Diana Nadeau joined CADRE in May 2021 and serves as a Dispute Resolution and Equity Specialist. Diana offers universal, targeted, and intensive technical assistance activities, learning community trainings specific to conflict resolution options within special education, and cultural and linguistic competency-specific programing. Diana has over 15 years of experience teaching students with disabilities and supporting students through family engagement. As a parent, Diana has lived experience navigating systems of care and various education systems.
Diana is an equity-informed mediator with 7 years of experience in family, teen, elder, community, and workplace mediation/conflict resolution. Through years of training and because of lived experience, Diana is highly passionate about conflict management and resolution, cultural and linguistic competence, systems-level thinking and improvement, collaborative problem solving, public speaking, presentation, and professional consultation.
As an Autistic, nonbinary, Arab-American, Diana provides CADRE with a personal understanding and experience of equity and access issues. To this extent, Diana brings authentic and genuine cultural competence to CADRE’s products, services, and stakeholders and constantly seeks ways to reach beyond barriers to better understand individual experiences. Diana has been a longstanding member of Oregon Mediation Association (OMA), and previous to CADRE, was the Southern Oregon Regional Manager to Oregon Family Support Network (OFSN). Most recently, Diana was invited to co-present on conflict resolution strategies at the Tribal Youth Resource Center’s 2022 Conference.
Diana has a 20 year foundation of mindfulness training in the Tibetan tradition and integrates this practice in her professional work. Inspired by earlier years as a K-8 private school teacher working with disabled youth, Diana wrote and received multiple awards for two children’s books. In addition to working on the CADRE team, Diana loves writing, hiking, sailing, paddleboarding, and enjoying time with a wonderful partner and daughter, family, friends, and two silly cats.