Today's Featured Biography

 
Marion Bear Frank

Mari Frank is an attorney, mediator, and certified information privacy professional (CIPP), author, professor, and radio show host in private practice in Laguna Niguel, California. She has worked in the District Attorney’s Office, practiced insurance defense law, and has had a general civil law practice. She has successfully resolved thousands of disputes as a neutral since 1985.
Ms. Frank was the founding President of the Orange County Chapter of the Society for Professionals in Dispute Resolution-Orange County. She served for three years as founding Chair of the State Bar of California Alternative Dispute Resolution Committee of the Legal Services Section. She presently is a qualified member of the Civil Mediation Panel for the Orange County Superior Court, and serves on the Executive Committee of the Orange County Courts Arbitration and Mediation Administration Committee. She also serves as a mediator for the Arbitration and Mediation Fee Disputes for the Orange County Bar Association and QDR Services. Ms. Frank has taught hundreds of law students as a law professor, and thousands of attorneys as a certified trainer for continuing legal education for the Bar. Since 2003, she has been teaching negotiation, mediation and conflict resolution at the University of California, Irvine and also teaches conflict management and leadership at Brandman University. Prior to 2003, she was an adjunct professor at Western State University School of law for eight years.
Ms. Frank served on the Mediation Advisory Board for the Irvine office of the American Arbitration Association. She was President of the Orange County Society for Professionals in Dispute Resolution, Chair of the first ADR Court Diversion Program of the Orange County Bar Association, and served on the first board of the Southern California Mediation Association. Ms. Frank served as Vice-Chair of the Advisory Board of the Orange County Mediation Conference Committee and Chairs the MCLE, and served as Chair of Presenters on the Mediation Conference Committee Executive Board. She is a Board Member of the Orange County Bar Association ADR Section, the Southern California Mediation Association of which she has served on the Board, and she is a member of the Association of Conflict Resolution. She was a member of the Advisory Board of Divorce Magazine for 10 years, and frequently wrote articles for that magazine and continues to write published articles for numerous other periodicals.
Aside from her private practice, Ms. Frank served as a neutral for the Franchise Arbitration and Mediation, Inc., Dispute Resolution Management, and the U.S. Federal Administrative Panel of Neutrals. She has authored a textbook Negotiation Breakthroughs, and many published articles/booklets dealing with conflict resolution. She is also co-author of Stepping Stones to Success. She is the radio host of “Prescriptions for Healing Conflict” on KUCI 88.9 FM in Irvine airing on Monday mornings at 8:30 A.M. and www.kuci.org. Ms. Frank consults, presents keynotes, workshops, training and facilitation and mediation for corporations, agencies and non-profits. Some of her clients have been American Express, Hartford Insurance, AIG, 3 M Corporation, Chartis, Merrill-Lynch, The Human Resources Association of Greater St. Louis, Motorola, California Credit Union Conference, McKesson, the State Bar of California and more, etc. She also presents conflict transformational training programs for lawyers, governmental agencies, and business professionals. She has taught myriad participants to utilize effective “solutioneering” techniques to transform adversity into opportunities in reaching private, successful agreements.
Ms. Frank is a Certified Privacy Expert (Certified Information Privacy Professional) and provides consulting, training, and expert testimony on privacy issues nationwide.
As a privacy expert, Ms. Frank has authored the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Recovering from Identity Theft; the Identity Theft Survival Kit, From Victim to Victor; Safeguard Your Identity and co-Authored Privacy Piracy with Beth Givens, Director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. She serves on the Executive Committee of Law Practice Management & Technology Section for the State Bar of California, and is the Chair of the Privacy committee of that section. She also is a privacy advisor to 3 M Corporation. In 2012, Ms Frank was featured by Money Magazine as a “Money Hero” for her privacy work. In January 2013, the Privacy Commissioner of Ontario Canada named her a Privacy Ambassador.
Ms. Frank has testified several times before the U.S. Senate and the California Legislature, the FTC, and the Social Security Administration. She gave a speech at the White House in 1999 with former President Bill Clinton that was televised on C-Span. She has been a Sheriff Reserve in Orange County. From 2001 until 2012, she served on the advisory board of the California Office of Privacy Protection until the office was closed due to funding. She has served on the Privacy Task Force for the California Department of Motor Vehicles, the Consumer Federation of America (DC), the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, and for 12 years, she was an advisory to the Identity Theft Resource Center. She is a member of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse Board of Trustees, and she is a distinguished fellow for the Ponemon Institute, a respected research institute dedicated to promoting responsible information management.
As a professional speaker she has presented programs and consulting for The Federal Trade Commission, the Annual Conference of Ohio Chiefs of Police, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, The Retired Military Association, the Houston Office of the FBI, the Veterans Administration Security Conference, the Economic Crime Summit, Experian, the California Senate and dozens more entities.
As a media commentator, she has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, Dateline, NBC, 48 Hours, Montel, CNN, ABC Nightly News Investigative Reports, and dozens of other national television shows. She has been featured in the New York Times, LA Times, U.S. News and World Report, Your Money Magazine, Parade Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and dozens more national publications. Ms. Frank has been interviewed on over 350 radio shows, and has been the host of Privacy Piracy since 2005, which airs Monday mornings at 8:00 AM on KUCI, 88.9 FM at the University of California, Irvine. The show also audio streams at www.kuci.org at the same time and podcasts on ITunes. In November 2011, Mari received a Broadcasting award from Be Real Broadcasting for excellence as a radio host. Ms. Frank hosted her own PBS television special entitled “Protecting Yourself in the Information Age” which aired nationally from 2005-2007.
Ms. Frank uses a variety of “solutioneering” techniques as a mediator, legal advisor, privacy expert, and expert witness. She has a unique expertise as a mediator of privacy and technology disputes.
Please visit her websites at:
www.marifrank.com
www.identitytheft.org
www.conflicthealing.com
www.kuci.org/privacypiracy

VIEW ALL BIOGRAPHIES