Sandy Heierbacher
Director
National Coalition
for Dialogue & Deliberation
114 W. Springville Road
Boiling Springs, PA 17007
717-243-5144

SANDY HEIERBACHER
NATIONAL COALITION FOR DIALOGUE & DELIBERATION
sandy@thataway.org
http://www.thataway.org

BIOGRAPHY
Sandy Heierbacher is the Director of the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD), which brings together people and groups who actively practice, promote and study inclusive, high quality conversations. She has served as the Director of NCDD’s 2002, 2004, and 2006 national conferences, working in collaboration each time with dozens of people from across the spectrum of dialogic and deliberative practice to create unique, engaging events.

NCDD has become a vibrant network of nearly 700 organizations and individuals who, collectively, regularly engage and mobilize hundreds of thousands of Americans around today’s critical issues, and NCDD’s resource-rich website, at www.thataway.org, is a popular hub for dialogue & deliberation leaders. Our website offers a comprehensive assortment of over 2000 tools, best practices and links related to participatory democracy, public engagement, collaborative action, and conflict resolution at all levels, and we keep in touch monthly with over 10,000 people who do this work. Although we have members in dozens of countries, NCDD is also helping similar organizations form outside of the U.S., including the Canadian Community on Dialogue and Deliberation (C2D2), which is currently planning its second national conference, and the newly formed African Coalition on Dialogue and Deliberation (ACDD).

In addition to her work with NCDD, Sandy has consulted for such organizations as the Corporation for National Service, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Kettering Foundation in the areas of intergroup dialogue, public participation and deliberative democracy. Sandy has an M.A. from the School for International Training. She wrote the chapter on dialogue and deliberation for the second edition of The Change Handbook (Berrett-Koehler, 2007). Sandy also currently serves on the Board of Directors of the National Issues Forums Institute, the Executive Committee of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, the Advisory Board of the Public Conversations Project, and the Advisory Board of the September Project.