OUR TEAM

COLLABORATIVE ATTORNEYS AND MEDIATORS

Diana Adams, Esq.

Diana Adams is a mediator and collaborative attorney serving LGBTQ and non-traditional families in creating family agreements, both to create families with intention and to separate with dignity. At her boutique family law firm Diana Adams Law & Mediation, PLLC, Diana serves same-sex couples as well as family partners who are unmarried, co-parenting, platonic, polyamorous, three or more, or non-biological parents, in the New York City area as well as the Hudson Valley and Capital Region. Many of the firm’s clients seek support for parenting with Assisted Reproductive Technology, including Donor Insemination Agreements, Second-Parent Adoption, and Co-Parenting Agreements. For nearly ten years, Diana has been a national leader in advocacy for family forms beyond marriage, such as domestic partnership and platonic co-parenting, and for consensually nonmonogamous families, through legislative advocacy, media interviews, and academic teaching at law schools, most recently as an Adjunct Professor in LGBTQ Family Law at Cornell Law School.

In her personal time, Diana enjoys cooking, traveling and gardening with her Domestic Partner in her Brooklyn backyard.

CONTACT: [email protected]; DianaAdamsLaw.net; 347-994-9529

Carol L. Buell, Esq.

Carol has been in private practice for over 28 years, and is a founding member of the LGBTQI Family Professionals of New York.

Carol is proud to serve on the National Center for Lesbian Rights’ National Family Law Advisory Council. She is a member of the New York State Bar Association, New York City Bar Association, Lesbian and Gay Bar Association of NYC, the LGBT Bar and Family Law Institute, the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals, and the Family and Divorce Mediation Council of NYC.

A holistic lawyer, Carol assists families in all aspects of their lives: estate planning, disability and estate administration, second-parent adoptions, family creation agreements, prenuptial and domestic partnership agreements, and exclusively uses alternative dispute methods with an emphasis on an interdisciplinary approach, to assist families who prefer to empower themselves to be active participants and ultimate decision makers in their family’s creation, divorce, or dissolution, reaching agreements which satisfy everyone’s needs.

CONTACT: [email protected]; carollbuelllaw.com; 212-967-5710

Teresa Calabrese, JD

Teresa Calabrese is a mediator and collaborative lawyer serving the NYC Queer community. Through mediation and collaborative practice, Teresa helps individuals, couples and families resolve conflict, problem-solve and make decisions together. She focuses on issues pertaining to: relationship formation, including co-habitation agreements and pre-nuptial agreements; building families, including donor sperm agreements and parenting agreements; and dissolving relationships and marriages.

The support and guidance she provides using a client-centered process helps create a sustainable & durable agreement that benefits everyone involved.

Teresa also handles second parent adoption matters and provides basic estate planning services including the preparation of wills, health care proxies and advance directives.

Teresa has dedicated her career to educating the LGBTQI community about legal tools that can protect LGBTQI relationships and families. She has facilitated legal and informational workshops for the LGBT Community Services Center, Brooklyn Community Pride Center, Senior Action in a Gay Environment (SAGE), and the Brooklyn Arts Exchange.

Teresa is a founding member of the LGBTQI Family Professionals of New York.

CONTACT: [email protected]; www.teresacalabrese.net; 212-889-1315

Catherine Canade, Esq.

Catherine is in private practice as the Law and Mediation Practice of Catherine Canadé in Brooklyn and Long Island as a collaborative attorney and family and divorce mediator helping couples and families resolve conflict outside of the court system.  Her practice focuses on family and couples conflicts, divorce, custody and visitation, parenting and co-habitation plans, and LGBTQ and adoption triad issues. Catherine also serves as a consulting and review attorney for couples going through the mediation process and mediates as part of the Custody and Visitation Mediation Panel of the NYC Family Courts. She is a certified mediator and mentor at the New York Peace Institute where she trains and coaches new mediators and is a consultant for the Hunter College High School Bias and Dispute Panel, for which she conducts mediation trainings for staff and students.

Catherine has a long-standing commitment to public service and is the President of the Family and Divorce Mediation Council of Greater New York and is a mentor and former co-chair of the Mediation Mentorship Program at FamilyKind, an organization dedicated to educating and assisting parents in transition. She is a member of the Academy of Professional Family Mediators, the Brooklyn Bar Association’s Family Law Section and Alternative Dispute Resolution Committee, the New York Association of Collaborative Professionals, the New York State Bar Association, Family Law and Dispute Resolution Sections, and the New York State Council on Divorce Mediation.

CONTACT: [email protected]; www.canadelaw.com; 646-308-1315

Andy Izenson, Esq.

Andy is an Associate Attorney with Diana Adams Law & Mediation, PLLC, and is a passionate advocate for queer families and for trans and gender nonconforming youth and adults. Andy also advocates through education and public speaking around gender and sexuality, consent and communication, nontraditional family law, and community accountability and transformative justice, and speaks at various organizations and events on the East Coast about those topics, including the Woodhull Sexual Freedom Summit, the LGBT Bar Association Conference, Creating Change, New York University, Columbia University, Rutgers University, Skidmore College, and the Family and Divorce Mediation Council.

As Associate Attorney, Andy aids clients with a broad array of legal needs including alternative reproduction agreements, estate planning, advanced directives, adoptions, cohabitation agreements, divorce, and separation, including handling the firm’s sliding scale and pro bono docket. Andy is a trained mediator through the New York Center for Interpersonal Development and a trained collaborative attorney through the New York Association of Collaborative Professionals, as well as a member of the LGBT Bar Association’s Family Law Institute and the National Lawyers Guild NYC Chapter Executive Committee.

CONTACT: [email protected]; dianaadamslaw.net; 347-994-9529

Jessica S. Rothberg, Esq.

Jessica has been in private practice as a family and divorce mediator for over 15 years and has received extensive mediation and collaborative practice training, including through the Center for Family and Divorce Mediation, The Ackerman Institute for the Family, and the Center for Mediation in Law. Jessica is an active member of the professional mediation and collaborative law communities in New York City and is an Advanced Practitioner member of the Association for Conflict Resolution, an Accredited Member of the New York State Council on Divorce Mediation, a member of the New York Association for Collaborative Professionals, the International Association for Collaborative Professionals and the LGBTQI Family Professionals of New York.

Jessica dedicates much of her professional career to training and mentoring aspiring mediators and collaborative practitioners through independent apprenticeships and as an adjunct professor at Cardozo Law School. Jessica has also served as a panelist and/or guest lecturer at various mediation and collaborative trainings throughout New York City.

CONTACT: [email protected]; mediationworksny.com; 718-624-5549

MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONALS

Bob Raymond, Ph.D

Bob Raymond, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist who is licensed in New York, New Jersey, and California. Bob’s work with families involves helping individuals and families meet their goals, whether forming and/or maintaining strong relationships or reconstituting and establishing new interpersonal dynamics appropriate to changing circumstances. He is a certified psychoanalyst who has been Dean of Students at the Couples Institute at the Center for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis of New Jersey, where he is a founding member of the Couple’s Training Program. Bob works as a divorce coach, a child specialist, and a parent coordinator – all in the interest of helping families achieve their goals while maximizing their potentials. He works with individuals in psychotherapy, and he has worked as a psychologist for over 25 years. Bob is passionate and committed to assisting others in dealing with the emotional issues which arise in interpersonal relationships. He emphasizes people’s strengths, while helping to identify emotional blocks which impede moving forward. He is actively involved in numerous professional organizations and he is proud to be participating in the newly formed LGBTQI Task Force of the New York State Psychological Association.

CONTACT: [email protected]; www.DrRobertRaymond.com; 212-769-2455

Barbara Rothberg, D.S.W., LCSW

Barbara Rothberg is a couples therapist, mediator and divorce coach. She has been working with the LGBTQ Collaborative Group for the past several years, as well as with the NY Association of Collaborative Professionals. She maintains a therapy practice for couples, helping them work on relationships to stay together, or to separate in the best way possible. She has taught couple therapy for more than 20 years at both Hunter and NYU Graduate Schools of Social Work and completed her doctoral dissertation on Custody Mediation in 1984. Barbara also works as a Child specialist helping parents co-parent whether they are together or apart, and a Divorce Coach to facilitate an amiable divorce. Barbara has been working for more than thirty years, is licensed and holds a doctorate in clinical social work. She practices in both Manhattan and Brooklyn.

CONTACT: [email protected]; www.barbararothberg.com; 212-447-7870 or 718-499-7574