Mary Mackenzie, author of Peaceful Living: Daily Meditations for Living with Love, Healing and Compassion, has been described as a deeply spiritual person with a keen sense of humor, inner clarity, and insight. She holds a master’s degree in Human Relations from Northern Arizona University and is a certified trainer of Nonviolent Communication. She is also a trained mediator and member of the Arizona Dispute Resolution Association.

Mary’s first career was as a fundraiser in higher education, where her listening skills helped people realize their dreams and helped her raise millions of dollars for the universities where she worked. In these development positions, Mary acted as a bridge between the donor and the recipient, always seeking and finding solutions that were satisfying to all parties.

She ended this career to work with the newly-formed Flagstaff Center for Compassionate Communication, a non-profit organization that teaches transformational thinking as well as speaking and listening skills to individuals, couples, families, and children, and facilitates processes to help organizations undergo restructuring or enhance their current programs.  She remains the executive director of Flagstaff Center for Compassionate Communication.

In 2006 she and Mark Schultz co-founded the NVC Academy, an innovative organization whose purpose is to create technological venues for teaching Nonviolent Communication.  NVC Academy employs NVC trainers from around the world to teach Nonviolent Communication through a variety of technological venues including telephone, online, audio downloads, and others.

Mary’s guiding vision is to help people learn concrete, practical tools for living peacefully day-to-day.  She believes that if each of us steps up to the plate to transform our own negative behaviors and thought patterns we can create world peace, one heart at a time.  Her workshops, retreats, public speaking engagements, and personal daily life reflect this passion.