I am Riley Sloat, and I am currently a senior at Elizabethtown Senior Highschool. I am interested in having a career as a mediator due to the business and Personal Law class I took in my sophomore year, wherein part of the curriculum was to do a mock mediation.

Although a 20-minute guided activity was nowhere near comparable to the real thing, I discovered that I liked the setting and atmosphere mediation provided compared to any alternative ways to resolve disputes introduced by the class. Mediation seems much more appealing because it focuses on communication between two people and not their avatars. It comes up with a mutual agreement. It hadn’t felt like it solved a singular issue but instead provided the tools to bridge a gap between two more people. I’ve since figured that mediation was something I wanted to pursue.

Due to a lack of genuine insight into what such a profession entails and a need for work experience credit to graduate, I’ve sought out Advoz to work as their intern. Advoz initially struck me as an organization that has demonstrated genuine care for the people it helps, whether it be via its mediation or restorative justice program. In many ways, Advoz embodies the initial reasons why I became interested in mediation. I hope that my time here will help me gain further insight and experience in the fields Advoz works within. I believe that I can only become more interested and passionate in mediation by being here!