Heather Scheiwe Kulp

Heather Scheiwe Kulp - Clinical Instructor and Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School

(The following post is an adaptation of an Alumni Profile article in the Northwestern University School of Law Center on Negotiation and Mediation Newsletter, Summer 2014)

Heather’s career is a tale of many firsts. When she graduated Northwestern in 2010, she was determined to move into dispute resolution and like many individuals trying to work in ADR as a first career was told it would be near impossible. But Heather was determined to make it work and she became the first Skadden Fellow to be awarded a fellowship in dispute resolution. Heather’s Skadden Fellowship was with Resolution Systems Institute and focused on researching and designing mediation programs as a process for addressing the height of the foreclosure crises. After completing her fellowship, she was then hired as the first ever Clinical Fellow at Harvard’s Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program. And now, Heather
is the first non-Harvard grad to be hired as a Clinical Instructor position in the Negotiation and Mediation Program where she will start this fall.
 
Heather says her career aspiration started in law school when she took the Negotiation Workshop at Northwestern Law. Prior to this course, she had always seen negotiation skills in the practice of law, but didn’t realize that being a professional dispute resolution expert could be a career in and of itself.

Heather relied on her entrepreneurial skills to
creatively design her own path. In fact, Heather says that anyone who wants to enter the field of ADR as a first career needs to have an entrepreneurial mindset. She says, "I look at what a better outcome might be, then set out to design processes
using tools that may be underutilized."

Congratulations to Heather as she starts her new position as Clinical Instructor at Harvard Law School! We are so proud of her and all the firsts she has accomplished.