Introducing Susan Borke, JD

- [Instructor] This is an audio course. Thank you for listening - [Instructor] Susan, thanks for joining us today. - [Instructor] Thank you, I'm glad to be here. - [Instructor] No, it is a pleasure to have you. How about you start off by telling the audience a little bit about yourself and what you do? - [Instructor] My name is Susan Borg and my company name is Borgworks. My focus is on training negotiation skills. I really feel it's empowering when people understand how to negotiate effectively and it makes them it puts them in a position of being able to do a better job for themselves and for their organizations. - [Instructor] And so how did you get into this? - [Instructor] A lot of my background is from when I was working in house for the National Geographic Society. I worked as in-house council creating the business affairs department for the television group initially, and then working as part of the general council's office as deputy general council for about 18 years. My total tenure with national geographic was about 28 years. - [Instructor] Wow. - [Instructor] And after I left, I realized that one of the things I most enjoyed from what I worked at National Geographic was creating a negotiation skills course for staff. People who took my course really enjoyed it. And it did two things, at least. One was giving them confidence that the lawyers they were working with were really interested in negotiating constructively, helping them do their deals well. And the second thing was it gave us a common language for talking about negotiations and that made our whole communication process much more efficient. - [Instructor] That's really smart. I think that's a really great example to show how negotiation as a skill can improve the communication skills of, of everybody in the organization and, and bring people closer together when they're working collaboratively. - [Instructor] That's very true, and I really feel that that's the key to effective negotiating.