Ms Ana Maria Maia Gonçalves
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +60 19 726 05 10
Mobile: +351 917 57 60 56
Video profile: http://www.icfml.org/
Website: http://www.convirgente.com/
Experience Qualification Path
Address:
E&O Residences
E&O Residences 1, Jalan Tengah off Jalan Sultan Ismail
Unit 1 25/2
Kuala Lumpur, 50450
Malaysia
Category 2: ADR Group
Mediation locations
Malaysia, Portugal, France, United Kingdom, Angola, Mozambique, Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal,
Australia - NSW, Brazil
Mediation languages
English, French, Portuguese
Current position and background
Ana has experience as a lawyer, teacher, mediator and organizational developer. She combines
20 years of experience with an exceptional triple curriculum, as a former IT industry executive,
an ADR neutral and trainer, but also as an executive coach (she has 800 hours of coaching and
is at the PCC level in the ICF accreditation).
She is a founder of Convirgente, the first Appropriate Dispute Resolution Consulting Company in
Portugal.
Ana is a graduate from UAL Lisbon and has a Master of Law (2008). She followed Mediation
Courses in several institutions in UK, France, Portugal, USA, and Australia. Ana is an
Accredited Mediator for ADR group, panelist of CPR, she is listed as an internationally
recognized commercial mediator in the Who's Who Legal since 2011 and is part of the
Portuguese mediators list of "Julgados de Paz". Ana is also an ADR trainer in several
Universities and with the European Academy of Law (ERA). Being very active across frontiers
and cultures, she has focused her practice in the last years on the impact of online technology
on the skills of ADR neutrals and has delivered lectures on that topic in several conferences.
What struck most of people that know Ana is her intercultural prowess: she has lived, worked
and traveled in many countries, and she recognizes and adapts easily to a wide range of
different demands and settings. She is a lawyer and mediator (like so many) but her senior
management experience at Microsoft has equipped her with a ready understanding of the
nature of cross-border business and its complexities in a globalized business environment. Ana
is an ideas person, but her deep roots in business and also in the law give her the unique ability
to put those ideas in ways that resonate with business, while assisting business people to think
beyond the usual boundaries of problem-solving. She is trilingual, another great asset in the
English-, Portuguese- and French-speaking worlds.
BUSINESS EXPERIENCE:
* Customer Service Director of Microsoft France, with a division of more than 100 people;
* Director of Critical Support Service Centre of Microsoft Europe;
* Founder of Convirgente, the first Appropriate Dispute Resolution Consulting Company in
Portugal.
Ana is the President of the ICFML - Instituto de Certificação e Formação de Mediadores
Lusófonos, a non-profit organization competent for the certification of Portuguese speaking
mediators applying for the IMI accreditation and a member of the Portuguese FMC - Federação
Nacional de Mediação de Conflitos.
Ana also works inside the organizations world, delivering collaboration management training to
several large and medium Global organizations and assisting Senior Executives and Lawyers in
developing their conflict management and negotiation skills, both in person and online. Ana has
an active role in helping Asian subsidiaries of Global organizations integrating mediation
techniques in their leadership framework model and in promoting internal ADR as a tool to
multicultural conflict resolution.
The best way to summarize Ana's character is to say she is passionate, intuitive, generous and
obstinate. She actually lives in Kuala Lumpur with her husband and has 2 children, Marie, 30,
who lives in Sydney and Thomas, 12, who lives with his parents.
Main mediation practice areas
Ana's experience covers both workplace and business disputes. Areas covered are Employment,
General Commercial,Technology, Community and Family.
Mediation experience
Ana has mediated a wide variety of disputes including, business, partnership, employment,
property, personal injury and family disputes in France, Portugal, Australia and Asia.
Description of mediation style
Ana has an experience of the English mediation model and of the Australian mediation model
and she uses the best of each model depending on customer needs, culture and interests. Ana
puts a lot of time and effort on the preparation of the mediation. Her first step is to make sure
that parties are comfortable making all disclosures that have to be made and are comfortable
about the process she'll use. She finds it especially useful to have either a pre-mediation
conference call or a pre-mediation private meeting with each party in highly emotional or very
complex disputes. These preliminary contacts that go over ground rules have a critical role in
increasing the commitment of parties to the mediation and to the idea of settlement. Ana´s
approach during the mediation is really about building - building trust in the mediator, building
trust in the process, building understanding of issues, and building conscience of the real impact
of settlement or no settlement in the future life of the parties and/or in the future of the
relationship between them. Ana uses her sense of humility and empathy to be non-judgmental in
relation to each party's mind-set and to understand and respond to their individual perceptions.
Whenever it´s possible, she uses joint sessions rather than private sessions (caucuses). She
stimulates the parties and their counsels to leverage the privileged arena of the mediation
session and think "out of the box" to reach a smart and durable decision.
Code of professional conduct
IMI Code of Professional Conduct
European code of conduct for mediators
Complaint process
IMI Professional Conduct Assessment Process
Professional indemnity insurance
None
Feedback digest
Reviewer: De Botton Isabel ( [email protected] )
Latest Update: 2016-03-10 00:55:47
This Feedback Digest is based no 28 Feedbacks in 22 Mediations, initially submitted in 2009.
The feedback reports came from companies and parties who saw Ms Goncalves mediating. 40%
of the feedbacks forms came from Europe, 20% came from US and 60% come from Asia. (Ms
Goncalves moved to Kuala Lumpur in February 2014).
Ms Goncalves is rated at a high performance level by participants for whom she has acted as a
mediator. The feedback received on her performance was extremely positive and continues to
demonstrate consistent best practice. All who responded would recommend Mrs Gonçalves as a
mediator, and would be confident to engage her again, themselves.
She is described as an optimistic, motivated and patient person who helped parties move the
process forward even on difficult moments. Her creativity, flexibility and perspective-taking
continue to be part of her set of major skills noted by the parties.
Ms Goncalves ability to prepare participants to maximize the likelihood of an agreement being
reached was noted in the feedback. Also noted, more than once, was her sensitivity to parties'
culture and her neutrality and impartiality especially in cross-border disputes.
Her high capacity of perspective-taking and realism combined with warmth, allowing her to deal
with people in a respectful and productive manner was also noted.
Participants felt that her creativity, flexibility and open-mindedness had a positive influence on
the parties, and that she had a special capacity to stimulate the respective participation of
parties and counsels. They appreciated her neutrality and impartiality, especially in
multicultural and cross-border disputes, and considered that she had a rich repertoire of
mediation techniques.
A high proportion of Ms Goncalves's mediations resulted in a resolution. Again, she was
especially congratulated for her flexibility and open-mindedness, positively influencing the
parties.
All parties recommended Mrs Gonçalves for future mediations. No reportable negative
comments have arisen.
Mediation education and training
* International Advanced Mediation Course (MATA - Mediation and Training Alternatives UK)
* Cinergy™ Conflict Coach Introductory workshop (Alice Springs)
* Executive Certificate in Positive Psychology Coaching (UTS - Sydney)
* Accredited Mediator (LEADR - Sydney)
* Certified trainer (Mediation Training Institute)
* Executive Coach -Level I (Escola Europeia de Coaching)
* International Coach Federation - PCC level
* Accredited Mediator (ADR Group)
* Mediator (IMAP - Instituto de Mediação e Arbitragem de Portugal)
* Master of Law (Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa)
Mediation teaching and mentoring
Ana is a lecturer in the major Portuguese Universities on the topics of Alternative Dispute
Resolution, Mediation and Negotiation. She is a regular speaker in International Conferences
(including ERA Academy of European Law, International Mediation Alliance) and participated as
a judge in several Mediation competition of the International Chamber of Commerce (Paris). She
is also finalizing her thesis on "Commercial Mediation in Portugal". Ana is part of an european
task on online mediation and online mediation training. Ana works with Brazilian universities
and chambers of commerce to promote IMI standards and IMI certification and with Malaysia
institutions to implement internal ADR.
Mediation publications
Ana Maria Maia Gonçalves co-Authored the Portuguese Chapter of the EU Handbook on
Mediation Law - Oxford University Press (to be published in 2012).
Note: This Mediator Profile is intended to offer guidance to users of mediation services about
the competency, skills, styles and potential suitability of the IMI Certified Mediator featured
above. The Reviewer, the Mediator and IMI are attempting to present fair, balanced and
objective information but none are to be held responsible for reliance on the information
given. Users of mediation services are encouraged to pursue further research before
selecting the IMI Certified Mediator, including contacting references and conducting an
interview with the Mediator before making a selection.