James L. Creighton, Ph.D.
James L. Creighton holds a B.A. in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in Psychology from the International Institute for Advanced Study. He has been an independent consultant since 1969. His consulting practice was incorporated as Creighton & Creighton, Inc. in 1980. His areas of expertise include public participation and consensus building; alternative dispute resolution; conference, workshop and public meeting design and facilitation; partnering and multi-party team building; risk communication, social impact assessment and institutional analysis.
PUBLIC PARTICIPATION
Creighton has been in the public participation field since 1972. He has been personally involved in designing or conducting more than 300 public participation programs. His government clients include virtually every US federal agency with responsibilities in transportation, natural resource management and planning and environmental cleanup, as well as numerous state and local clients. See client list. Creighton is the author of guides on public participation used by agencies such as the US Environmental Protection Agency, Army Corps of Engineers, Bonneville Power Administration, Bureau of Reclamation, US Forest Service, US Department of Energy, and others. Creighton has also conducted public participation training in Egypt, Thailand, Japan, and Brazil.
Creighton is the author of three books on public participation: The Public Participation Handbook (Jossey-Bass, 2005), Involving Citizens in Community Decision Making (National League of Cities, 1992), and The Public Participation Manual (Abt Books, 1982). Complete publications list.
Creighton has worked with the electric utility industry to encourage the use of public participation in siting of potential controversial energy facilities, such as transmission liens and substations. He is the author of the Edison Electric Institute's Public Involvement Guide, and has conducted public participation training nationally for the Edison Electric Institute and the American Public Power Association. Creighton has designed and conducted public participation programs for more than 30 projects for the Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, Pennsylvania Power & Light, Florida Power & Light, and Hawaii Electric.
Creighton was the founding President of the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2), the professional association of public participation practitioners.
ALTERNATIVE DISPUTE RESOLUTION
From 1988-1998, Creighton headed a team of nationally recognized experts in dispute resolution that provided technical assistance to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the use of alternative dispute resolution techniques (ADR) as an alternative to litigation. This team developed manuals and guides, published an ADR newsletter, designed and conducted training, and provided direct technical assistance to Corps project. Creighton was personally involved in editing a series of pamphlets providing an overview of ADR, and covering specific techniques such as mini-trials and non-binding arbitration, as well as editing several case studies and two reader of articles on ADR and public participation. On May 1, 1995 the Corps ADR/Partnering team received the Hammer Award from Secretary of Defense William J. Perry.
Creighton is on the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution's roster of environmental dispute resolution practitioners. He has served as a mediator on a number of issues, mostly relating to environmental or planning issues. Examples include: Mediating a dispute between the Ventura County Health Department and the Ventura Regional Sanitation District over solid waste planning; mediating a dispute between a Regional Water Quality Control Board and a large regional sanitation district over chloride discharges into a river; mediating a dispute about a long-standing commercial operation in a residential neighborhood (Menlo Park, CA); assisting a citizen task force in Menlo Park. CA, in developing consensus recommendations regarding limits on additions to existing homes; and mediating a dispute between a state water regulator and a large sanitation district over discharge standards. Creighton also coordinated negotiations between the Northern Tier Pipeline Company and seventeen Washington counties regarding mitigation and social effects of that project, and initiated a similar process on the WyCoalGas project. He developed and facilitated an interest-based negotiation process used by the Bonneville Power Administration to renegotiate all of its power sales contracts with Bonneville's 150 utility customers.
Creighton designed and led a team which conducted a series of dispute resolution training courses in Russia and the Republic of Georgia, with funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development.
CONFERENCE, WORKSHOP AND PUBLIC MEETING DESIGN AND FACILITATION
Creighton has designed and facilitated literally hundreds of public meetings, work groups, and conferences, including work on the White House Conference for Global Change. Recent examples include co-facilitating two National Water Policy Dialogues for the American Water Works Association and a dialogue between water ministers from 50 countries and non-governmental groups as the World Water Congress in Kyoto, and facilitating a national series of listening sessions for the Army Corps of Engineers.
Creighton has been involved in facilitating public meetings for such controversial issues as Orme Dam (on President Carter's "hit list" of western water projects), whether to restart construction of the WPPSS 1 & 3 nuclear power program, the cleanup program for Kesterson Reservoir, prescribed burns at the former Fort Ord and more than fifty other projects. Creighton was also a facilitator for the National Energy Consensus Experiment, an effort to get agreement on a national energy policy between 50+ national leaders of all the major interests concerned with national energy issues.
He has designed and conducted conflict-resolution conferences bringing scientists and technical experts from around the world to establish research priorities regarding storage of nuclear waste in crystalline rock (Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories), fisheries (smoltification) on the Columbia River (Bonneville Power Administration), and social impacts of coal development in the West (Bureau of Land Management). Other conferences were designed to get agreement on research protocols for assessing cumulative impacts of energy development upon wildlife (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service) and developing criteria for emission of toxics in bays and streams (U.S. Bureau of Reclamation), and resolve water issues in the Sacramento River Delta. Creighton was also retained by the U.S. Committee on Irrigation and Drainage to design and facilitate a workshop bringing together key people in agriculture with environmental leaders to hammer out a proactive program for agriculture's handling of hazardous or toxic substances. Creighton also prepared a pamphlet summarizing the group's recommendations, which has been distributed nationally within agriculture.
PARTNERING AND MULTI-PARTY TEAM BUILDING
Creighton has been involved in efforts to improve team effectiveness since 1969. He has conducted scores of team building or partnering sessions for corporate, educational, and governmental executives and their work teams, including several Silicon Valley start-up companies. He also trained team-building facilitators, including a program to train a cadre of internal facilitators for a large federal agency. Under contract to the US Forest Service, Creighton developed a Team Action Workbook, a self-administering guide that could be used by managers wishing to develop greater team cohesion and group effectiveness. This manual was used by all supervisors and managers in the nation's largest national forest.
Since the 1990s, the focus of Creighton's work has been on building effective multi-organization teams. As part of the Corps ADR program, Creighton authored a guide on Partnering, under direction of a tri-service committee, for use as part of the Army's environmental mission worldwide. This guide extends the concept of Partnering from its original use on construction projects to environmental cleanup projects involving regulatory agencies and stakeholder groups. Subsequently Creighton developed another Partnering Guide for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Civil Works Mission, and completed a number of case studies of "less successful" Partnering programs to determine what the differences were between successful and unsuccessful Partnering.
Subsequently Creighton and his staff operated a "skunkworks" -- a highly interactive meeting center for the U.S. Department of Labor. Out of that experience, Creighton developed a strong interest in meeting place design and the use of collaborative technology. Based on this experience Creighton was the lead author of CyberMeeting: How to Link People and Technology in Your Organization (AMACOM: American Management Association, 1997.
More recently Creighton developed a Joint Stewardship training course for Department of Defense and natural resources agencies involved in environmental management of land used by the Defense Department for training, but owned by the natural resource agency. Currently he is developed a training program for staff of DoD agencies, and federal and state regulatory agencies involved in jointly developing natural resource management plans for major Defense Department training installations.
RISK COMMUNICATION
Dr. Creighton has worked extensively with utilities on siting of energy facilities, and this led him into the risk communication field. Creighton is the lead author of a manual on risk communication titled Sourcebook for Utility Communications on EMF that is published by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). He was also an instructor for two EPRI Risk Communication Workshops. He is the principal author of two manuals for the Tennessee Valley Public Power Association, Understanding Electric and Magnetic Fields (EMF) and Communicating with the Public about Electric and Magnetic Fields (EMF). Also for the Tennessee Valley Public Power Association, and with the assistance of Robert S. Banks Associates, Creighton prepared a risk communication manual and video tapes and designed and led a training program that won a trophy award from the American Society of Association Executives. Creighton completed a study for Pennsylvania Power & Light in which he reviewed risk communication practices of major U.S. utilities related to the (EMF) issue. He also co-authored a guide for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency which addressed public involvement and risk communication issues related to siting of solid waste facilities.
Creighton played a major role in developing a community partnering plan for siting of the State of Pennsylvania's Low-Level Radioactive Waste disposal facility. This plan outlined the process by which the state and its contractors would work with local communities to find a volunteer community willing to act as host of the facility.
Creighton has served as risk communication consultant on projects for the Florida Electric Power Coordinating Group, Public Service of Colorado, Tennessee Valley Authority, PSI Energy, and others. He has been a frequent speaker and workshop leader in the risk communication field. He has made two presentations on public participation and risk communication to National Academy of Science - National Research Council panels providing review of the Army's program for disposal of chemical weapons.
SOCIAL AND INSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS
Creighton was a member of a team of social scientists who developed a social assessment guide for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. This team included many of the leading figures in the field, and Dr. Creighton served as facilitator of the group meetings. Subsequently he co-authored the guide itself, which was later issued as a text titled Guide to Social Assessment: A Framework for Assessing Social Change (Westview Press: 1984). He also developed a social impact assessment-training program for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and conducted an extensive review of the values literature for the Corps, with a particular emphasis on its usability in public involvement and social assessment.
More recently he prepared a report on the socioeconomic impacts of terminating irrigation on 49,000 acres in California's San Joaquin Valley, and studies on the future of agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley (U.S. Bureau of Reclamation). He also analyzed the institutional barriers to water conservation and the establishment of a trust fund to purchase water savings (U.S. Bureau of Reclamation). He was also a member of a large team assessing the potential socioeconomic effects of locating a high-level nuclear waste repository at Hanford, Washington. Creighton headed the Monitoring & Mitigation Group, which prepared a draft Monitoring & Mitigation Plan for the state before Nevada was chosen as the repository site.
Dr. Creighton headed a team conducting an assessment of the social impacts on major changes to Federal water law and practices involved the Central Valley project in California. He also wrote a Technical Appendix to a major EIS in which he described institutional alternatives for decision making regarding future operation of the Columbia River System. He also was a member of the team identifying social impacts associated with possible changes in river operations. He also completed a draft guide on assets-based community development for the Idaho Department of Health & Welfare.
OTHER PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE AND ACTIVIITIES
Prior to establishing his consulting business, Dr. Creighton was the Regional Director of Effectiveness Training Associates, supervising and training approximately sixty instructors conducting Leader Effectiveness Training and Parent Effectiveness Training courses in Northern California. He also served as the Executive Director or Administrator of several charitable organizations, and spent several years in human resources with an electronics firm.
Creighton is the co-author of the Bantam best-seller Getting Well Again, which has been translated into seventeen foreign languages. His book, Don't Go Away Mad (called How Loving Couples Fight in the paperback version) is a conflict manual for couples, based on his doctoral thesis. This book has been translated into French, German, and Chinese. While promoting his books Creighton has appeared on The View with Barbara Walters, the Sally Jessy Raphael Show, the Montel Williams Show, and the ABC Home Show, along with more than 100 other regional radio and television programs.
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