Mediator Profile

Professional Experience

Harold Coleman, Jr. is principal of Harold Coleman Jr. Ltd. (2004 to date), a San Diego-based conflict-management firm that delivers solution-focused and value-driven professional alternative dispute resolution (ADR) services in the areas of real estate, construction, commercial, consumer, business and employment law, with a practice focus in complex technical disputes and pre-dispute avoidance. As an ADR professional, he also serves as senior vice president for mediation at the American Arbitration Association (AAA) – the global leader in dispute resolution services worldwide.

Coleman is an ADR panelist with the Superior Court of California’s Civil Mediation Program, the San Diego Association of Realtors’ Real Estate Mediation Center, the San Diego County Bar Association’s attorney/client fee arbitration and mediation committees, and the AAA’s Large & Complex Case (LCC) panel for commercial and construction disputes. He is a licensed attorney, licensed real estate broker, and credentialed mediator, arbitrator and educator who since 1987 has served the international business and legal communities in resolving complex litigated and non-litigated disputes through innovative ADR applications of interest-based negotiation, facilitation, mediation, independent fact-finding, early neutral evaluation, and binding arbitration. He is a former civil-litigation attorney (McInnis, Fitzgerald, Rees, Sharkey & McIntyre, 1990-97; Gaglione, Coleman & Greene, LLP, 1997-2004) with expertise in complex technical litigation. He is a professional trainer who routinely trains corporate management teams in ADR, communication, conflict management, claims prevention, strateagic planning, and critical thinking/problem solving, among other enterprise risk-management themes. His corporate clientele includes The Boeing Company, the global aerospace leader.

A former project design engineer and multi-disciplinary project manager (County of San Diego, Office of Architecture & Engineering, 1980-90; Arizona Department of Transportation, 1975-80), Coleman’s ADR expertise has actively facilitated the resolution of several hundred mediated and arbitrated complex disputes, with an aggregate case disposition value well exceeding 500-million dollars. Among other honors and awards, Coleman has been recognized by the State Bar of California in 2000 with its “Distinguished Service to the Legal Profession” citation. More recently, Coleman in 2009 was inducted as Fellow of the prestigious national College of Commercial Arbitrators, comprised of the most esteemed neutrals in the industry. In 2011, Coleman was appointed to the Board of Trustees of the San Diego Museum of Man. In 2012, Coleman was appointed to the CCA’s national Board of Directors.