Debra L. Nudelman is a consensus building and dispute resolution professional with nearly twenty years of experience handling high-level, sophisticated and often sensitive projects in a wide range of areas: hydroelectric facility relicensing, transportation, watershed and natural resources management (including water quality/quantity issues), and public land use. She has provided neutral process services for Portland General Electric, City of Portland Water Bureau, the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs, US Forest Service, California Department of Fish and Game, NOAA National Ocean Service, Oregon Department of Transportation, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the Environmental Protection Agency – to name but a few.

Debra brings a wealth of knowledge about environmental law and policy as well as natural resource management to her role as Vice President and Senior Mediator for Kearns & West. She is currently responsible for convening, facilitating, and mediating projects involving complex natural resource, environmental and public policy issues. Her cases involve a wide range of parties representing diverse interests from private entities to public agencies, including federal, state, local and tribal governments, non-governmental organizations, and the public. Debra also offers quality trainings on negotiation skills, facilitation, public involvement, strategic planning and consensus building to public and private entities, and designs and implements specialized dispute resolution systems for public agencies and private industry.

Her expertise has led her to Hanoi, Vietnam, where she facilitated an international experts' workshop convened to recommend potential site nominations to UNESCO's World Heritage Committee. She is also comfortable within the scientific community, having facilitated numerous multi-stakeholder groups providing advice and recommendations to the National Environmental Policy Institute (NEPI), the National Institutes of Environmental Health Council of Scientific Society Presidents, the National Weather Service (NWS), and the National Environmental, Data and Information Service (NESDIS).

Debra directs Kearns & West’s Portland Office. She holds a Juris Doctorate from the University of Wisconsin School of Law and a Bachelor of Science from Carroll College in Social Work and Geography. She is a member of the American Bar Association (Section of Natural Resources and Section of Dispute Resolution), the Wisconsin Bar, and the National Association for Conflict Resolution, and a roster member of the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution and the Oregon Consensus Program.

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