Louise is a mediator with a master’s degree in creativity and innovation. She has enjoyed a diverse career that’s included managing production and personnel in a family nursery, specialty tile-making, and teaching creative problem solving to middle-schoolers. She is certified in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and has integrated Psychological Type into her mediation and training practices.

Since 1989 she has conducted over 2,000 mediations involving all aspects of interpersonal, civic, and workplace conflicts. These days she mediates tense conversations between irate Portland, Oregon citizens and Portland police officers.

For 25 years Louise taught the mediation process, negotiation, and conflict management at Marylhurst University. Concurrently, she trained, coached and/or mentored hundreds of new mediators for federal, state, county, city, business, community, and victim-offender programs. She has developed and presented over 100 trainings, including The Naked Truth About Problem Solving and Avoid this Workshop!

Louise’s first book was Mediating with Picasso: Relying on Your Inherent Creativity When You Need It Most. She is fascinated by the connections between “little c” creativity and “little c” conflict—what we experience on a day-to-day basis. As a theorist at the convergence of creativity and conflict, her focus in this second book is on interpersonal creativity, the kind we need when we are In Cahoots with others—creatively collaborating to accomplish shared goals.

“If you want to drive anywhere, you can’t have your foot on the brake pedal while gunning the engine. Creative thinking operates the same way. It depends on the dynamic balance between the gas pedal, divergent thinking (idea generation) and the brake pedal, convergent thinking (decision making).”

-from In Cahoots, by Louise Neilson

“There are five general strategies for dealing with conflict. When conflict erupts, it can be dealt with in one or more different ways, depending on several factors.”

-from In Cahoots, by Louise Neilson