DE LA MORA Training

Maria Ceballos-Wallis is a Georgia/Florida Certified Spanish-English Interpreter on staff with the DeKalb County State Court, in Decatur, GA. She has worked in multilingual communications since 1990. Her passion has always been eliminating barriers to effective communication through the mastery of language and the media. In addition to being an accomplished television/documentary producer, in 2002, Maria received a certificate in translation studies from Florida International University and was certified as Spanish><English translator by the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters (NAATI.com.au) in Australia. She is also a Georgia-registered civil and domestic mediator (GODR.org). Maria holds an M.A. in international studies from Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, FL and a B.A. in communication arts with a minor in French from Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY. She has also taught English as a second language at Miami Dade Community College, lectured on mass communications as an adjunct at Florida International University (Spanish/English), taught online classes with De La Mora Institute of Interpretation since 2014 and presented at NAJIT, AAIT and Emory Healthcare Interpreter Conferences. Maria occupied various key positions on the Board of Directors of the Atlanta Association of Interpreters and Translators (AAIT.org) from 2011 – 2016. In 2017 Maria was appointed to represent interpreters on the Board of the Georgia Commission on Interpreters.  She joined the team of instructors for the Georgia Commission on Interpreters Orientation Program in 2019.  In 2020, she co-developed the course Foundations for Interpreters in Conflict Resolution and ADR with Barrie J. Roberts, J.D. and Marjory Bancroft (Cross-Cultural Communications), the first online training of its kind for interpreters in all domains. An active advocate of the interpreting profession, Maria has served in key roles in AAIT, NAJIT, the Georgia Commission on Interpreters and Georgia Judicial COVID-19 Task Force.

Barrie J. Roberts is a co-creator, along with Maria-Ceballos Wallis and Marjory Bancroft (Cross-Cultural Communications) of Foundations in Conflict Resolution and ADR for Interpreters, the first online training of its kind to provide ADR training for interpreters. She is also the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Administrator for the Los Angeles Superior Court and the former ADR Administrator for the Riverside County Superior Court, working in both counties with judges, court staff, attorneys, neutrals and community mediation organizations to provide high-quality alternatives to trial.  She completed Cross-Cultural Communication’s 20 -hour Online Interpreter Training course in May 2020. As an ESL instructor at the university level, she created “Mediation as a Second Language” (MSL) courses to combine ADR and ESL for international students at UC Berkeley. Before working in ESL and ADR, Barrie was a staff attorney with Legal Services of Northern California, Inc., representing low-income persons in Sacramento.She has provided teacher training in MSL at international conferences including TESOL, Global Legal Skills, and the Global Negotiation Symposium at Kobe City University of Foreign Studies in Japan. She is also an online mentor in legal English for a female attorney in Kabul, Afghanistan.Barrie holds a B.A. in Political Science from UC Berkeley, a J.D. and Certificate in Public Interest Law from UC Hastings College of the Law, an LL.M. from the Pepperdine University School of Law, Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution, and an M.A. in TESOL from CSU Sacramento.Her publications include Conflict Resolution Training for the Classroom: What Every ESL Teacher Needs to Know, University of Michigan Press, E-Book Single (2020) and Using Getting to Yes to Teach English, Negotiation and Other 21st Century Skills, Journal of Research Institute, Kobe City University of Foreign Studies, 58 (77). (2018)