Brenda Paik Sunoo often conducts her workshops on "Managing Grief at the Workplace" with her husband, Jan Sunoo. He formerly served as Commissioner and a Program Director for the International and Dispute Resolution Services of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Services. He is currently serving a post as Chief Technical Advisor for the International Labor Organization in Viet Nam.

Ms. Sunoo's husband has taught mediation and cross-cultural dispute resolution skills throughout the country and in Germany, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Korea and Australia. He is the past Regional Director for the Western Region of FMCS and has mediated disputes for 10 years in the Southern California area pioneering interest-based bargaining and other successful labor-management cooperation programs in the Southern California area.

Prior to joining FMCS, Jan Sunoo worked as an elected union representative for the Teamsters in the San Francisco Bay area, held teaching positions at San Francisco City College, and the City College of New York, and practiced clinical psychology at the Watts Health Center in South Central Los Angeles. He has 25 years of labor-management experience.

He completed the post-doctoral fellowship in community psychology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, received a masters of arts degree in clinical psychology from the University of Minnesota, and a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Missouri.

Together, they have recently led workshops for:

Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service Institute, Seattle Society of Federal Labor Relations Professionals, New York City The Association for Conflict Resolution, Toronto Federal Dispute Resolution Conference, New Orleans Labor Law Conference, Anaheim, California Asia Pacific Mediation Forum, Adelaide, Australia Industrial Relations Research Association, New Orleans

What Participants Are Saying:

"I certainly enjoyed your workshop and appreciate your courage in sharing your own very real experience."
—C. Lowry

"Saying I enjoyed the workshop seems uncomfortable, but I did. Loss and death are areas I have always felt rather embarrassed or shy about. I don't feel I handle them as well as some others do. So the workshop was very good for me."
—S. Dundas

"I found the workshop thought-provoking."
—L. Henrikson

"The session was most useful. Unfortunately, I had to put in place a lot of what I had learned as soon as I came home. A good friend of mine lost a young relative to a heart condition."
—Sharene

"The level of content and emotion was just right. Definitely met my needs responding to world and personal events/losses."
—P. Kaplan

"Workshop leaders with personal experience is a great asset."
—Anonymous

"The presentation addressed issues currently taking place in my office."
—C. Moore

    
    E-mail: brenda@compassionatwork.com