Melissa G. Reinberg

Melissa Reinberg is the Founder and Executive Director of Negotiation Works, a non-profit organization that empowers people emerging from difficult and often traumatic situations—such as incarceration, homelessness, addiction, and domestic violence—to better navigate their everyday challenges and to live the next chapters of their lives confidently and productively.

For more than 20 years, Melissa has served as a community mediator in a wide variety of legal disputes, including criminal cases and civilian police complaints through the Center for Dispute Settlement; family, small claims, and truancy cases with DC Superior Court’s Multi-Door Dispute Resolution Division; and appellate cases with the DC Court of Appeals’ Appellate Mediation Program. For 17 years, Melissa taught a simulation-based Negotiation and Mediation seminar as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center. Previously, Melissa served as a Mediator with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel; Legal Director of the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia; Staff Attorney at Neighborhood Legal Services Program; and Prettyman Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center's Juvenile Justice Clinic.

Melissa has taught negotiation and mediation to mediators, attorneys, teachers, and other professionals. Together with volunteer co-instructors, Melissa has led over 75 multi-week Negotiation Strategies courses with Negotiation Works.

Melissa has an A.B. from Cornell University, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and an LL.M. from Georgetown University Law Center.