Masha Rusanov

I spent over two decades inside Bay Area tech companies, including Google and Intuit. Over and over, I watched high-functioning, capable, talented people tense up in meetings. I saw well-functioning teams get blocked because of communication breakdowns. And I noticed the amount of resources that were spent on managing conflict instead of understanding and preventing it. I have always been curious about the root causes of human behavior. Same thing with conflict - why do we keep reacting in the same way even when we know the outcome is not the best for us? That question pulled me out of marketing and communications and into earning a graduate degree in negotiation and conflict resolution, completing extensive mediation trainings, and eventually starting a coaching and facilitation practice built around one core insight: most problems have a pattern underneath that nobody has looked at directly yet. Once you see it, you gain the power to make different choices. I work with individuals navigating high-stakes personal transitions and with organizations where communication keeps breaking down. The contexts are different, but the work is the same: find the pattern, bring it into the light, then figure out what to do next. My book, Repatterned (Glass Spider Publishing, 2026), introduces the Exhale-Explore-Engage® method, a research-grounded framework for interrupting inherited conflict patterns and choosing a different response. I hold an MA in Negotiation, Conflict Resolution, and Peacebuilding and am a mediator, a communicator, and a coach, credentialed through ICF, Harvard, and DCA.