“My mission is to help you reframe issues – separating people from the problem – so that all involved can meet their needs with the future in mind.”
–- Natalija VOJNO
Natalija Vojno, Founder & Principal
Fostering foresight, empathy, and imagination to develop pathways for mutual gain.
Natalija Vojno mediates, designs, and facilitates processes that help people identify their common values and pathways towards more liveable futures. Her multi-partial approach guides clients to develop solutions for mutual gain. She brings to the table the ability to convene business, government, and civil society leaders as well as disgruntled neighbours, roommates, and siblings.
Natalija is a peace innovator who comes to the field of mediation with a decade of experience helping diverse groups align on environmental priorities and actions – be it North America’s Great Lakes or the Nile River. Her past as a watershed campaigner, speechwriter for Ontario’s Minister of the Environment, and global youth network leader inform her practice. Years of collaborating with distributed teams of stakeholders, across multiple time zones and sectors, have honed her ability to help people move forward across their differences. She works across scales to open up the heart of a conflict.
Her post-war homeland of Bosnia & Herzegovina inspired her lifelong desire for social cohesion. As a result, she co-founded a peacebuilding project in the Balkans called Naša Gora. Approaching conflict transformation from a creative lens, she has piloted values-based community-building projects and is an UNLEASH Innovation Lab fellow.
She was trained in community mediation by St. Stephen’s House, cross-cultural dialogue by Soliya, as well as advanced mediation by Ken Cloke and Aaron Wolf. Her negotiation training is from the Clingendael Institute in the Hague and MIT’s Lawrence Susskind.
Natalija holds a BA from the University of Toronto, an MSc in Water Resources Management from UNESCO-IHE, in the Netherlands and an MA in Public Policy from ICU, as a Rotary Peace Fellow in Japan. Her research focuses on natural resources policy and participatory water governance processes.
Natalija grew up in Toronto by the banks of the Humber River on the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples.
Portfolio:
- mediation and conflict coaching;
- interaction design;
- cross-cultural dialogue facilitation;
- strategic-foresight processes;
- creative concept development; and
- youth empowerment
Simon Adams, Research & Outreach Intern
A recent graduate of the University of Toronto, Simon holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts with a
major in Diaspora and Transnational Studies, and minors in both History and Drama. He has
always been interested in working to create positive cultural and political change. As a resident
of the U.S. city of Chicago, Simon volunteered in the presidential campaign of Senator Elizabeth
Warren, and served the food-insecure at The Uptown Cafe. Simon has also been active with
interfaith programs like “Let’s Get Together,” which involved Chicago’s diverse youth in interfaith
learning about the region’s civil rights and cultural history. In Simon’s free time you can find him
performing standup around the city.