Mary Ellen Bowen

Mary Ellen Bowen

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Mary Ellen, expert facilitator and communications specialist, has a lifelong commitment to conflict resolution education. She is the founding executive director of both the Victim Offender Reconciliation Program of Nashville (VORP) and Mid South Mediation Services in middle Tennessee. She was responsible for building and securing funding for the successful mediation program in Nashville and continues the same for Mid South’s program. She graduated Summa Cum Laude with a BSc in Sociology from Tennessee State University and recently earned an MSc in Sustainable Social Communication from Gaia University.

Mary Ellen has trained over eight hundred volunteers for mediation programs and the two neighborhood mediation centers which she initiated. In addition, she developed the curriculum and teaching staff for conflict resolution and anger management classes for youth and adults. Mary Ellen has also trained many of Tennessee’s AmeriCorps workers in conflict resolution skills for the National Association For Community Mediation and has served as their board co-chair. As a member of the Professional Development Training Team of the Center For Peace Education in North Carolina, Mary Ellen has given workshops and trainings in mediation, conflict resolution, peer mediation, fundraising and multicultural diversity for groups and organizations in North America and Europe. 

Mary Ellen is a Listed Rule 31 Civil and Family Mediator with the Supreme Court of Tennessee with special training in domestic violence. She also serves as president of the Tennessee Council for the Advancement of Mediation Programs.

In the last thirty years Mary Ellen has taught many subjects at all age levels, as well as serving terms as the elementary school principal and high school director for an independent community school. In 1986 she created, and has since directed, the Kids To The Country Program (KTC), a twenty-three year-old outdoor, experiential, education program that helps reduce anger, violence and fear in at-risk urban children by connecting them with nature and community. KTC gives kids experiential education normally unavailable to them. The nature school curriculum helps youngsters develop a connection with the rhythms of nature to help expand and enrich their world-view. This work has been and continues to be one of the greatest endeavors of Mary Ellen’s life. Her Gaia University degree (“Sustainable Social Communication Through Education”) revolved around this program as well as her work with founding the Victim Offender Reconciliation Program (VORP) of Nashville, Tennessee.

The primary goals of Mary Ellen work are to educate families in the skills of conflict management, to develop restorative justice programs in the state of Tennessee and to promote social sustainability in the world.