Susan Jordan is in her 13th year as Executive Director of Susquehanna Valley Mediation (SVM), a nonprofit community mediation center serving rural communities in central Pennsylvania. SVM’s mission is to support constructive responses to conflict across the region. Susan’s work focuses on helping individuals, families, and communities develop the skills, relationships, and structures they need to respond to conflict before it escalates and to address difficult challenges together.
Susan holds degrees in Educational Psychology and Applied Linguistics and is a Certified Transformative Mediator and Trainer with the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation, where she also served on the board. She has trained mediators and facilitators across Pennsylvania, the United States, and internationally in transformative mediation, restorative practices, transformative dialogue, trauma-informed mediation, active bystander intervention, de-escalation, story circles, and responding effectively to conflict.
Susan’s work is rooted in a belief in people’s inherent dignity and in the human need for both self-determination and connection with others. She is particularly interested in the ways conflict can either deepen division and disconnection or become an opportunity for greater understanding, engagement, and connection. Her approach emphasizes early intervention, relationship-building, and creating opportunities for people to have meaningful voice in addressing the challenges they face.
Under Susan’s leadership, SVM has developed collaborations with family courts, county governments, child welfare agencies, treatment courts, probation departments, Community Action Agencies, school districts, universities, nonprofits, faith communities, grassroots organizations, and others. SVM’s programs include mediation, crisis and rapid-response family meetings, prison reentry and reintegration, violence prevention, recovery support, story circles, civic conversations, and conflict and communication training.
SVM represents rural communities in the Trust Network, a national project involving ten community mediation centers across the country that received a grant from the National Association for Community Mediation (NAFCM) and the U.S. Department of Justice to develop local, comprehensive, trauma-informed approaches to preventing targeted violence. This work has deepened Susan’s interest in how communities can recognize and respond to risk early, strengthen protective relationships and community connections, and build systems for effective early warning and early response.
Susan is a collaborator at heart and serves on several coalitions, including The Trust Network, her local Criminal Justice Advisory Boards, coalitions addressing youth and elder mental health, child abuse prevention, addiction and recovery, and prison reentry and reintegration.
Susan recently contributed a chapter, “Families in Crisis: A Unique Application of Transformative Dialogue,” to Co-creating Conversations: Transformative Dialogue in Communities and Organizations, published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2025. In April 2024, she received the Pennsylvania Council of Mediators’ “Most Valuable Peacemaker” award.
The Summit was more than empty words – it made clear that a solution-driven approach is the only way to fight hate. That’s why the working group activities, which are results driven are going to be critical in defeating violent extremism. The Summit brought together the best minds in government, private sector, academia, and civil society. Being surrounded by these experts sparked new ideas – some of which I’ve already implemented or have written about.
