Born in Chicago in 1956, Jamie Walker grew up in Atlanta, Georgia and received a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Georgia State University in 1977. That same year she moved to Europe, later earning a Master’s degree in Adult Education from the Free University of Berlin, and a PhD from the Technical University of Berlin, where she occupied a 5-year teaching position from 1991 to 1996.
She began working as a trainer for conflict resolution in 1981 and as a mediator in 1990. Subsequently, she went on to design and implement dozens of professional and volunteer training courses and projects, and helped pioneer school and community mediation in Germany, as well as running a mediation center in Berlin from 1999 to 2008. As an avowed "pracademic", she has published widely in the fields of violence prevention, peace education, school mediation and, most recently, mediation in cross-border child abduction cases.
Long interested in expanding her work to a more international context, she began working as a consultant in the field of development cooperation in 2004, which has so far taken her to Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Serbia, Kosovo and Russia. She currently focuses on applying hisintercultural communication skills to highly escalated conflict situations ranging from families and businesses to government bodies and NGOs. While English is her mother tongue, she speaks and writes German at mother tongue level.
