2026 Keynote Speakers
Opening Keynote - 13 April | Mary Rowe Keynote - 14 April
Monday, 13 April 2026 | 8:00 AM - 9:05 AM PT | Opening Keynote: Something Clinical Is Missing
Description
The phrase, “Something clinical is missing”, belongs to an experienced international mediator, who felt that his work was regularly derailed by the irrationality and intense feelings carried by the groups he was trying to help. The pain behind those feelings is what he meant by “clinical”. From his perspective, that pain had to do with the ways that trauma had shaped the large-group identities and societal contexts of those he was working with.
Does this mediator’s plight link to the organizational challenges IOA members face today? In this presentation, I will explore that question by first outlining a framework for thinking about organizations as dynamic systems with enormous potential for creativity or pain-engendering dysfunction. I will then consider some of the lessons learned in the International Dialogue Initiative’s efforts to bring psychological understanding to societal conflict and how those might apply to the stresses – and efforts to deal with them – in today’s organizations.
About the Speaker
M. Gerard (Jerry) Fromm spent his clinical career at the Austen Riggs Center, where, among other roles, he directed the Erikson Institute for applied psychoanalysis. Jerry is the Past President and Distinguished Member of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations and Past President of the International Dialogue Initiative, which works to bring a psychological understanding to societal conflict. Jerry is a Fellow of the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis and maintains a private practice of organizational and clinical consulting. A recent book is Traveling through Time: How Trauma Plays Itself out in Families, Organizations and Society.
Tuesday, 14 April 2026 | 8:05 AM - 9:05 AM PT | Mary Rowe Keynote: Leaving the Sandbox – Building a Definition Across Models of What It Means to be an Ombuds
Description
The organizational ombuds community is in constant conversation with itself about what it means to be an ombuds. Since its 2005 creation, IOA has enacted practice standards, debated and amended those standards, and created a credible professional certification.
But a profession is also defined by its stakeholders - the people who might actually use the services. The general public mostly has no idea what an ombuds is, and people who might be expected to know better, such as organizational leaders and dispute resolution professionals, often think they know more than they actually do. And that lack of knowledge impacts us in concrete, material ways that threaten not just individual ombuds programs, but our profession as a whole.
If we fail to win the conversation for the word "ombuds" in the mind of the public, our ongoing internal conversations about what it means to be an organizational ombuds will be meaningless. In order to win that conversation, we have to come together across models, bringing together the different ombuds organizations and practice models over the many things we have in common, rather than the few things we don't. Significant work has already been done to define that common ground, and I will draw on my personal background as both an ombuds and an attorney to discuss the ways we might be able to build on it for the benefit of our profession.
About the Speaker
Paul Sotoudeh is the University Ombuds at the University of Rochester. Prior to arriving at Rochester in September 2025, he spent nearly 20 years ombudsing in the US federal government, serving in internally-facing and externally-facing ombuds roles at three different agencies. He also served as Chair of the Coalition of Federal Ombuds for nearly nine years. Paul co-authored, with Emma Phan, the “Governmental Ombuds” chapter in IOA’s 2025 book The Organizational Ombuds: Foundations, Fundamentals & The Future. He holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Rochester and a JD from Washington & Lee University School of Law.
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International Ombuds Association