Mari Cruz Taboada

Co-Founder and Managing Director, Iberian Legal Group

Mari Cruz is co Founder and Managing Director of Iberian Legal Group an international consultancy, publishing and business development group for international businesses and law firms set up in 2007.

Previously Mari Cruz worked as a consultant and sole dispute resolution expert for Brighton & Hove City Council – which has more than 12,000 employees – providing mediation and negotiation support on employment disputes and inter-departmental conflicts. She has assisted parties in over 300 disputes ranging from employment, community and commercial disputes. In 1997 Mari Cruz became the first Spanish lawyer working within the Centre for Effective Resolution (CEDR) in London, the coordinating body for commercial mediation in the UK. In 2000, she was recruited to a pioneering position as the business development manager to London´s largest community mediation service, the Southwark Mediation Centre (SMC). SMC works at a local and institutional level – in cooperation with the public authorities - on issues related to health, education and labour disputes. Mari Cruz coordinated the development of pilot projects around the South of London and was responsible for their training programmes.

Over recent years, she has delivered workshops at conferences in Spain and England with ACDMA (Asociación para el desarrollo de la mediación y el arbitraje) and Mediation UK - the UK´s regulatory authority for mediation in civil and public disputes - amongst others. Since 2006 she has taught on the Postgraduate Programmes on Alternative Dispute Resolution at the University of Barcelona, and to MBA students in Madrid at IE Business School. She has contributed as a Visiting Professor for the Mexican Justice Department, providing a programme on mediation skills for judges and since 2012 has trained law graduates on negotiation skills at University College of London (UCL).

Mari Cruz is a law graduate from Zaragoza University and has completed a postgraduate diploma in ADR at the London School of Economics. She is a member of the Barcelona Bar Association (ICAB) an accredited mediator in commercial disputes with CEDR since 1998. She gained IMI accreditation on multi-cultural conflict resolution on 2012.