Negotiation Works Shares Negotiation Strategies With Georgetown’s “Making an Exoneree” Program
By Lee Gjertsen Malone, Negotiation Works Partnerships and Communications Manager
NW Partnerships & Communications Manager Lee Gjertsen Malone works with students at the MAE class.
In January the NW staff had the unique opportunity to share negotiation skills and strategies with Georgetown University’s Making an Exoneree class. Each spring semester, a group of Georgetown undergraduate students reinvestigate likely wrongful conviction cases, produce short documentaries that suggest innocence, and create social media campaigns calling for exonerations.
NW Programs and Evaluation Coordinator Isa Salazar helps students develop negotiation strategies at Georgetown.
Melissa, Lee, and Isa spoke to the class, sharing some of the strategies we teach in our regular courses as well as some specialized scenarios and role plays created just for this group– such as how to manage challenging conversations with incarcerated clients, as well as navigate the difficult situations students can face working together as a team on such an important project.
Feedback from the class was overwhelming positive, with one student saying that the instructors “helped me understand the dynamics underneath my group work, and use my knowledge of them to better understand my teammates,” and another reporting, “I think it was helpful to hear that two people can have the same interests and be voicing those in different ways to make it seem like they want different things, when in truth they want the same thing…I think it’s advice that will extend even beyond MAE and be applicable to my personal life.”