Leaders & Achievers 2022
KRISTEN SLOAN MACCINI
Co-founder, Key Mediation LLC
TRADITIONAL LEGAL EXPERIENCE helped shape the career of Kristen Sloan Maccini, co-founder of Key Mediation LLC in North Kingstown.
A graduate of The College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., she joined her father’s law firm after graduating from New England Law in 1991. She worked alongside three other attorneys at Gardner, Sawyer Gates & Sloan in Providence.
“I was able to work in real estate, doing contracts and probate work, and given many opportunities – jury trials, for example,” Maccini said. “It was good experience in a traditional, old, respected firm and I enjoyed it very much.”
During a period when she stepped back from standard practice to build her family, Maccini coached Rhode Island Interscholastic Mock Trial League at Moses Brown School in Providence for eight years. Mediation’s soft skills were part of this coaching. The team even made it to the finals one year.
It was during this time that Maccini became interested in mediation, sparking a new area of professional focus.
“I had always believed that traditional litigation had a limited construct,” she said. “Mediation puts actual needs and motivations at the forefront. It took me being away from formal practice to reflect on this – to think more about alternate dispute resolution.”
‘Mediation puts actual needs and motivations at the forefront.’
Exposure to nontraditional learning needs within Maccini’s family solidified mediation as the work she wanted to do.
Concerned that mediation was not respected by the traditional legal community, Maccini didn’t just jump in.
In 2013, Maccini completed a 40-hour training with the Center for Mediation & Collaboration Rhode Island. In 2014, she did a three-day program on negotiation at Harvard Law School.
The more Maccini learned, the more she liked.
“I started to believe it was a big something,” she said of mediation, saving time, money and worry for both the parties involved and the attorneys themselves. Maccini and co-founder Christine Marinello started Key Mediation at the genesis of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.
Marinello says Maccini betters the community, sharing mediation skills pro bono, in addition to her training work. “She is a treasure to the bar and Key Mediation,” Marinello said.
