Whenever we attempt to exert influence over an outcome, we are negotiating. Most of that negotiating is mindless – the patterned repetition of old scripts disconnected from the present. By bringing awareness to our negotiation environment and providing a framework for navigating it, we can make order out of the chaos and become more effective (even value-creating) advocates. In our brief but beautiful time together we will discuss conflict styles, cognitive biases, and the family systems which guide our internal and external deliberations. Please come with questions, skepticism, and your negotiation challenges.

About the speaker:

Maxwell Bevilacqua                                                                                                      Founder and Managing Director                                                                            Mindful Negotiating

Max is the Founder and Managing Director of Mindful Negotiating, a research and training firm empowering attorneys to harness conflict, navigate complex negotiations, boost resilience, and build lasting partnerships. With practitioners cross-pollinating from different schools of negotiation, Mindful supports teams and organizations across the conflict spectrum to negotiate more effectively. The principal way we do this is through differentiating between Mindless and Mindful Negotiating.

Prior to founding Mindful Negotiating, Max advised and trained Fortune 100 Executives, Business Development Teams, and US Special Forces as a Senior Trainer at Vantage Partners. Max has been on the teaching team of Harvard Law School’s (HLS) Winter Negotiation Workshop, the Program on Negotiation’s (PON) Spring Mediation and Conflict Resolution Seminar, Harvard Negotiation Institute’s (HNI) Summer Workshop, and PON’s Executive Education Masterclass. Max has taught Negotiations in the Department of Management and Organizations at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, Negotiating Leadership at Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Negotiation and Conflict Response in a medium-security prison through Tufts University’s Prison Initiative at Tisch College.

Max served as the Executive Director of In Good Faith, an INGO which translated Elie Wiesel’s Night into Bahasa Indonesia and led interfaith programming amongst universities in the U.S. and Indonesia. Max received a Fulbright Scholarship (‘13) to Central Java and sits on the board of the community-led environmental conservation non-profit, Planet Indonesia.

Max holds a Master’s Degree from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where he studied International Negotiation and Conflict Resolution (MALD ‘18). He received his B.A. from Wesleyan University in Religious Studies (‘12).