Pete Swanson Bio

Pete Swanson is a Senior Partner at Impact Associates. With nearly 40 years of extensive experience across both domestic and international settings, he has helped a wide variety of clients achieve effective business outcomes. He specializes in blending conflict resolution, leadership development, coaching, organizational development, and training to provide systemic, holistic approaches to challenges. His work focuses on enhancing communication and connection within organizations. Mr. Swanson is an accomplished mediator, coach, facilitator, trainer, and consultant, particularly in leadership development, alignment, and systemic change.

Over the past two decades, Mr. Swanson has been at the forefront of conflict resolution, leadership development, and complex organizational change. He has worked with over 50 federal, state, local, and international agencies and organizations across four continents and 25 countries, including Afghanistan, Argentina, Austria, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Greece, the Netherlands, India, Japan, Korea, Kosovo, Myanmar, Nepal, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Serbia, Slovenia, Sweden, and Thailand. His expertise covers mediation training, facilitation, dispute systems design, and leadership development.

Mr. Swanson frequently mediates and facilitates workplace conflicts of all sizes, leads senior executive leadership programs, and drives culture change initiatives for federal agencies and other organizations. He also provides executive coaching to senior leaders. As a course designer and lead trainer, he has taught over 3,000 students in hundreds of courses focused on mediation, leadership, negotiation, and facilitation. He has coached numerous leaders in challenging environments, helping them enhance communication and negotiation skills to foster deeper connections and transform adversarial relationships into productive partnerships.

Until March 2025, Mr. Swanson served at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS), where he led high-profile national and international projects. He also founded and directed the Conflict Management Professional Program, aimed at developing FMCS staff to deliver comprehensive conflict management and prevention services for agency clients, alongside managing FMCS’s international portfolio. From 2018 to 2024, he was the Manager for Conflict Management and Prevention/International at FMCS, overseeing interagency agreements and activities with other federal agencies.

Before rejoining FMCS in 2018, Mr. Swanson was a senior partner at Carr Swanson & Randolph, LLC, for 18 years. Mr. Swanson began his career at FMCS, where he served from 1989 to 2001 as a Commissioner/ADR mediator and a training specialist in mediation and facilitation. He played a key role in developing FMCS’s domestic and international alternative dispute resolution programs and served as a mediator in numerous public policy, tribal-federal, environmental, labor, grant, employment, EEO, and environmental disputes. His work includes facilitating complex multi-party disputes and negotiated rulemaking, especially in collaboration with intergovernmental agencies and Native American tribes. Mr. Swanson holds a master’s degree in Conflict Management and an undergraduate degree in Cultural Anthropology, both from George Mason University.