Robert Stains, MEd

Bob Stains is a Senior Associate at Essential Partners, having previously served as Senior VP for Training. He designs and facilitates dialogues the US and other countries that help people divided by identity, religious and political differences to connect and become more human to each other. Bob trains other senior practitioners in Essential Partners' Reflective Structured Dialogue approach and provides conflict engagement coaching to academic, civic and religious leaders in the US and abroad. 

Over the space of two decades Bob helped build the Public Conversations Project from a small local group to an internationally-renowned team of practitioners, trainers and consultants now known as Essential Partners.

Bob was a Visiting Researcher at the Tom Porter Program on Religion and Conflict Transformation of the Boston University School of Theology 2018-2021and consulted to the Harvard Negotiation Project for 15 years. He has served as adjunct faculty at Harvard Divinity School and schools of law at Pepperdine and Mitchel-Hamline universities and has also taught at Baylor and University of Washington schools of law as well as Hebrew College. 

Bob is an active member of Mediators Beyond Borders International, a co-founder of The Family Dinner Project and was one of the original mediator trainers for the USPS REDRESS program, the first national program in Transformative Mediation.

In addition to his work with Essential Partners, Bob maintains a private conflict transformation practice in Danvers, MA.