingly intractable conflicts. Co-founder of a leadership initiative under the academic sponsorship of the Harvard Negotiation Project, he works with key figures across the Middle East and on a global scale. His research focuses at the intersection of human behavior, strategy, and diplomacy, and he brings innovative approaches to problems, opening space for possibilities and curating networks that catalyze action. He holds a degree in Government, Diplomacy and Strategy from the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, and completed the Executive Program on Negotiation & Leadership at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.

Rebekah has been working alongside INP since 2010, and joined the team in this role in 2015.  After receiving an M.Ed. in Higher Education from Harvard University, she joined the Harvard Global Health Institute, where she worked to develop curriculum on negotiating new experiences and working abroad for undergraduate students.  She was critical in developing the first INP courses for undergraduates at Harvard, and continued working with INP until she joined INP as a team member in 2015.  Rebekah works on curriculum, research, strategic planning, and other projects.  She is currently a doctoral candidate in Sociology at Northeastern University, where she studies the intersection of identity, community, gender, race, and health.

Joshua Greene is a member of the INP Faculty Advisory Committee.  He is an experimental psychologist, neuroscientist, and philosopher.  He studies moral judgment and decision-making, primarily using behavioral experiments and functional neuroimaging (fMRI).  Other interests include religion, cooperation, and the capacity for complex thought.  He is the author of Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them.

Catherine (“Cat”) Huang is a Teaching Fellow for Gen Ed 1033: Conflict Resolution in a Divided World, taught by Professor Daniel Shapiro at Harvard College. She holds a Master’s in Education Leadership from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University. Previously, Cat performed award-winning research with the Scheinman Institute of Conflict Resolution and Cornell University’s Neutral-in-Residence, where she researched the use of alternative dispute resolution in higher education as well as the effects of cultural contexts on international labor negotiations.

Cat is a trained restorative justice facilitator and mediator, and she also serves as a Teaching Fellow for the Program on Negotiation’s executive education course on Negotiation and Dispute Resolution. A proud daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, Cat has international experience studying and traveling in Israel/Palestine. Her interests include studying the effects of political polarization both in America and abroad; educational ethics and the politics of higher education; and conflict resolution and negotiation education.

Ethan Kee is a Junior at Harvard College concentrating in Psychology with a particular interest in relationship building and negotiation. As a research assistant in social psychology, Ethan has contributed to social psychology work around what levers influence political attitudes as well as to consumer psychology research on how we stigmatize the purchasing decisions of others. Ethan is the current Chair of Youth Lead the Change of the Leadership Institute at Harvard College where, amongst other responsibilities, he helps research and design leadership and negotiation curricula for international high school populations.

Zaki is a Sophomore at Harvard College concentrating in Government, with a particular interest in how tools of negotiation can improve the quality and effectiveness of multilateral dialogue in international relations. In addition to serving as a research assistant at the Harvard International Negotiation Program, he is an Analyst for the Harvard College Consulting Group and a member of the JFK Jr. Forum Committee at the Institute of Politics.

Dr. Kimberlyn Leary is Associate Professor at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University, and has been a Senior Advisor in the White House on matters of science education, development, and mental health.  She served as Chief Psychologist at the Cambridge Health Alliance, and has a wealth of experience in policy, research, and practice in psychology, negotiation, and conflict. 

Dr. Jennifer Lerner is the Thornton F. Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy and Management at the Harvard Kennedy School and Co-Founder of the Harvard Decision Science Laboratory. She is the first psychologist in the history of the Harvard Kennedy School to receive tenure.  Professor Lerner also holds appointments in Harvard’s Department of Psychology and Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences.  In addition to her roles at Harvard, Professor Lerner currently serves as Special Advisor to the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations and as the Navy’s first Chief Decision Scientist.

For more than three decades, Dr. Levendusky has directed and/or developed more than 30 cutting-edge clinical programs at McLean Hospital. He is recognized nationally and internationally as a pioneer of integrated cognitive-behavioral treatment systems for persons with serious mental illness. In addition, he has inspired a generation of students to achieve excellence in the pursuit of their professional careers.

Dr. Nisenbaum has consulted to the Harvard International Negotiation Program since its inception, specializing in family conflict resolution as a global issue. He is a Psychologist, a Mediator and an Attorney who has an appointment to the Medical Staff in the Psychiatry Department at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School and is also an Assistant Clinical Professor at Tufts Medical School.  He has law degree from Harvard Law School where he was an Editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.  He has a Ph.D. in Psychology from Clark University, and an B.A. from Northwestern University.

He is on the Board of Directors of the Massachusetts Council of Family Mediators and is Past President of the Massachusetts Chapter of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts. He is Founder and President of Family Healthy Choices, Inc., a nonprofit agency teaching and assisting divorcing and unmarried parents living apart in raising children and resolving conflict. 

Representative publications are “Negotiation and the Shadow of the Law” in J. DeRivera (Ed.), Handbook on Building Cultures of Peace (2009), “Ethical and Legal Issues in Transitioning the Life Span” (with M.C. Weiss and D. Shapiro) in T. Miller (Ed.) Stressful Life Events: Transitions in the Life Span (2010), and “Ethicolegal Issues in Veterans Healthcare,” (with D. Norman and S. O’Keefe) in T. Miller (Ed.), Praeger Handbook of Veterans Health (2012).

Dr. Bruce Shackleton has served as a Senior Associate to INP since 2003.  He is on the faculty of Harvard Medical School as a Lecturer and is a Clinical Associate at McLean Hospital. He is a consulting psychologist; executive coach, mediator and psychotherapist who has taught mediation and negotiation skills in a variety of business and organizational settings.

In his consulting practice, Dr. Shackleton has worked with executive teams, professional partnerships, family businesses, individuals and families.   He assists his clients in the areas of leadership development, organizational change and identity clarification, as well as negotiation and conflict resolution locally and internationally.  He is currently leading a research project at INP to explore how we can expand our worldviews and sense of identity in the face of emotionally charged conflicts using perspectives achieved by astronauts; Overview Effect.

Dr. Shackleton previously served as a Clinical Associate on the Psychology Staff (Department of Psychiatry) of the Massachusetts General Hospital, where he specialized in occupational health psychology; and consulted on occupational and environmental stress management, and career development.

Lucas Woodley (’23) is a junior at Harvard College concentrating in Economics with a secondary in Psychology. As co-president of the Harvard College International Negotiation Program, he directs and oversees the implementation of the Senior Training Program, Civil Discourse Project, and Research Initiative. Lucas has also worked alongside Dr. Daniel L. Shapiro to design and revise his General Education course at Harvard College: Conflict Resolution in a Divided World and to contribute to Psychology Today. In addition, Lucas is the lead author of a forthcoming book that aims to teach conflict resolution to youth internationally.