 Carole
Houk
Carole Houk is a dispute resolution professional, facilitator,
attorney and conflict management systems designer based in
the Washington, DC area. She is the principal of Carole Houk
International, LLC (CHI) which she formed in 2005 as a successor
company to Resolve Advisors, her alliance with Resolve Advisors
Pty Ltd of Australia.
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Conflict Management
Carole Houk is a conflict management professional and attorney
specializing in the design of integrated systems to resolve
healthcare disputes before they become legal claims or malpractice
actions. She designed the operating protocols for the first
Medical Ombudsman/Mediator™ Program within an acute
care hospital in the U.S., which has shown consistently remarkable
results throughout its first 28 locations across the country.
Carole was the first Counsel for the U.S. Department of the
Navy’s Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Program
from 1997 through February 2001, and had all programmatic
responsibility for designing and managing a comprehensive
ADR program covering the Navy’s environmental, contractual,
tort, and workplace disputes. As ADR Counsel, she worked with
the top decision-makers in the Navy to use ADR processes for
a wide range of disputes, from sensitive environmental negotiations
with multiple litigants to convening a mediation in the largest
government contracts claim to date; the $2.1 billion A-12
Avenger litigation with former Secretary of State Warren Christopher
as chief mediator. Carole’s design and implementation
of the first federal certification program for workplace mediators
has become the gold standard for employee neutrals working
within large organizations.
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Making Systemic Changes
Carole specializes in the design of conflict management systems.
She has designed a successful model for the early resolution
of medical malpractice disputes for healthcare organizations,
which has shown remarkable results in its first four years
of operation at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda,
MD, and nationwide at 28 Kaiser Permanente locations. She
is supporting PDG Group in its design and implementation of
an Integrated Conflict Management System for the Model Workplace
at the Transportation Security Agency. As the US consultant
on an international team to assist Public Works and Government
Services Canada, she helped design an integrated system for
procurement matters. She has served as an ADR consultant to
the Canadian Department of National Defense, Justice Canada,
and the Australian Defense Organization in the design of their
federal ADR programs, as well as the Federal Maritime Commission
and the Department of Interior in the U.S.
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Training and Papers
Carole has developed and presented learning programs in the
form of executive level presentations, intensive skills sessions,
and multi-day trainings for the Departments of the Navy, Air
Force, Army, Defense, Justice, Agriculture, Environmental
Protection Agency, Interior, Veteran’s Affairs, and
the Securities and Exchange Commission. She has been invited
to speak at many industry functions and conferences, including
the National Patient Safety Foundation’s Annual Congress,
the American Society for HealthCare Risk Management, the Partnership
for Patient Safety, the Pittsburgh Regional HealthCare Initiative,
and the American Organization of Nurse Executives. She has
presented internationally at the NADRAC and LEADR conferences
in Sydney and the Network conference in Vancouver, British
Columbia. She is an adjunct professor of dispute resolution
at the Georgetown University Law Center and Hamline University
School of Law.
She is a contributing author to the recently published book,
Achieving Safe and Reliable HealthCare: Strategies and Solutions,
by Leonard, Frankel and Simmonds, in a chapter entitled Communicating
About Episodes of Harm to Patients, published by the
Health Administration Press, 2004.
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Honorarium
Carole is Co-Chair of the Organizational Conflict Management
Section of the Association for Conflict Resolution, and a
member of the Dispute Resolution Section of the American Bar
Association.
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Background
Carole has a BA in Urban Studies from Michigan State University,
a JD from Wayne State University, and an LLM from Georgetown
University Law Center. She has been a licensed attorney since
1979 and is a trained mediator and ombudsperson.
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