Patrick Field

Patrick Field is a Senior Mediator at the Consensus Building Institute and Associate Director of the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program. For 24 years, he has built consensus and collaboration capacity on complex public and organizational issues in the U.S. and Canada. His primary focus is building agreements on and finding solutions for the built and natural environment across sectors, interests, disciplines, and organizations. 

Leading CBI’s U.S. practice, Patrick mediates and facilitates public engagement and stakeholder processes on natural resource, land use, transportation, energy, and water issues across the United States and Canada. He frequently works with and between local, regional, state, and federal governments.  He is particularly adept at designing and facilitating processes that integrate technical complexity, community involvement, and agency decision-making.  He has worked with federal agencies such as the U.S. Department of Interior, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Department of Defense, and others. He has worked extensively with Native American and First Nation communities and governments. Patrick has worked with major industrial sectors in energy, mining, construction and development, and food and agriculture.  His cases have involved energy facility siting, Superfund cleanup, river, estuarine and groundwater restoration, food system and sustainable agriculture policy and programs, land use and transportation projects and policy, and wildlife management.   

Patrick also helps organizations improve their effectiveness and manage change, redesign decision processes and systems, and establish collaboratives across sectors and interests.  He works with nonprofits, government agencies, and private entities to improve their negotiation skills and procedures.  Patrick helps organizations internally explore and hone strategic direction in the face of opportunity and threat. He also helps organizations analyze, revise, or re-create their stakeholder processes. He has worked on strategic planning for state and federal agencies and nonprofits; governance for PJM and MISO, two large regional electric transmission private entities; and reform of the federal budget process.