Luke Johnson: Bridge Classroom Knowledge with Experiential Training

Thursday, August 8, 2026

By Lydia Ray, NVMS Court and Community Programs Manager 

It’s an overcast Tuesday afternoon on July 21, 2026, and I’m sitting down with Luke Johnson, NVMS’s summer court coordinator intern, over Zoom as he reflects on the past several months and the experiences that shaped his internship. 

Behind Luke, a map of the Middle East fills the background, marked with designated oil centers. He explains that he is taking the interview from his school, The Institute of World Politics, where he is completing his Master of Arts in Statecraft and National Security Affairs. Dressed in a blue cotton button-down shirt, Luke appears eager to reflect on his time with NVMS and the ways his experience in mediation has begun to intersect with his academic interests. 

What follows is a conversation about mediation, national security, professionalism, self-determination, confidentiality, and the human element underlying conflict at every level, from a landlord and tenant navigating a dispute to nations negotiating on the world stage. 

It has been a pleasure working alongside you during your internship with NVMS
Conflict Resolution Center as the Court Coordinator Intern. As you complete your
internship period, what moments or learning experiences stand out most, and which
do you expect to carry with you into your future career?
Well, first off, thank you very much for having me on the interview and for the chance to
reflect on the past few months. I’m very grateful to have had the chance to be a part of this
world, and understand how mediation works a little bit better, and to be in court every
Friday. I think that’s been really beneficial.
So, specifically to the question, just some moments that have stood out. I think obviously
each Friday we explain mediation to everyone sitting there in small claims, and that’s been
a good opportunity for me to work on public speaking. Maybe that’s a little bit generic; I
want to be more specific than that.
I guess really learning how to communicate my point clearly so that people can make an
informed decision about their case. Obviously, it’s important to them, and so they need to
understand the different options that they have on the table for handling it.
And it’s important for them as well because obviously they want to handle it in an efficient
way. There’s money on the table. There are sometimes reputations and different things like
that. So, making sure that I communicate that in a way that’s helpful to them, timely, and
useful has been really significant to me.
So that’s the first thing that comes to my head. There’s, a lot of things, but that’s probably
up there.

How has your experience with mediation compared to your studies in national
security? In what ways have you found the two fields to be different, and were there
any similarities that surprised you once you gained hands-on experience?
So, okay, different and similar.
Maybe as far as similar goes, one of the things that originally interested me about interning
at NVMS and learning more about mediation and ADR in general is the chance to see
different people with different perspectives come together and try to create solutions that
they can live with.
I have a map behind me. I’m currently at school right now, and that’s also what we’re
learning a lot about, is understanding people from different cultures, different
backgrounds and constraints, different expectations that they have, whether on
themselves or by their family or their community, and trying to understand.
We’re living in the same community, whether that’s a neighborhood in mediation or
whether that’s, you know, the globe and on the world stage, and that’s been something that
I’ve drawn a parallel between the two.
As far as different, obviously the subject matter is different. Typically, we’ve been dealing
with maybe a small business and the folks that they served, or in mediation, we deal with
landlords and tenants. Obviously, that’s different than the people that are involved or the
subject matter that we’re talking about when it comes to nations relating with one another
and working with one another.
But at the same time, something that underlies all of it is just the human aspect. Like,
whether it’s a company or whether it’s a country, it’s run by people, and you have to
understand this. I think it’s beneficial to understand that it’s people at the end of the day
that are making those decisions, and hopefully that can help you navigate it more
efficiently and in a way that is helpful to everybody.
Over the past few months, you’ve had the opportunity to observe court proceedings
and interact with a variety of individuals. What experience has had the greatest
impact on your perspective of the importance of court-referred mediation or private
mediation, and why?
I think, yeah, it goes back to this idea of self-determination and this idea of, America just
had her 250th, and I think we obviously, as Americans, we believe that every human being,
unless they forfeit it, they have the right to make decisions for their own life and to use their
God-given ability to reason and to be accountable for their decisions.
And I think mediation is a beautiful manifestation of that.

What skills have you developed during your time as a Court Coordinator Intern that
you believe will be most valuable in your future career or endeavors?
I always got to work on my professionalism. My mom thinks I’m going to lose every job
because I just say whatever is on my mind and I’ll just go off the rails.
And you, Lydia, have been very helpful in making sure that I talk to people maybe a little bit
softer, or my introductions are a little bit better, or I take into account the social dynamics
that are happening in a certain conversation, or the way that I go through, you know,
handling difficult situations between certain parties.
So, I think professionalism and making sure that everything is accounted for.

What surprised you most about working in the courthouse environment compared to
what you expected before starting your internship?
I’ve watched a little bit of Judge Judy before, but typically you think of, you know,
courtrooms as being very rigid, very high pressure, and in small claims, in my experience,
I’ve noticed less pressure.
Obviously, it’s pro se, and I think overall the judges do a good job at trying to hear out each
party. The informality, I think, is good for the kinds of cases that are in small claims, and I
hadn’t been exposed to that kind of courtroom environment before.

During your internship, what was one challenge you encountered, and how did you
work through it? And how did working through it help you grow professionally or
personally?
Okay. Well there’s a couple things that come to my mind.
One challenge for me was, as a coordinator, especially on Friday mornings, you have to
juggle a lot of things at once.
This and making sure that I coordinate with you as best as I can, so that you are informed,
and making sure that I am as helpful to you as I can be without either overstepping my
bounds or doing something that would make things more confusing.
So, I think making sure that I integrate well with the team, communicating about locked
doors. That’s something that we’re struggling with and trying to work on. Communicating
when you have multiple parties that are interested in mediation at the same time. Who’s
going to talk to who, and do we know what rooms are already taken and things like that.
So, good communication and, making sure that I’m helpful.

If you could improve or expand one aspect of the internship experience for future
interns, what would it be, and why?
One thing that I know you and I both wish we had been able to really sink our teeth into
more was the private mediation aspect, and so that’s definitely the first thing that comes to
my mind.
I think that it can be overwhelming, and I wish I’d done a better job kind of wrapping my
arms around it. But I think it’s a really wonderful opportunity, and I think future interns
would benefit from and would be blessed to help out with this process.

As you move on from NVMS Conflict Resolution Center in the capacity as a Court
Coordinator Intern, and as we know that you will still be with us on your mentorship
journey, what is one lesson or piece of advice from this experience that you’ll carry
with you throughout your career?
Reputation and confidentiality.
That’s something that I feel like, again, Lydia, you emphasize a lot. Is the importance of
keeping confidences and how that can benefit a workplace and how that can make sure
that people feel safe and then empowered to share when it is the right time to share, and it
can help, obviously, with the reputation of individual mediators as well as, and the larger
company or framework that they work within so that they’re trusted to do the work that they
need to do.
So, I definitely think that those are extremely important for building rapport and trust that
can carry from one portion of your career to another.

As you move forward on your mentorship journey, how do you see mediation, and the
skills you’re developing through mediation, adding to the skills you’re learning now in
school, and maybe what you’ll do with that in the future?
Yes, 100%. So, yes, I’m in the middle of that process right now. I’ve done the, I guess you
could say, like the “book portion” of it. I’ve done the portion of my training that will now
allow me to start doing observations and co-mediations.
And everywhere you look you’re trying to solve a problem, and it involves people fighting
other people.
And maybe an example that I would give is Switzerland. They have traditionally played the
role of neutral mediators. It blew my mind when I realized that Switzerland remained
neutral through World War II. If you look geographically where they were sitting within
Europe and next to Germany, it’s crazy that they were able to maintain that status, and
then all the good that they do for the world because of that.
Currently, obviously, the U.S. and Iran are in conflict, as well as a bunch of other parties,
state, and other parties in that region of the world. And you have other countries that are
doing something similar to what Switzerland has typically done, playing the in-between
and acting as a mediator.
Pakistan at certain times, Oman traditionally does that as well.
So those are some of the parallels that I’m drawing for sure. I think it’s important to start
again with just the human element. Understand that it’s human beings that are making
these decisions, whether it’s a lease agreement or whether it’s leaders of countries making
decisions.
And I hope that I can slowly kind of marry the two, and they can overlap over time as I have
technical expertise on maybe certain areas of the world or things like that. Or how things
within even our own government work. And then also bring in the expertise of working with
not just sitting behind a desk all day, but being in conflict, talking to each party, and
working through things regularly.
I believe that those two skills will complement each other very well moving forward.