The people behind the materials
People who plant something and then nurture it: that’s how the materials in this shop come about. It usually starts with an idea born out of practical experience – perhaps because something was missing from a seminar, or because an exercise called for a form that you could hold in your hand.
It often takes a long time for this to become a finished product. Some items have developed over the years, been trialled in groups, revised, tested again and only then printed. What you’ll find here has gone through this process of trial and error.
So there’s a person behind almost every resource. You may recognise some of them from seminars; others you’ll be meeting here for the first time. Here’s a brief introduction to them.
Claudia Broadhurst
Claudia Broadhurst is the owner of Empathikon. She has been a certified trainer with the Centre for Nonviolent Communication for many years and works as a trainer and mediator specialising in non-judgemental communication. She offers practice groups, one-day training sessions, seminars and workshops in companies, as well as conflict management, mediation, coaching and process facilitation. Her office and seminar room are based in Glückstadt. Everything available in this shop has been selected, co-developed or published by her.
Markus Castro
Markus Castro is a trainer, instructor and co-founder of the Impact Institute. He is a certified trainer in Nonviolent Communication (CNVC and the GFK Professional Association) and a certified facilitator for Systemic Consensus-Building; he is also trained in sociocratic facilitation and Metaplan facilitation. Based in Potsdam, he is responsible for the Berlin and Potsdam branches and runs introductory seminars, trainer training courses and webinars.
Stephanie Ebel
Stephanie Ebel, known to everyone as Steffi, is a communication designer and runs the Weckerwerk studio in Hodorf. She has taken on the design work for Edition Callimani: she developed the ‘Magisches Feld’ dance mat, the Giraffe Journal and the mousepad together with Sylvie Hörning and Claudia. She created the visual representation of the NVC process in the forms of flower petals, a giraffe and a wolf, as well as in the symbols for observation, feeling, need and request.
Anja Escherich
Anja Escherich lives and works in Hamburg as a consultant and coach in Non-Violent Communication, as a Kundalini yoga teacher, as a designer and as an artist. She is a trainer at the Hamburg Institute for Non-Violent Communication and at the Non-Violent Communication Hamburg association, where she offers introductory courses, advanced workshops and coaching. She helped design the institute’s visual identity; the website and the handbook for practice groups are her work. As well as Non-Violent Communication, she works in print and web design, illustration and painting. We are delighted to showcase her enchanting giraffe mugs.
Michael von Hartz
Michael von Hartz has shaped the visual identity of *Empathische Zeit* for many years. Furthermore, our collaboration has produced numerous postcards and other small NVC materials, which many subscribers have received as supplements to the magazine. Michael has immersed himself deeply in the philosophy of Non-Violent Communication and developed a distinctive visual language for it. With a keen sense of symbolism, humour and subtle nuances, he has created designs that invite you to pause, smile and reflect further. Many of these designs are now among the special products in the Empathikon range.
Sylvie Hörning
Sylvie Hörning is a happy grandmother and has been a trainer certified in Nonviolent Communication by the Centre for Nonviolent Communication since 2012. In Basel, she offers courses, workshops and one-to-one support under the name Callimani. She loves to accompany people on their journey towards mutual understanding. Following a seminar with Marshall Rosenberg in 2006, she decided to delve deeper into what she had experienced and to share it with others. She developed the ‘Magical Field’ dance mat, the Giraffe Journal and the mousepad in creative collaboration with Claudia and Stephanie Ebel, producing them in several languages.
Ingrid Holler
Ingrid Holler is a trainer and author specialising in Non-Violent Communication and works at the Blickwinkel Academy in Munich. She is a recognised trainer with the Professional Association for Non-Violent Communication, a BM-certified mediator and trainer, a trainer in holistic learning, and a management consultant specialising in human resources development. She has translated Marshall Rosenberg’s seminal work and written several books of her own on Non-Violent Communication, including the training book *Non-Violent Communication* with exercises for self-study, seminars and practice groups.
Irmtraud Kauschat
Dr Irmtraud Kauschat is a trainer in Non-Violent Communication and has travelled to the UK, Iceland, France, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, Nigeria, Ukraine, as well as Israel and Palestine in this capacity. She has more than fifteen years’ experience as a mediator in conflict-affected regions, including Croatia and Serbia, Kenya, Israel and Palestine, and Ukraine. She first encountered Non-Violent Communication in 1994 at an intercultural peace camp in Hungary. She also works as a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine and has been teaching Qigong since 1988. She is the author of *Das große Praxisbuch des wertschätzenden Miteinanders* and *52 x ICH*, as well as the English-language book *Stepping Stones to Peace – Nonviolent Communication in Eastern Africa*. For the past ten years, she has been supporting certification candidates in her role as an assessor.
Petra Kumm
Petra Kumm is a teacher in Bremen, a trainer in Non-Violent Communication and the developer of the ‘Clarification Game’. Since 2009, she has been enthusiastically sharing NVC and is particularly committed to the professional development of her colleagues. In addition, she translates NVC seminars and has worked with Kelly Bryson, Robert Gonzales and Liv Larsson, amongst others.
Christiane Lesch
Christiane Lesch is an illustrator and painter. She studied graphic design, has been publishing book illustrations and children’s books since 1975 – mainly with the publisher Freies Geistesleben – and has also been working with colour etching and freehand painting since the 1980s. She was introduced to Non-Violent Communication by her friend Dr Gitta Zimmermann, a certified NVC trainer: this led to the creation of a perpetual NVC calendar and two portfolios of artwork. Her designs feature on the postcards and art cards that we have published and printed.
Jens Neumann
Jens Neumann is a certified trainer and instructor in Non-Violent Communication and the owner of Mut-Fabrik. In addition to running practice groups, providing annual support and delivering training courses, he works as a mediator and offers one-to-one support. He has written and published several exercise books for practical use, including the ‘Favourite Exercise Book on Non-Violent Communication’, for which he compiled the favourite exercises of around thirty trainers, and ‘Travel Companion Instead of Education: NVC with Children’. He is also the author of *Giraffe Relationships*. He is the father of three children.
Andi Schmidbauer
Together with Ingrid Holler, Andi Schmidbauer runs the Blickwinkel Academy in Munich, which offers training and courses in Non-Violent Communication, mediation and coaching. He has been working professionally with Non-Violent Communication since 2002; prior to that, he gained experience in international project management and consultancy. He is a recognised trainer with the Professional Association for Non-Violent Communication and a founding member of the organisation; he is also a BM-certified mediator and BM-certified trainer with the Federal Association for Mediation. Andi Schmidbauer is also the author of books on Non-Violent Communication. Our programme includes his practical works on emotion and need vocabulary.
Al Weckert
Al Weckert is a trainer certified in Nonviolent Communication by the Centre for Nonviolent Communication and the Professional Association for Nonviolent Communication, as well as a BM trainer and a Mimic Resonance trainer. His areas of specialisation are empathy training, organisational development and conflict management, particularly within large companies and organisations. He is the author of numerous books on Nonviolent Communication and mediation, including *Nonviolent Communication for Dummies*. Between 2013 and 2023, he wrote over forty articles for *Empathische Zeit*. The Empathikon Shop stocks, amongst other things, the daily planners he has developed.
