About Nick Coburn-Palo
Nicholas Coburn-Palo is a full-time faculty member at Harvard University, where he serves as a Preceptor of Public Speaking, and teaches in the management and government graduate programs, including courses in negotiation and organizational conflict resolution, public policy analysis and writing, comparative democratic theory, and writing in the social sciences.
Dr. Coburn-Palo earned his MA and PhD in Political Science from Brown University, where he was awarded the Hoppman Teaching Prize, also studying at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. Nick has worked as a negotiation and diplomacy trainer for UNITAR for over a decade, up through the United Nations Security Council level. Among other engagements for the United Nations, Dr. Coburn-Palo presented on advanced negotiation strategies at an ambassador level summit in New York for the African Union delegations in preparation for the Rio+20 Summit on Sustainable Development. In addition, UNITAR retained him to work with dozens of diplomats from the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the run-up to contentious regional security and economic negotiations with Japan involving culturally sensitive issues. He was recently selected by UNITAR and the Doha Foundation to teach the Masterclass on “Cross Cultural Communication” at World Negotiation Day in Qatar.
Recently, Nick delivered a senior level lecture on “Leading with Impact” to the General Secretariat of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in Riyadh and was a featured speaker at the grand opening of the Japanese innovation hub, TECH-Tokyo. He has also maintained a longstanding consulting relationship with the leading economic think tank, The European House – Ambrosetti, lecturing and leading numerous training sessions in Italy and France for corporate and governmental officials. Dr. Coburn-Palo previously served as a Program Dean for International Security Studies at Yale University, and has lectured at universities on four continents, including the Warsaw School of Economics (Poland), Alfaisal University (Saudi Arabia), National Taiwan University (Taipei), Stanford University (USA), and EAFIT University (Colombia).
Dr. Coburn-Palo previously served as a Program Dean for International Security Studies at Yale University, and has lectured at universities on four continents, including the Warsaw School of Economics (Poland), Alfaisal University (Saudi Arabia), National Taiwan University (Taipei), Stanford University (USA), and EAFIT University (Colombia).
Nick previously served as a lecturer in the Department of Communication Studies at San Jose State University, where he taught courses on persuasion, global strategic communication, mediation, and a graduate seminar on argumentation theory. Dr. Coburn-Palo was also an online graduate instructor for the Open University of Catalonia (Barcelona), working to develop and teach graduate courses on overcoming negotiation deadlocks across several years. In addition, while Nick lived in South Korea, he designed and taught immersion programs in formal and informal negotiation approaches for regional governmental officials, who were preparing for upcoming trade negotiations in the U.S. and U.K. While living in Taipei, he taught numerous professional workshops on negotiation for major corporations, civic organizations, and educational institutions.
Dr. Coburn-Palo also spent almost twenty years in the high school sector as a faculty member, award-winning coach, department chair, and in administration, at top-tier institutions including the Taipei American School (Taipei City), the College Preparatory School (Oakland, CA) and the York School (Monterey, CA). As a high school teacher, Nick taught courses including Modern World History, Asian History, U.S. History, Public Speaking, Debate, American Government (AP), Theory of Knowledge (IB), Philosophy (IB- SL & HL), and a year-long honors seminar on Crisis and Leadership. As a speech and debate coach, his students won numerous state, national and international championships.
Finally, Nick has undertaken considerable pro bono work in the nonprofit sector, including with the Urban Debate League (USA), training public school teachers to assist in reaching at-risk high school students through competitive speech and debate, as well as advising on behalf of the humanitarian organization, the Grace Global Initiative, among other groups.