For nearly 40 years, Ginny Sassaman’s career aspirations have been driven by an inner duality: a yearning to contribute to the greater good of the world through the pursuit of justice, and a need to be personally, artistically creative. As a schoolgirl, she wanted to be the first woman president and a civil rights worker, as well as a poet/interior decorator. Sassaman’s first professional job — a writer, photographer, producer, and talk show host for a public television station across the street from the Hershey chocolate factory — blended her dual interests fairly well. But Washington, DC beckoned, and Ginny dove into the public policy arena as media relations director for Common Cause and the Women’s Legal Defense Fund. Eventually her artistic self came again to the fore, and Sassaman started a 15 year stint as a fulltime, self-employed watercolor painter.

The shift to mediation began in 2005, following an inspirational visit to the Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm, Sweden. Sassaman completed her M.S. in Mediation and Applied Conflict Studies at Woodbury College in 2007 and served as an assistant editor of Mastering Mediation during the 2006-07 academic year.

She lives with her huband Bob in a renovated cow barn in the heart of downtown Maple Corner.