 Aloha and welcome to Life in the Law with Hingte Kauai. I'm your host, Trisha Nakamatsu. Joining me today is my esteemed co-host, Cecilia Chang, former director of the Hoi Si Qutu Sherry Center for Alternative Dispute Resolution, and our guest, Tracy Wilkin, Executive Director for the Mediation Center of the Pacific. Good afternoon, Cecilia and Tracy. Good afternoon. Starting today, we'll be kicking off a five-part series featuring the distinguished recipients of the 2020 annual awards presented by Hawaii Women Lawyers. Hawaii Women Lawyers is a local nonprofit organization committed to serving our members and the community by improving the lives and careers of women attorneys, influencing the future of our legal profession, enhancing the status of women, and promoting equal opportunities for all. A lot of HWL's work centers on educating, mentoring, and promoting women attorneys, but we're also engaged in legislative matters, judicial appointments, and career health and welfare matters that affect the legal community, women professionals, and women and children in need. Today, we are very fortunate to begin our awards series by celebrating one of the foremost experts on mediation in Honolulu, Ms. Tracy Wilkin. Tracy was selected to receive HWL's 2020 Distinguished Service Award, which honors an individual in the community who has made significant community contributions within the past year, which advanced the mission of Hawaii women lawyers. At this point, I'll turn things over to Cecilia to introduce our esteemed awardee. Cecilia, I understand you had the pleasure of working closely with Tracy on a number of projects during your tenure at the Hawaii State Judiciary Center for ADR. Absolutely, and it's such a tremendous experience. Thank you very much for inviting me to introduce Tracy. It's a real privilege. If I may, Tracy Wilkin is the Executive Director of the Mediation Center for Pacific. It's a non-profit dispute resolution corporation that serves over 7,000 people annually through direct mediation, facilitation, and training in conflict resolution processes. Tracy consults with businesses and other agencies such as the Hawaii State Judiciary, the Hawaii Civil Rights Commission, the Department of Education, and the U.S. military to design and develop in-house mediation and dispute resolution programs. One such initiative that Ms. Wilkin created is the Kupuna Hono Program, which assists families in reaching agreements on elder issues. In 2019, Tracy spearheaded efforts for the mediation center of the Pacific to further expand its services and increase accessibility, including providing online dispute resolution services. In addition to her extensive work contribution, Ms. Wilkin is very active in access to justice efforts across the state. She served as a past commissioner of the Access to Justice Commission, co-chair of the Hawaii Access to Justice Commission's pro bono initiative, past force, and as a member of the Commission's administrative committee since the Commission's inception. Ms. Wilkin is currently an adjunct professor at the University of Hawaii's William S. Richardson School of Law, where she teaches mediation workshop at the law school. She also teaches courses at the Montenegro Peace Institute and program on conflict resolution. And the Hawaii Pacific University and serves as a guest lecturer for Kishamina University. Ms. Wilkin serves as advisory director to the Rose Periment Foundation, with a mediator with the Transportation Security and Health Association Council, a past director for the Hawaii Association for Conflict Resolution, a past co-chair for the Hawaii State Bar Association's Alternative Dispute Resolution Section, a founding member and past chair of the Rotary Club of Honolulu's Peacemaker Committee, and a past director of the Rotary Club of Honolulu. Ms. Wilkin served as a member of the special advisory panel overseeing the implementation of Hawaii 2015. State plan on Alzheimer's disease and other related dementias, Alzheimer's and other dementias Hawaii Task Force. Ms. Wilkin has received numerous honors for her service and dedication to improve the lives of others, including the citizens of the year award from the U.S. Navy Pacific Region for her work with the Navy and other federal agencies in developing an in-house dispute resolution program, the Mahalo Award from the Hawaii Speech and Hearing Language Association, assisting families and children by providing training, facilitation and other dispute resolution processes, the Suroptimist International Making a Difference Award for her outstanding work to improve the lives of other women, and the Hawaii State Bar Association's Shreddy Award for service towards the profession. She has also been recognized with the Hawaii Women's Legal Foundation Rota Lewis Award. Ms. Wilkin received her BS Homaude from Gonzaga University, a master's of science degree from the University of Hawaii, and the JD's of the William S. Richardson School of Law. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Thank you very much for the opportunity to participate in this award. That's truly amazing accomplishment and well deserving of the Distinguished Service Award. I'd like to know for our viewers that Ms. Wilkin, Tracy Mei, if I may, Tracy, did receive the actual fiscal award from Hawaii Women Lawyers in October 2020. I believe we have a picture for there. And that was along with official commendations from the Hawaii State Legislature received in December 2020. Thank you so much for joining us today, Tracy. Thank you so much for having me, Trisha, and thank you so much to the Hawaiian employers for this recognition. Greatly appreciated. And thank you, Cecilia, for that long introduction. Way too much information. There's so much that you have accomplished. It's just it's hard to keep in nutshell. I did want to shift gears a bit now and see if we can really get to the crux of your work, Tracy. We've heard about the amazing things you've done, your contributions to the world of mediation. But first of all, if you could just briefly, for those of our viewers who might not be familiar, what is mediation in a nutshell and what makes it different from say litigation, arbitration? Where does it fit in amongst all those other legal mechanisms? Sure. Thanks, Trisha. I'm happy. I'm always happy to describe mediation. Mediation is a process in which parties in conflict work with an impartial mediator who basically helps them talk to each other in a way they haven't been able to and helps them negotiate creative solutions to their issues. What's key about mediation is the mediator, unlike a judge or an arbitrator, doesn't make a decision. And it's up to the parties whether or not they want to reach an agreement. So it's a really empowering process in that the parties have an opportunity to work privately with the mediator and joint session, bouncing ideas off of each other to see if they're able to reach an agreement which leaves both of their needs. And if they're not able to reach an agreement, they can always move on to the formal legal process. Much more informal than going to court or an arbitration. And what's key is it's not an adversarial process. Court by nature, it's about winning and losing. It's about proving the other person is wrong in mediation. It's about having a conversation and negotiating agreements that are going to enable both parties to be able to move forward. It really does have a special place in that legal realm then. Given all of that, why do you do what you do? What is it about mediation that keeps you excited, motivated to do this type of work, this great work year after year? So that's a great question. And I always tell people the reason I really like mediation is I don't like being told what to do. And I think most people feel that way because that's the crux of mediation. It's the people coming up with this solution. I was attracted to this arena many years ago. I was formerly a speech pathologist when I first my first career working within the school system. And I saw a lot of conflict between schools and parents regarding the needs of their children. And I thought there's going to be a better way to address these issues because schools and parents need to work together for the benefit of the child. And when I went to law school, I learned about mediation. And it just was a process that really lent itself to me because it helped people sit down and really talk and work through issues. And it's appropriate for any kind of situation, but in particular when there's an ongoing relationship, it's really powerful. So it's been a great honor for me to be part of the Mediation Center all these years and be able to do this work. Because Tracy, you've done so much. Can you tell us about one of the programs, perhaps the domestic mediation program? So domestic mediation is one of our largest programs at the Mediation Center of the Pacific. And it really fits into the mission of Hawaiian lawyers because we are helping couples and a lot of women who are going through a difficult time, whether they're a married couple going through a divorce or an unmarried couple who have a child who still need to work out time sharing arrangements. They're far better off working through these issues together. As we tell them, you may not be a couple, but you're still parents to these children. So you need to find a way to talk with each other to make the decisions together for the benefit of your children. And mediation helps them do that. And so over the years, we've seen our domestic mediation program, we've really focused on growing it. And the number of couples that we assist has tripled over the last 15 years, which is wonderful because we see so many people come in and they're going through tough times. And by going through the mediation process, they start talking to each other in a different way. So not only do they reach agreements, but they're figuring out ways to communicate to help them move through the future. And this is really important. And I must say over the last year with the pandemic, we saw even more couples in conflict regarding time sharing issues, because one parent would feel that their home was safer for the child than the other. And so they wouldn't want the child to go to the other parent's home. And of course, the other parent would want to see the children. So we've really seen those cases increase even more over the past year. Oh, no, you and attorney, another attorney, William or Bill Dara, have offered and have been offered having you long past your 200th recession on some of these domestic mediation possibilities for people contemplating divorce as well. Yeah, absolutely. You know, one of the interesting things about mediation, even though it's grown over the past 25 years, and it's in the forefront, most people don't think about axing accessing mediation. So it's really important to get the word out. Attorney Bill Dara, William Dara created the divorce law and Hawaii program. And he invited me to participate with him. So since 2011, every month, we've been providing the program for the public. It's a free program. It was traditionally at noon at the Supreme Court. Then we started at Cochle and it gives couples or people going through a divorce with knowledge and information about how the divorce process works, paperwork they need, how mediation work. And so actually, next month, we'll be celebrating doing 250 of those presentations, which is amazing. And we shifted to having the presentation via Zoom just this past February, because we realized it was so valuable for couples. And it was amazing because we weren't sure if anybody would show up via Zoom. And actually, we had 32 people in February and 33 people in March. And tomorrow we'll, I think we have another 34 people signed up again. So the nice thing is we're actually more accessible to people and giving more people this important information. So it's exciting. So even with the pandemic, or even more so with the pandemic, your outreach has expanded. Absolutely. Absolutely. We are doing a lot more outreach in the community and not only in the divorce arena, the domestic arena, but we've been doing a lot of outreach regarding landlord tenant issues. Since this is a huge area of concern with the moratorium in place, then we know eventually that moratorium will end. And there's a potential for a flood of eviction cases. So we've been doing a lot of outreach through Zoom presentation, working with property managers, resident managers, realtors, and many others to get the word out about encouraging landlords and tenants to access mediation now to work out agreements that will enable the landlord to receive payment and enable the tenant to remain in the residence and have them not end up in court. So it's, it's as challenging as some people have found shifting to using the Zoom platform, what we have found with our outreach and training is that enables us to access more people, which is really wonderful. Thank you. You're talking many people despite the moratorium avoid eviction. So we are encouraging landlords and tenants to access mediation. We have worked closely with the state and the Aloha United Way and Catholic Charities with the rental assistance program where they would offer mediation to tenants who were interested. We partnered with Catholic Charities in their rental assistance program this past January, the RAP program, where they provided rental assistance and educated tenants about the opportunity to mediate. So as a result of those partnerships, we opened over 600 landlord tenant cases last December and another 600 between January and February of this year. Now not every landlord and tenant are mediating. Some of them are accessing mediation and working out agreements, which is great. Others were helping them understand the rental assistance program and the need to work together. So we are really helping them have more open conversations and communications because they need to work together as a team to access the rental assistance. That is amazing. Now, you are also, you've also created the Kapuna Pono program, which helps our elderly, correct, and their family. Yes, absolutely. So we created the Kapuna Pono program with the assistance of Attorney Chuck Hurd, who he was very passionate about it because we recognize the community need more and more members of our community, particularly women, that fits in with the white women lawyer's mission, who are caregiving for elderly family members. And there's a lot of conflict around that. Oftentimes the caregiver is taking on a lot more than they're comfortable with. They're not comfortable reaching out to family members. Sometimes the elder adult siblings aren't honoring the wishes of the elder family members. So we have a mediation program and also a family conferencing process that we created to bring family members together, to have difficult conversations and basically to come up with plans that support the needs and the desires of the elder family member and working together. And that's really what you want at the end of life. You want to see your family working together, not in conflict. And this was a program near and dear to me because I was a caregiver for 16 years for both parents. And so I know how challenging it is to be a caregiver, particularly when you're balancing, working, and trying to give your loved one the best support possible to enable them to be as independent as possible while making sure that they're safe. So your own personal experience was that an inspiration for creating this program? I can definitely relate to families who are working through that process. So with all of these programs, how do you, in the mediation center for Pacific, sustain them? How does one, where do you get all of the mediators? Well, that's a great question. And we are so fortunate because our mediators are the lifeblood of the mediation center. We generally, we have about 125 mediators. We have a little bit fewer right now. We're coming back as, as people are getting vaccinated and getting comfortable with doom. And they provide for the, for most of our programs, the mediators provide the services at no cost. They're volunteering their time pro bono. So we do a lot of training to train our mediate, train our mediators in all the different areas that we provide mediation in. We provide ongoing continuing education so they can hone their tools. And over the last year, we provided a lot of training and how to mediate via zoom, how to be comfortable working with people in zoom so that we could continue our services. And as a result of our wonderful mediators and ability to provide mediation remotely, our services never stopped. So we feel really fortunate. And in fact, the number of requests for mediation have continued to grow. We're really grateful to our mediators who give so much for the community and do so much. I don't know. I was just going to say that's so impressive that you were able to, that you have so quickly and really pivot to, to meet the needs of your clients and, and everyone that you serve in such a short amount of time during such a difficult period for the entire world. Yeah, it was a, it was a little scary initially. And once we set up the processes and protocol, and I say we, because I work with an amazing team here at the Mediation Center of the Pacific, there are eight of us. And I'm very fortunate we work well together. They were able to adapt to the technology. And together we came up with good protocols and processes to support our clients as well as our mediators. We also were able to continue providing limited in-person services. We want to make sure that we're accessible to all. We work closely with the Access to Justice Commission and other legal service providers, because we know that there are a lot of mediators out there. The mediation center, the Pacific serves everyone, but we are the only option for people in the lower income population. So it's important that our services are accessible. So we make sure people can come in and social distance and be safe. We have the ability for them to participate remotely. And if they want to participate remotely and they don't have the equipment, they can come to our building and use our equipment in a room by themselves. So we have really worked hard to be versatile and as a result, as you said, we were able to transition quickly. And it's to the credit of the staff and team that I work with and the mediators who really believe in their work and are really dedicated. So wonderful to hear that you have such a dedication to Access to Justice, especially for some of those who are less fortunate. Thinking about and it ties in a little bit to how you adjusted to the COVID situation, thinking about the future of how things may be evolving for mediation for mediation in Honolulu, in particular for MCP and your client. Where do you see things going? Have things involved in the time that you've been there? Are there opportunities perhaps for young lawyers or other professionals, students perhaps even who are thinking this might be something I'd like to get involved in someday? Yeah, absolutely. And I'm delighted that you asked that question. I think there's more and more opportunities for young lawyers. Generally, before it would long time attorneys and retired judges who were predominantly the private mediators and we still have many wonderful private mediators providing services, but we are creating opportunities. We have about eight law students from the William S. Richardson School of Law right now who are volunteering their services for the Mediation Center of the Pacific and we're delighted to have them. We've also been fortunate to recruit a couple of young mediators who, one in particular, he completed his master's in conflict resolution at Pepperdine. He's from Hawaii. He wanted to be able to have the opportunity to get more experience and he's really well versed in Zoom and technology. And as much as we reopen and we'll have more in-person mediations, technology is here to stay. We will still offer mediations through Zoom. So having young mediators gain their experience and incorporate what they learn into their law practice, into the work that they do is invaluable. So I see, Tricia, that there's more and more opportunities and we're delighted to have them be involved with us. That's wonderful to hear and it sounds like you're going to be with them every step of the way to help develop that incoming generation as things continue to evolve over time. You know, Lee, I'm so sorry. It looks like we're starting to run short on time. I've had such a great time speaking with you and Tracy, thank you for being here to put up this area of law with us and all the amazing forward movement you've really brought to the field, especially here in Honolulu. Maybe Cecilia, did you want to take a minute or so and what are some of the highlights you had today? Thank you so much. Just from what we've seen here, Tracy, you've done a tremendous job bridging the legal field and the practice of mediation. So if you have really moved Hawaii forward on Honolulu, we see attorneys and mediator pools that you've developed are not just attorneys, correct? So we've really seen this incorporated or emerging of the practices together, haven't we? Yeah, absolutely. I think it's wonderful. And as you said, we have many attorneys who are mediators, but we also have many non-attorneys who are wonderful mediators, and actually they do great when they're paired together. They bring different strengths to the table to help people with different types of issues. So I really appreciate the opportunity to be able to talk about mediation because I really believe in it and share about the Mediation Center in the Pacific and I am so grateful to both of you and Hawaii women lawyers for this recognition because there are so many amazing women lawyers out there who are fully deserving of the recognition. So thank you for giving me that opportunity. And thank you Tracy and Cecilia for joining us here today. We did have a chance to show that contact information for mediation center of the Pacific for any of our viewers who would like more information to contact them about any of the opportunities you've heard about here today or services you've heard about here today. Thank you so much to our guest, Tracy Wilkin, Executive Director for the MCP and HWL 2020 Distinguished Service Award recipient. Thank you especially to my esteemed co-host Cecilia Chang. I am your host, Krisha Nakamatsu, extending a big mahalo to you, our viewers, for taking the time to join us today. Please tune in again next week for another edition of Life in the Law and if you'd like to follow the rest of our five-part award series for Hawaii women lawyers, each segment in this series will feature a new HWL board member or officer sitting down with remotely, of course, with a new award recipient. This is such an amazing opportunity to hear from some truly amazing, remarkable women who have been having positive impacts on the lives and well-being of the women, children and legal profession and really everyone in our community as a whole. Mahalo, thank Kauai and Whitman Lawyers for your collaborative work on these awards segments. Our next award, our next awardee will be Judge Barbara Richardson for the Lifetime Achievement Award that will be on May 3rd, Monday at 3 p.m. Until then, thank you so much again ladies for joining me. Always a pleasure and to all of our viewers, a hui hou and aloha.