Jack Hamilton

"Being heard, you hear yourself." - JACK HAMILTON, Ph.D.

Jack Hamilton is an inquisitive man. And this attitude, in tandem with his love for people, has led him to and sustained him through his wide-ranging career as a mediator.

When he was on a third date with his future wife, Myllicent, Jack had an epiphany: Listening is an act of love.

Myllicent asked, “Well, Jack, why don’t you tell me about your love life?” Jack complied, telling her about all his past girlfriends and a former fiancée. She simply listened. “Being listened to like that changed our whole relationship. I felt like I was known to her.” (During a subsequent conversation, Jack asked his wife about her love life, too.)

Jack said, “In mediation, it is very critical that the disputants experience being heard by the mediator and by one another. Being heard has a transformational impact on a person’s state of being. They’re relieved that ‘somebody really got it.’”

Convinced that we are at a time in the world when embracing diversity among people and groups is of vital importance, Jack is on a mission as a conflict-resolution professional to teach people how to realize their potential of coming to a truer understanding of each other. He said, “The reality is that adversaries are people who have not yet heard each other's stories.”

Jack has held positions as an instructor at Stanford University, as a senior research scientist at the American Institutes for Research, as director of executive services at the Institute for Information Management, and as co-founder of The Information Group, Inc. He holds a B.A. from Harvard, an M.A. from the University of California, and an M.A. and a Ph.D. from Stanford.