Donna Louden — NREL Ombuds

Donna Louden leads the NREL Ombuds Office and provides employees with a highly confidential, impartial, and informal forum to help them with work-related concerns and conflicts.

Louden has served as a facilitator, mediator, and conflict coach in the field of dispute resolution since 1999. She has been NREL's organizational ombuds since 2013.

Prior to NREL, she was the associate director of the Ombuds Office at the University of Colorado at Boulder and also served as ombuds at the University of California at Irvine. As an organizational ombuds, she helps others engage in effective communication and problem solving.

An accomplished trainer, Louden is considered a subject matter expert in interpersonal and organizational conflict management. She is a principal instructor for the International Ombudsman Association and has taught professional skills, ethics, and best practices to hundreds of ombuds and mediators from all over the world. She recently developed and implemented a virtual ombuds training program that has dramatically increased the organization's training capacity.

Louden earned a bachelor’s from Loyola Marymount University and a master’s from California State University at Fullerton.