Jim is a neutral mediator and facilitator who came to this profession after many years of doing just the opposite – being a professional consultant advocating for the success of his clients. This transformation from being a CEO responsible for an environmental planning and design practice may seem to clash with his practice as a neutral since 1994. After all, helping private and public sector clients to build major waterfront developments or to formulate public resource management policies did require advocacy in community meetings and expert testimony at various hearings. Neutrality was not seen as an asset.

Jim was trained as a landscape architect, going through the jury critique system in which students honed not only their design and planning skills, but also their abilities to be convincing and self-assured under the intense scrutiny of faculty and peer reviewers. At that time, there was a competitive rather than collaborative relationship with students in other design or planning or environmental programs. On every assignment, landscape architecture students were expected to identify problems and develop answers, and to present them with confidence. Jim remembers being told in an early studio "your design is not very good, so at least explain it well!" If you had little or no ego in this atmosphere, you did not succeed.

He did make a successful change in his subsequent career by never allowing disciplinary boundaries to obstruct collaboration among landscape architects, ecologists, engineers, geologists, economists, archaeologists and the other people he brought together from within and beyond his firm. Jim wanted the best possible people in

each profession, but he also wanted creative, big picture inputs. That anti-compartmental approach did not extend very far into the public realm, unfortunately. While he won many awards from professional organizations, he rarely talked with the stakeholders being affected by his recommendations. Then something happened – one of life's “aha!” moments. He was selected to direct one of the first environmental assessments in Ontario, for a proposed road through a wilderness class park that would, in the eyes of its proponents, resolve most of the socio-economic problems of an isolated community. Among other things, local students traveled 70 miles to attend high school. The court system and most services were even more distant. To its opponents, a scenic road extension to another regional highway would destroy the very wilderness values on which the park's existence was based.

The EA required a great deal of community participation, which Jim decided to do himself. He met with hundreds of stakeholders, from the local nurse and a tourist resort operator to an elderly woman whose existence depended on a seasonal maple syrup tap line. He met with backwoods hikers on the trails, and held meetings in Toronto and other regional locations. It was a very controversial project among stakeholders throughout Canada. Everyone was kept informed via comprehensive newsletters (no email back then), including non-resident property owners in other countries. Two things resulted – the process he designed became a participatory model for all EA's, and he learned that stakeholders have a lot to offer to consultants if they will just stop what they are doing and listen. Even better, they need to listen before applying their skills.

That project led to many others involving conflict resolution, and eventually Jim's assignments were dominated by the growing participatory side of his practice. It did not matter what the project was about - from the impact of logging access roads on fly-in fishing lodges and improving relationships between government and First Nations, to the inventory of historical values in community

planning, and redevelopment of waterfronts – ordinary people knew “stuff” that he and his teams did not know, and had ideas that they wanted him to explore. He pioneered serious participation opportunities to a public that was increasingly resistant to conventional approaches - consultants coming to them with plans and answers without asking for input until it was too late to influence the results. The public was right, and many of Jim's clients agreed to do much more than the obligatory meeting or two.

People were also increasingly energized by being engaged early, to the point where they wanted and anticipated consultant inputs. It was a simple but powerful discovery – changing the sequence could change the attitudes, and thereafter changed attitudes required abandoning conventional approaches.

After achieving his goals as a landscape architect, and being accountable for large project teams and budgets, Jim defined a new horizon and changed course. He downsized and more importantly set aside advocacy. He created a new Florida practice in which he would use his experiences in bringing leaders, stakeholders, staff and consultants together for mutual gain. He had to learn an entirely new political, social and natural landscape. Courses in environmental permitting, community planning and mediation were vital and he received certification as a county court mediator by the FL Supreme Court.

While he embraces mediation's principles of impartiality and ethical conduct, his preference is to work “upstream” of the court system in avoiding or resolving impasse. Every assignment brings new issues and possibilities, and most of all new people who have potential that needs to be tapped. The many peer group design and planning awards he has remain important, but that was then and this is now. What counts most today is how well the participants he works with view the results of their efforts through facilitated collaboration. He has received new awards for his current practice as a neutral, and continues to help stakeholders and consultants to collaborate on better and more broadly supported proposals of all kinds.