YOUR FACILITATOR: Yael Petretti

Bringing people together comes naturally to Yael. This theme has run through everything she has ever done and continues to be what most inspires her passion in life.

Both before and after earning a degree in International Relations at UC Berkeley, Yael traveled widely to meet people of other cultures and creeds.  She organized citizen diplomacy groups to travel to other countries, giving Americans the chance to build real friendships with people they would otherwise have never understood. She served on the Israel-Palestine Working Group at the United Nations and facilitated a number of Compassionate Listening trainings in the United States.

As a licensed tourist guide living in Jerusalem over three decades, she facilitated encounters between her tourists and the various religious and ethnic groups who inhabit the Middle East: Bedouins, Druze, Israelis, Christian and Moslem Palestinians. Appreciation of cultural diversity, friendship and mutual respect are her deepest values

Yael relocated in late 2010 to the New England area where she teaches Compassionate Listening to a wide variety of groups and organizations. Her work as a certified Compassionate Listening Facilitator provides the perfect tool for bringing people together: the practice of listening and speaking to one another from the purest places of the heart.