Marilyn McKnight

Marilyn McKnight is a mediator, trainer, and author who has practiced exclusively in the field of mediation since 1977 after an extensive career in public social work. She received the Bush Leadership Fellowship Award for the study of mediation earning her M.A. in 1987 and is a leader in promoting the Client-Centered model of mediation.

In 1988, Marilyn was elected to the Board of the Academy of Family Mediators where she began the movement toward the certification of mediators and later served as President of the Academy. In 1996, she and her partner, Steve Erickson, were awarded the Distinguished Mediator Award by the Academy for their outstanding contributions to the field of mediation.  She served at president of ACR (the Association for Conflict Resolution in 2008.  In 2012 she was a co-founder of the Academy of Professional Mediation.  She is a founder and first president of the Professional Mediation Board of Standards in 2015 to the present.

Marilyn and her partner Steve have co-authored six highly successful books on mediation:

• Family Mediation Casebook (1988)
• The Children’s Book (1992)
• Mediating Divorce: A Client’s Workbook (1998)
• Mediating Divorce: A Trainer’s Manual (1998)
• The Practitioner’s Guide to Mediation (2001)

And in 2020, she co-authored with Steve Erickson and Don Saposnek The Child Support Solution: Unhooking Child Support from Custody.  CSS Press, Hackensack, MN.

Marilyn is a former member of the ADR Section of the Minnesota Bar Association and has taught courses as an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota School of Social Work, at William Mitchell College of Law, and in the Master of Arts in Leadership program at Augsburg College.

Education

• Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, Masters, Human Development: Psychology and Mediation, 1994
• Augsburg University, Bachelor or Arts, Sociology and Social Work, 1967