Marshall Rosenberg, Ph.D.

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As a child growing up in a turbulent Detroit neighborhood, Marshall Rosenberg knew he wanted to find a way of speaking that would decrease the occurrence of physical and verbal violence.

As a clinical psychologist in 1961, he set out to create such a language—and to teach it.

Within forty years, people on five continents were speaking that language.

From his childhood years, Dr. Rosenberg was intent on understanding what motivated people toward violence and why some people, even in trying circumstances, were moved to compassion instead. After studying comparative religions and the stories of peacemakers throughout history, and using his own varied life experiences, he was convinced that human beings are not inherently violent. That belief is the basis of the concepts and skills of Nonviolent Communication.

In the early 1960s Dr. Rosenberg left his clinical practice and literally went on the road, teaching people what he had learned. He wanted to “give away” the communication skills that he had been teaching his clients as a therapist.

In his efforts to apply these skills to the needs of people in everyday life, Dr. Rosenberg found people all over the country who wanted to learn Nonviolent Communication and he offered it to a broad base of people in their communities.

To meet this need and to more effectively spread the skills of NVC, he founded the Center for Nonviolent Communicationin 1984 as a non-profit organization. A volunteer staff who shared his vision of a more peaceful world started to organize workshops in an ever-increasing network of communities across the United States, and then in Europe as well.

In addition to groups across the U.S., CNVC now has regional teams of trainers and organizers in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Western Europe, Russia, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Burundi, and several countries in Latin America. By 1998 the CNVC team in the former Yugoslavia alone, had trained over six hundred teachers who taught over 12,000 students and parents, and now has developed curriculum materials for use with children from kindergarten through high school.

There are now more than 200 CNVC-certified trainers throughout the world and it is estimated that, in each of the past two years, over 250,000 people have received training in NVC in a multitude of countries, cultures, and languages. Many thousands more people have informally shared what they have learned, thus enhancing the lives of their families, workplaces, and communities. Because NVC is such a practical and do-able process, the old adage truly applies, “Each one teach one.”