John Brand is a lawyer and retired consultant and ADR specialist at Bowmans in South Africa. He was also a director of Conflict Dynamics in Sandton, Johannesburg. He serves on the ADR Advisory Committee of the South African Law Reform Commission and is on the Executive Committee of the National Dispute Settlement Practitioners Council. John is an IMI Certified Mediator and a member of IMI’s Independent Standards Commission and is a CEDR-accredited mediator. He has specialised in dispute resolution and the training of negotiators, mediators and arbitrators, has written extensively in journals and other publications and co-authored “Commercial Mediation – a User’s Guide” and “Labour Dispute Resolution” both published by Juta. Over the past 30 years, he has arbitrated and mediated many large commercial and employment disputes and he regularly facilitated negotiation, strategic planning and transformation processes. He was a member of the team of international experts appointed by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to design mediation training for developing countries and he regularly trained mediators from countries in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and South America. The ILO also commissioned John to design training material and to train parties and trainers from countries across the world in mutual gain negotiation. This training material has been translated into French, Portuguese and Arabic and is used extensively throughout the world.
