Liz Grenat, Executive Director
Liz has been the executive director since April, 2016. She has spent the majority of her professional career promoting social justice and working to alleviate the barriers faced by at-risk youth and vulnerable families. Liz was Executive Director of Big Brothers Big Sisters of South Central Indiana from 1999 to 2007. Since that time she held regional positions with Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and BBBS of Northeast Indiana. As Midwest Associate Director of Agency Development, Liz consulted with agency leadership teams on capacity building initiatives, strategic planning, financial management, fund raising, diversity and inclusion planning, and on improving program quality and outcomes. She also worked on public policy and advocacy issues. Liz certainly knows about conflict resolution as she grew up in a large blended family where talking about issues both large and small was the norm, even as small as who gets the last fudge bar.
Ed Greenebaum, Director of Programs
Ed serves CJAM in many roles: as a member of the board of directors, an instructor, director of programs, and senior mediator. Ed is a graduate of the Harvard Law School, and retired law professor at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law. At IU he taught dispute resolution, mediation and related subjects. He served as a visiting social scientist at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations and as a visiting fellow at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies at the University of London. Ed and Joan are long-time Bloomington residents.
Nick Philbeck, Restorative Justice Case Manager
Nick is a senior mediator and currently serves as the restorative justice case manager, managing the VORP (Victim & Offender Restoration Program) and STEP (Shoplifting & Theft Education) programs. Nick is a Bloomington, Indiana native and Butler University alumnus. He served as a member of the school’s Black Student Union and as a representative on the R.E.A.C.H. (Respecting, Embracing & Achieving Community Harmony) council, who partnered with the Student Government Association to promote respect of diversity within race, spirituality, gender and sexual orientation in order to foster a fair, cooperative, and open-minded environment. Nick began volunteering with CJAM in 2004 as a teen mediator and youth workshop facilitator. He worked with fellow mediators to create a youth-appropriate conflict resolution handbook, Fight Without Fighting, published by CJAM in 2005.
Diane Legomsky, Community Mediation Case Manager
Diane came to Bloomington in 2014 and joined CJAM as a volunteer in 2015, and because of her experience, joined the staff as community mediation case manager. She came to us from Green Bay, WI where she served as the executive director at a mediation center. Her areas of expertise are: training/mentoring mediators, mediation itself, and program development. In Green Bay she had an average of 30 volunteer mediators, and an average of 500-600 cases a year, with a 92% resolution rate and 85% compliance rate. Diane also serves with the League of Women Voters. She and her husband Don are enjoying retirement in Bloomington.
Ben Wendell, M.D., Office Manager
Ben is a retired radiologist who decided to give back to the community by serving CJAM as our office manager. Ben came to us through Area 10 Agency’s RSVP program. Besides volunteering at CJAM, Ben is an avid dancer at the Arthur Murray studio with his wife Meredith. Ben and Meredith have lived in Bloomington for 25 years, they have three grown children.
- John Alme, Esq. serves as Vice President of the Board of Directors, is an instructor and a senior mediator. He is an attorney and former prosecutor whose Minnesota practice centered on assisting individuals and families in various forms of crisis: criminal allegations, juvenile delinquency proceedings, child protection actions, and civil commitments, among others. John and Leah currently live in Bloomington.
- Edwin H. Greenebaum is a graduate of the Harvard Law School, and retired law professor at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law. At IU he taught dispute resolution, mediation and related subjects. He served as a visiting social scientist at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations and as a visiting fellow at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies at the University of London. Ed is the HOA president of his condo association and double bass player in the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra. Ed and Joan are long-time Bloomington residents.
- Donna Hackney serves as Treasurer of the Board of Directors, chairs the finance committee, and is a trained mediator. Donna has a B.A. in Social and Behavioral Sciences from Indiana University and recently retired from Indiana University where she was departmental administrator and fiscal officer of the Department of Geological Sciences.
- Susan M. Klein, Ph.D. serves as a member of the board of directors and chairs the Development Committee. She has been a special educator for over 50 years working in summer camps, residential programs, and public school classrooms before completing her Ph.D. Now Professor Emerita of Special Education from the Indiana University-Bloomington School of Education, she continues to be engaged in the study of family-professional relationships in public and non-profit settings that serve persons with developmental disabilities and their families. Susan and her husband Bob Agranoff reside in Bloomington, IN.
- Jody Madeira, Ph.D. serves as a member of the board of directors. She has been a law professor at Indiana University since 2007. Her interests primarily involve the intersection of law and emotion in criminal and family law. Madeira is also an author and researcher; her first book, Killing McVeigh: The Death Penalty and the Myth of Closure, was published in 2012. Madeira is married to Matt and they have seven children.
- Vanessa Roberts serves as President of the Board of Directors, chair of the Programs Committee, and a senior mediator. She has more than 20 years of management experience with 15 years in the pharmaceutical industry. She has expertise in supply chain management and process improvement methodologies and is a trained mediator with extensive expertise in conflict resolution. She served as the chief operations officer of the consulting firm, Learning Purpose, and is current a Supply Chain Manager with Baxter International.
- Jerry (J.L.) Siefers, Esq, serves as a member of the Board of Directors and is a trained mediator. He is an attorney and limits his practice to elder law issues including elder law and elder care mediation. He is a registered Civil Mediator with the Indiana Supreme Court. J.L. is married and has two sons.
- Roberta Wysong serves as Secretary of the Board of Directors and volunteer bookkeeper for CJAM. She is a retired social worker who served as the executive director of the Monroe County Youth Services Bureau for 12 years and was employed in other youth serving organizations in other communities before that. Her social work degrees are from Indiana University.