“After being an at home mom for thirteen years, Risa became certified as a Parent Educator to pursue her goal of helping other parents develop strong self-esteem in their children. Risa has three adult daughters and it was through raising them that she wanted to help other parents develop self-esteem with their children. While working with many parents in parent education, the constant theme became, “how do I co-parent with my least favourite person…. my ex-spouse?” It was this repeated question that lead Risa to become an Accredited Family Mediator in 2000, specializing in creating parenting plans and assisting families transition into the daunting task of living their newfound two home realities.

Risa understands, cares and empathizes with the challenging journeys for each client at this time in their lives. To assist her in truly helping clients feel supported and cared for in this process, she earned a Master’s Degree in Pastoral Counselling on 2005 specializing in grief counselling to further assist clients and their children with the challenges of divorce grief. This added expertise has been extremely helpful for clients while they wrestle with grieving the multiple losses that separation presents, while and at the same time, negotiating the complexities in creating parenting and financial agreements. Risa particularly enjoys interviewing children to hear their views and preferences as part of the mediation process, as it is in this context that she can also help the children deal with their grief issues as they assert their concerns and wishes.

Risa also works as a Parent Coordinator, implementing and amending binding parenting agreements to maintain low to no conflict in two-home situations. This work also involves a heavy emphasis on dealing with the challenges of blending families.

Since 2008, Risa has very much enjoyed working as a Family Professional in the Collaborative Model with so many like-minded professionals working to assist families in a non-adversarial process that expedites agreements to facilitate positive futures for all members of each family.

Risa has two offices to facilitate convenience for clients, one in North York and one in downtown Toronto. She provides a free consultation to all prospective clients. “