Rev. Dr Carrie Pemberton Ford

Carrie has worked in the field of community, individual mediation, and organisational change for many years. She has over two decades of experience in the world of the protective services and mediation generated in this particular world.  She has extensive understanding of trauma experienced in workplace and domestic settings. She understands the intense psychological impact which suffering injustice, bullying, harrassment, financial punishment, dismissal or loss of control of ones territory, safety, or agency can bring. 

 Her professional roles as an Executive Coach, an Expert Witness working within the court system in the UK on issues of labour exploitation,  as a Religious and Welfare manager, Hospital and Prison chaplain, parish priest, CEO of a National Charity 'housing' charity, and more recently as the Executive Director of CCARHT informs her style and capacity for dispute resolution through mediation. Only through the uncovering of 'mutual self-interest' and an understanding of the importance of our common goals and mutual flourishing, can we move the dial from alienation and hostility, to releasing each other to our onward journeys and positive future.

Carrie is a professional trainer, with a particular specialism in Diversity and Inclusion.   Carrie brings a sense of profound safety into the process of mediation, allowing  people who have felt intimidated, bullied or silenced, to start rebuilding their next steps in self-esteem and renewed sense of purpose.  Her outstanding ability to build rapid empathy, and her commitment to enabling people to name their challenges and look towards the future,  has won her numerous high profile public service and business contracts particularly in the area of Human Trafficking, Domestic Violence, inter-cultural engagement and Whistleblowing support.   She has worked with the Commonwealth Secretariat, the Serious Fraud Office, the College of Policing, numerous local government agencies, Police Services across the UK, as a UK Women’s National Commissioner, and has worked within European Governance as an adviser to the European Union Director General’s office.

Carrie is passionate about the transformational capacity for mediation and this is clear in the attention to detail across the broad sweep of the legal narrative,  compassion for the individuals who are embroiled in the dispute, and an energetic focus for solution finding, which she brings to the task.  She is a member of the Civil Mediation Council, and carries an MA in PPE from Oxford, a DBA from the Open University and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. She trained with the London School of Mediation.  She has been for two decades a senior national Non Service Executive Assessor for the College of Policing, and understands professionally and personally the costs of loss of confidence, professional standards and financial security when trust gets lost.  

Carrie has strong intercultural translation skills, developed over years of working in a diverse range of civil society, business, NGO, faith community, and blue light environments. She understands the challenges which emerge when parties are under pressure, and 'left field' conflict and disputes have arisen.  Carrie opens up forward momentum, using a pragmatic, energised and constructive conversation.