Three weeks after 9/11, dispute resolvers gathered to ask what they could do. They never stopped meeting.

On September 20, 2001, as New York City reeled from the September 11 attacks, a group of dispute resolution professionals gathered over breakfast to ask a single question: what could conflict resolvers do to help their wounded city? They have met, on the first Thursday of nearly every month, ever since.

What began as a crisis response became an institution. For twenty-five years the NYC-DR Monthly Roundtable Breakfast has convened mediators, arbitrators, ombuds, educators, judges, and peacebuilders — from courthouses, universities, government agencies, and private practice — to learn from one another and from the field's leading thinkers. More than 300 sessions have addressed everything the discipline touches: negotiation and impasse, restorative justice and community violence, implicit bias, interfaith dialogue, disaster response, and today the arrival of artificial intelligence in the practice of dispute resolution.

The Roundtable is free, open, and deliberately non-commercial. It exists to strengthen the field's shared knowledge and its community of practice. Since moving online in 2020 it has grown from a New York breakfast into a global gathering, drawing hundreds of registrants each month from across the United States and around the world, with every session recorded and preserved for the practitioners who follow.