About Kathleen
Bio
Kathleen Macferran is an author, facilitator, Certified Trainer and Assessor Emeritus for the Center for Nonviolent Communication, and the owner of Strength of Connection.
Kathleen holds a vision for a peaceful, just, and sustainable world. She is committed to co-creating a world where peace replaces violence, love replaces hate, equity replaces inequity, and all people live meaningful lives. She has worked as a Certified Trainer for the Center for Nonviolent Communication (CNVC) since 2003, and as a CNVC Assessor for 13 years. For 20 years she served as a workshop facilitator for the Freedom Project of Seattle, WA, an organization that supports healing and restoration inside and outside prisons through Nonviolent Communication, mindfulness, racial equity and anti-oppression.
In an increasingly polarized world, Kathleen believes practical dialogue skills are learnable and essential to reach across the gaps that divide us. Kathleen offers these skills internationally through workshop and meeting facilitation; reimagining and redesigning social systems; and conflict transformation using practical skills that lead to reconciliation with ourselves, our loved ones, and our communities. She has worked with individuals, community groups, businesses, schools, colleges, faith-based communities, hospitals, families, incarcerated individuals, and correctional and law enforcement employees. Kathleen co-facilitates trainings with her husband Rev. Dr. Bob Salt on topics such as healthy sexuality across the lifespan, spirituality and multicultural awareness.
Kathleen is one of the people I think of when I imagine someone who deeply embodies NVC in practice. This is not to say perfection, but rather a grounded presence that consistently modeled care, honesty, steadiness, and mutuality. I especially appreciated Kathleen's capacity to hold space for silence. In a culture that often rushes toward productivity, answers, or resolution, their willingness to allow pauses and spaciousness felt incredibly meaningful. Those moments often gave me time for self-connection, clarity, and deeper awareness of what I was actually feeling or needing beneath my initial reactions. I also appreciated Kathleen's ability to respond empathetically and steadily when difficult dynamics or disruptive energies emerged in the space. I witnessed moments where they acknowledged activation or intensity without shaming individuals, while still remaining connected to the needs of the larger group. That balance felt incredibly skillful and humane.
Prior to her work in nonviolence, Kathleen spent much of her life bringing harmony to communities through music, including two decades as a classical music conductor and leader of a nonprofit organization, and seven years as a public-school music teacher.
Kathleen is the author of Calling In the Dawn: Shaping Our Future through Authentic Dialogue, and co-author with Jared Finkelstein of Choice: A Field Guide for Navigating the Polarization of Our World and Living Interdependently. She is the author of the children’s books How Giraffes Found Their Hearts and How Giraffes Got Their Ears, and conductor for Giraffe Tales a children’s CD setting those stories to music. The Giraffe Tales Trilogy including the new book How Giraffes Learned to Talk Bravely will be released June 2026. Kathleen is the conductor on multiple Rainier Chamber Winds classical music recordings.
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