Mediation expert helps businesses, families

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - Louise Phipps Senft doesn’t just help her clients find a middle ground — she helps them realize who they

really are.

Founding Louise Phipps Senft and Associates/Baltimore Mediation in 1993, the woman named Baltimore’s best mediator by Baltimore Magazine prides herself on not only helping professionals, employees and families come to a resolution, but also revealing their personalities.

A renowned advocate of Enneagram personality testing, Senft is a nationally certified transformative mediator and accredited by the Maryland Council on Dispute Resolution.

“Effective negotiating begins by knowing yourself and your own triggers,” Senft said. “We make sure everyone is able to say what they want to say in the way they want to say it and be heard and understood. Whenever I can accomplish that with my clients, it is an enormous success.”

Running a firm of seven employees, Senft continually raises the bar for herself and her practice. To date, she has mediated more than 2,000 family and organizational conflicts, and helps to train and educate more than 500 people a year.

Sporting a law degree from the Washington & Lee School of Law, Senft serves as an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland School of Law, the University of Baltimore Law School and Loyola Business School. Recently, she lectured at Harvard Law School on negotiating and teaching conflict transformation.

Senft emphasizes a continued level of high service from both herself and her employees. “I am entirely committed to my local community here in Baltimore and Maryland,” she said.

“It’s very high energy here,” said Tammi Scott-Lynch, executive assistant of business development at Baltimore Mediation. “Working with Louise, she’s very honest to herself and the people she works with. She is also very concerned with making sure people have their opportunity to speak.”

dcarey@baltimoreexaminer.com