Oscar J. Franco is a Venezuelan attorney who litigated commercial, international business as well as family law for 20 years in his native country, until he decided to shift gears and use ADR as his way to resolve conflicts. He was trained as a mediator in Florida in 1998 and returned to Venezuela to teach and practice civil and family mediation. The impact of cultural diversity in the mediation process has been of the utmost interest to Oscar.
Oscar relocated to Florida in 2003 to be a full-time mediator and later became an American citizen. He is a Supreme Court Florida Certified, County, Circuit Civil and Family Mediator, as well as, a Florida Supreme Court Approved Primary Mediation Trainer in County Mediation and a Qualified Arbitrator.
Oscar was a County and Family contractor Mediator for the Mediation and Arbitration Program of the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit Florida (2004-2012), as well as an Independent Associate mediator with the Upchurch, Watson, White and Max Mediation Group (2003-2004), Divorce Without War (2012-2018), and Mediar Inc. (2018 to date).
Oscar has participated as lecturer as well as a speaker in many national and international ADR Conferences (Venezuela, Brazil, Uruguay, Panama, Colombia, Spain). He is an Adjunct Professor at Florida International University and lectured a Strategic Negotiation and Mediation Course at the Koubeck Center, University of Miami. He is frequently invited to lecture on cultural diversity and other mediation topics to the law students at Nova University.