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Each year, we are honored to present prestigious and highly recognized awards at the conference. With your conference attendance, you will be able to celebrate and commemorate the recipients. Click on each award to see the recipients!
Each year the Southern California Mediation Association presents the Cloke-Millen Peacemaker Award to an individual or organization in the dispute resolution community who inspires us through their passion and dedication to peacemaking.
The award is named in honor of two of the SCMA’s founding members: Kenneth Cloke and Richard Millen. Kenneth Cloke, the Director of the Center for Dispute Resolution in Santa Monica, is an internationally-recognized speaker and author in the field of conflict resolution. He is also the founder of Mediators Beyond Borders. Richard Millen, who passed away in 2010, was a distinguished mediator and mediation trainer, who co-chaired the first conference of mediators in Southern California, which led to a second conference at which the SCMA was born.
Retired Superior Court Judge Angela C. Robinson is an author, diversity consultant, law professor and mediator who works through various disciplines to help resolve discord and build community. Her academic areas of interest include legal history – particularly that which involves Black women judges, Evidence, Alternative Dispute Resolution and Critical Race Theory. Additionally, Robinson provides specialized diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) consultations and coaching.
Her book, First Black Women Judges: The Story of Three Black Women Judges in the United States, will soon be followed by another one on Critical Race Theory, to be released in early 2023. She is also a frequent contributor and lecturer on the intersection of diversity work, mediation and dispute resolution.
Robinson served as a Connecticut Superior Court for twenty years. Prior to her appointment to the bench, she was a trial lawyer at a nationally renowned, boutique law firm in Connecticut, specializing in representing plaintiffs. Following her retirement, Robinson was a litigation partner and Chief Diversity Officer at a multi-state law firm based in New Haven, CT.
Robinson is an honors graduate of Cheshire Academy, Rutgers University (Phi Beta Kappa) and Yale University School of Law. She is a James W. Cooper Fellow of the Connecticut Bar Foundation and serves on several boards. In addition to serving on the faculty at Quinnipiac University School of Law, she also teaches trial practice at Yale Law School and has taught at the University of New Haven and Gateway Community College.
Among her many awards and recognitions are the Connecticut Law Tribune’s Distinguished Leader Award in 2019; the Edwin Archer Randolph Diversity Award from the Lawyers’ Collaborative for Diversity in 2017 and; the Judicial Award from the Connecticut Trial Lawyers’ Association. Robinson is the 2022 recipient of the SCMA’s Cloke-Millen Peacemaker Award in recognition of her long-standing dedication to diversity work, dispute resolution and her committed mentoring of youth, with an emphasis on introducing them to the law as a profession.
Each year the SCMA presents the L. Randolph Lowry Award to a member of the dispute resolution community who has honored and inspired us through their passion and dedication to education in the field of dispute resolution. The award is presented at the Friday Evening Kick-off Dinner Reception.
Professor Bush’s scholarship and teaching focuses on mediation and alternative dispute resolution. He is one of the originators of the “Transformative Approach” to mediation, as explained in his best-selling book, The Promise of Mediation (1994, 2d ed. 2005), co-authored with Dr. Joseph Folger and translated into six languages. Bush has practiced, taught and written about mediation for over 40 years, authoring five books and more than thirty articles/chapters on mediation and ADR. His latest article is “Hiding in Plain Sight: Mediation and the Value of Human Agency.” In 2017, Bush received (together with co-author and colleague Joseph Folger), the Association of Conflict Resolution’s “William Kreidler Award for Distinguished Service to the field of Conflict Resolution.”
Rains Distinguished Professor of Alternative Dispute Resolution, Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University; Co-Founder and Board Member, Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation.
It has been a tradition at our annual conference that the SCMA President recognizes an individual who has made a significant impact to the organization and the mediation community during their term in office.
Andy Shelby is currently a pro bono mediator for the Los Angeles Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) mediation panel and for the Small Claims Court of Los Angeles.
He previously spent 36 years with the Hughes/Boeing aerospace company in a variety of management-level positions in their Human Resources organization. He worked at three manufacturing sites over those years, successfully interfacing with all levels of employees in the areas of staffing, compensation, labor/employee relations, diversity, and general HR.
Recently, Andy served as the Southern California Mediation Association (SCMA) Board of Directors President (2020) and was its interim Director (2019-2020). He currently (and proudly) still maintains a position on SCMA’s Board of Directors.
Andy holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of Michigan, a master’s degree in Labor and Industrial Relations from Michigan State University, and in 2015 completed his postgraduate certificate in Negotiations and Conflict Resolution from California State University, Dominguez Hills.
He is married (13 years) and enjoys playing softball in his spare time.