Dear ADRIO Members and Dispute Resolution Practitioners
Happy New Year! Wishing you a healthy, happy and successful 2026!
We ended 2025 on a high note with our exciting annual member appreciation event!
I want to congratulate the three longest standing members of ADRIO Richard McLaren, Harvey Kirsh, and David Atlin. These members were honoured for their commitment of 38 to 47 years of ADRIO membership and contribution to the field of ADR.
I want to also congratulate our Star award recipients for 2025, Todd Archibald and Cheryl Gaster. The ADRIO Star award is a staff-choice award, dedicated to members who have made a memorable impact through their volunteer work at ADRIO in a given year or more. Thank you both for your meaningful contributions to the ADR field in Ontario and the community here at ADRIO through your volunteer work, leadership, and depth of care in making the dispute resolution and conflict management industry a better place.
Tommy and I travelled to the ADRIC Conference held in Vancouver in Oct 2025. We had a great representation of Ontario members. It was a time of valuable learning, networking and collaboration. As well, I joined our National Executive Director and the Executive Directors from British Columbia and Alberta to share on Leading Change: What’s Next for ADR in Canada.
I also took time to reflect on my journey in dispute resolution when I was honoured with the 2025 Lionel J. McGowan Regional Award of Excellence at the ADRIC Conference. This experience left me deeply grateful and humble.
As I reflected on 2025 at ADRIO, I got more and more excited about our achievements together as an organization and am bursting with enthusiasm for 2026!
You have heard me say many times before that it is a great honour for me to be the leader of operations as we all do our part to elevate ADRIO and the field of ADR to new heights. As I look back on the year it has been filled with materialized potential and possibility as we completed year one of ADRIO’s 3 year operational plan.
Our ADRIO membership, YOU, make ADRIO a meaningful place to build, grow and flourish. Our community has been our strength. We continue to move with momentum in the areas of membership, designations, branding and building awareness for the ADR field. Thank you all for contributing to building a strong community!
I wanted to give you an update on our 3 strategic pillars that will continue to shape our work for the next 2 years of greater success.
1. Branding: Increase Awareness and Support of Our Industry and Organization
This year ADRIO has formalized 9 collaborations with the goal of increasing awareness of ADR and ADRIO through creative collaborations and thought leadership. These collaborations include: ADRIC, Charity Village, Condominium Authority of Ontario, Department of Justice Canada, Human Resources Professional Association, Humber College, Kompass Professional Development, Lightstone Academy of Conflict Resolution, and York University.
These collaborations have provided opportunities to our members, sponsorships, contributed to thought leadership in Ontario and across Canada, built awareness in other sectors about dispute resolution services and practitioners.
We look forward to building on these strategic collaborations to raise awareness and be leaders the field of ADR and ADRIO.
2. Membership Retention and Recruitment: Strengthening Our Community
I am happy to share that as a staff team and dedicated group of member volunteers, knitted together with our common goals and shared values of unity, our membership retention and recruitment efforts have translated into a trend that reveals that for the end of 2025, we are months ahead of our membership total. We have interested people everyday inquiring about this strong community that you have all played a part in building. Thank you all for being the heart of ADRIO! 😊. Let us continue to support one another through publishing articles filled with a wealth of wisdom, facilitating workshops for new, intermediate and seasoned practitioners, mentoring and coaching each other to gain valuable designations and credentials provincially, nationally and internationally.
Our ADRIO staff team and Board of Directors has a track record of providing member centric value—meaningful experiences, ongoing learning, and a strong sense of belonging.
We have launched the Pathways to Experience (P2E) program for mentees to gain mentorship from experienced practitioners and will launch the next phase in 2026.
Another milestone is that we have reached the highest number of designations granted in one year at 72 designations.
3. Sustaining Our Future through Revenue Growth
Over the past year, ADRIO has:
- Piloted and launched the organizational membership category for organizations to join our strong community and be supported in their dispute resolution efforts.
- Welcomed in a new post-secondary education provider who purchases student ADRIO memberships to support and set their students up for success by introducing them to ADRIO as the association that provides a pathway to careers, membership, designations and a strong community. This is a total of 60 new members annually.
- ADRIO has piloted and launched ADRIC’s National Introductory Mediation Course.
For the remaining 2 years of ADRIO’s strategic plan, we will continue to plan, innovate, and be focused. Our team and board of directors, look forward to a future where our revenue is strong, sustainable, and aligned with our mission. We will ensure that our organization remains at the center of all things ADR, as well as a thriving force for years to come.
In Conclusion: Our Path Forward
The 3 priority areas function as a cycle that feds into each other. We continue to reap the benefits of this cycle working as we have built a strong brand, support new practitioners and our current membership and grow our revenue. As this continues, we can invest in even greater branding, membership support, and creating a cycle of success.
I want to express my deep gratitude to our ADRIO Board of Directors, thank you to our President, Jeff Donnelly, for your strong governance leadership, professionalism and kindness. Thank you to our executive committee, Sarah Albo, Jen Hyatt, and Drew Samuels for your executive leadership, expertise, focus and care. Thank you to our Directors, Steve Benmor, Peter Bruer, William Cornet, Kartik Gupta, Rosie Macri, Eric Myles and Treena Reilkoff for your time, expertise in your respective areas, and dedication to ADR, ADRIO and the staff team.
I also want to express gratefulness to Sioux and Tommy for their intelligence, ability to create systems to cover much more ground than 2 people and commitment to impact the ADRIO member experience in ways that will last a lifetime.
In closing, our team is excited for 2026! We have hit the ground running by pursuing our organizational goals with purpose and passion.
Wherever you are on your career journey, please remember our ADRIO team is here to support you.
I look forward to connecting many of you at one of our exciting engagements in 2026.
Sincerely,
Pramila Javaheri, C. Med. Q. Arb, WFA
Executive Director, ADR Institute of Ontario