BILLIE JO GARCIA began her career in alternative dispute resolution by taking a course in community mediation and volunteering for the Chatham County Dispute Settlement Program, mediating misdemeanor cases of assault, threats, larceny, and general neighborhood disputes. In her first divorce dispute, Ms. Garcia assisted the parties with equitable distribution of a large knife collection. In Washington D.C., she worked with the Center for Dispute Settlement, handling criminal matters selected through the Attorney General’s office before joining the Multi-Door Division of the D.C. Superior Court, mediating and managing divorce, custody, and child support cases referred from the court as part of the Family Mediation Program. In 2007 Ms. Garcia joined the North Carolina Child Custody and Visitation Program, providing state-level oversight of 41 mediation programs through the Administrative Office of the Courts’ Court Programs Division. Ms. Garcia is bilingual in Spanish and took a year during graduate study to review and assess mediation in the South American countries of Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay. She is the director of the Family Services of the Conciliation Court, supervising an office of eight professional mediators and evaluators. She received her B.A. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and M.A. from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
