Email: MeetingExpectationsHawaii@gmail.com
Website: Meeting Expectations Hawaii
Elizabeth Kent enjoys helping people find solutions to sticky problems. She has worked in a variety of interesting and challenging positions and finds that lessons she learned in those experiences are relevant in Alternative Dispute Resolution work.
Elizabeth started work in her early teens, stringing and selling puka shell necklaces. Following her love of being outside, Elizabeth taught swimming in Hawaii, Colorado, and two small native villages in Alaska and served as the first female park ranger in the maintenance division at Haleakala National Park.
After graduating magna cum laude from the University of Colorado at Boulder, Elizabeth graduated from the William S. Richardson School of Law (University of Hawaii). She then clerked at the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals (New York) and the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (San Francisco), returning home to Hawaii to practice commercial law at Paul Johnson Park & Niles. After six years of litigation, Elizabeth was offered a position with the Hawaii Judiciary’s Center for Alternative Dispute Resolution (started by Peter Adler). She worked there for approximately two decades, serving as the Director for 16 years and taking an 18 month leave of absence to serve as the Deputy Director at the Department of Human Services.
Elizabeth is a facilitator, mediator, and arbitrator. She enjoys training and giving presentations and applying academic and practiced based research to real life issues. Elizabeth and Professor John Barkai have studied and written about the resolution of thousands of cases that were filed in Hawaii’s circuit courts; Let’s Stop Spreading Rumors About Settlement and Litigation: A Comparative Study of Settlement and Litigation in Hawaii Courts was recently published in the Ohio State Journal of Dispute Resolution.
Elizabeth is also is an artist, designing wearable art from vintage kimono. Her label is Vested Interest Hawaii, and her jackets, scarves, and other work can be found in fine shops in Hawaii, including Magnolia at Kahala Mall.