Aaron B. Zeman is a mediator credentialed by the Texas Mediator Credentialing Association and received a Master of Arts in Dispute Resolution from SMU’s Simmons School and is a member of the American Arbitration Association. Aaron established Oak Cliff Conflict Management Group (OCCM) in 2022. OCCM seeks to provide mediation and conflict coaching to communities underserved by traditional Dispute Resolution practitioners.
Aaron was born in Pecos, TX, but he “grew-up” in Pecos, Lubbock, Pecos (again), Fredericksburg, Temple, Belton, College Station, San Antonio, and Dallas. As the product of a contentious divorce, bad mediation is something with which Aaron is familiar and understands how much wasted time and energy we can devote to issues that do not really matter. Aaron’s “vida loca” taught him to appreciate that conflict can be a creative force, and that endings are not always bad.
Aaron received a degree in Business Management from Texas A&M University in College Station, TX in 2007. He worked in corporate benefits consulting and employee compensation analysis for over a decade before returning to school. He began his graduate studies at the University of Dallas in Irving, TX in 2018 where he completed his studies in Psychology in 2020. Aaron finished his Master of Arts in Dispute Resolution from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX in 2023. Aaron Zeman is a doctoral candidate at SMU, studying historical responses to shared trauma, from a conflict engagement perspective.
Aaron lives with his partner in the Oak Cliff area of Dallas. They have a very opinionated black cat named Dorito. Aaron and Dane are addicted to college sports, but they are also active members at First Presbyterian Church (USA) of Dallas. They actively support the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and UKirk SMU.
Bertram-Zeman, LLC was established in 2022 and provides employee compensation analysis and internal dispute mitigation system design and consulting services.
Primary Counties of focus: Dallas County, Tarrant County, Brazos County, and Reeves County, Texas.
Despite conflict’s potentially destructive impacts on interaction, people have the capacity to change the quality of their interactions to reflect personal strength or self-confidence (the empowerment shift) and relative openness or responsiveness to the other (the recognition shift). Moreover, as these positive dynamics feed into each other, the interaction can regenerate and assume a constructive, connecting, and humanizing character. The model assumes that the transformation of the interaction itself is what matters most to parties in conflict – even more than settlement on favorable terms. Therefore, the theory defines the mediator’s goal as helping the parties to identify opportunities for empowerment and recognition shifts as they arise in the parties’ conversation, to choose whether and how to act upon these opportunities, and thus to change their interaction from destructive to constructive (Bush & Pope, 2002).
A transformative mediator should be able to:
Southern Methodist University, Dallas TX – Doctor of Liberal Studies (Cohort 9)
Southern Methodist University, Dallas TX – MA Dispute Resolution
University of Dallas, Irving TX – Graduate work in Psychology and Humanities
Dallas College, Dallas TX – Social Work
Texas A&M University, College Station TX – Bachelor of Business Administration in Management (Legal Track)
Texas A&M University, College Station TX – Certificate in International Business (Marketing and Communication Emphasis)
