Nicola Hartfield

Nicola began her career in 1986 as a hospital based social worker working with terminally ill children and their families. Later she gained a post graduate diploma in dispute resolution and has held contracts providing specialist reports for Family Court, chairing care and protection resource panels, providing applicant and respondent domestic violence programmes, voice of child reporting and since 2006, providing FDR mediation. Her experience covers every aspect of family life and the grief, trauma and heartache that separation of any kind creates.

Nicola is a Fellow of the Arbitrators’ and Mediators’ Institute of NZ, a Fellow of the Resolution Institute and is NMAS (Aust) accredited. She is the inaugural recipient of the Anne Edge Memorial Award for Excellence in Fellowship Mediation. Nicola sits on the AMINZ Panel of Mediators, the FDR and Elder list of mediators, and was appointed to the AMINZ complaints committee in 2022.

Nicola has been a contract teacher for the Massey University Dispute Resolution Centre and prior to covid, taught mainly in Australia and the States. She lives in Whanganui where she mediates, provides supervision and coaching online, and teaches the AMINZ 5-day AMINZ Mediation skills programme, throughout NZ Aotearoa.