Training Team
Lead Trainer
Terri Breer, Attorney and Mediator
Attorney and Mediator, Terri Breer, is the founder and lead trainer at New Day Divorce Center. She designs the curriculum for New Day Divorce Mediation Training Programs. She created the training series “Essentials for California Divorce Mediators” designed to raise the standard of care for California Family Mediators whether they are practicing attorneys, non-attorney mediators, therapists, financial experts or other divorce professionals. Although some training programs will include Guest Trainers who will provide additional expertise regarding more complex financial and parenting curriculum, Ms. Breer is the sole presenter of the popular training program “5-Step System for California Divorce Mediation” that she suggests her training participants complete either before or after their 40-Hour Basic Mediation Training before they begin their family mediation practice.
For over thirty years Ms. Breer has provided mediation services to divorcing couples primarily in Orange County and Los Angeles County as well as most jurisdictions in the state of California using her unique Flat Fee Mediation Process that she designed to provide an affordable and innovative option for divorcing spouses to resolve their divorce disputes. She shares this unique process with all training participants taking them through her procedures and strategies from the initial contact with a potential mediation client to entry of judgment.
She graduated from Pepperdine Law School in 1985 and in 1993 she returned to Pepperdine to attend the Domestic Dispute Resolution Training Program presented by Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine School of Law.
She was a founding member of Collaborative Divorce Solutions, Orange County’s collaborative practice group founded in 2003. She has written several articles on alternative dispute resolution and the need for change in the current family law adversarial system.
Ms. Breer was Chair of Orange County Bar Association – Alternative Dispute Resolution Section in 2014. She has served as Board Member of the Southern California Mediation Association (SCMA) for two terms from 2015 to 2021 and was the Chairperson for the SCMA Family Mediation Institute (FMI) in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 2022, and 2023. She is the recipient of the SCMA President’s Award in 2018 and the 2023 SCMA Star Award for Excellence and Innovation in Family Mediation.
Ms. Breer is active in hosting various networking and educational opportunities for divorce professionals, including South Coast Collaborative Professionals Luncheons and Mixers that she hosted quarterly from 2006 to 2016, and The Attorney Therapist Breakfast Club that was founded in 2017 and meets monthly in Orange County. Both professional groups bring together professionals who share their commitment to help keep family law disputes out of court.
Guest Trainers
Laurie Itkin, CDFA
Laurie Itkin is a financial advisor, wealth manager, and certified divorce financial analyst (CDFA). She is also the author of the Amazon best-seller, Every Woman Should Know Her Options: Invest Your Way to Financial Empowerment. Investopedia named Ms. Itkin one of the top 100 most influential financial advisors in the country.
As a wealth manager at Coastwise Capital Group, which has received the annual Five Star award for “Best in Client Satisfaction” for the past seven years, Ms. Itkin manages the investments of clients’ brokerage, trust and retirement accounts. Through her financial consulting company, The Options Lady, she provides divorce-related financial planning and analysis to individuals and couples throughout all stages of the divorce process.
Ms. Itkin frequently appears as a guest expert on investing and personal finance on television, radio and podcasts. She has been quoted in numerous publications including the Wall Street Journal, San Diego Union Tribune, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, U.S. News and World Reports, Redbook, and Forbes.
Ms. Itkin is a national expert on women and investing and speaks at conferences and seminars throughout the country. She has a talent for communicating arcane economic and investing subjects in a language that everyone can understand. She volunteers as a pro-bono financial planner for the San Diego Financial Literacy Center, as a speaker for the Second Saturday and Divorce 101 workshops, and as a mentor to women launching new businesses in her capacity as a board member for Hera Labs’ Business Accelerator. She earned her B.S. in economics with a concentration in finance from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Jenna Flowers, Psy.D, MFT
Dr. Jenna Flowers is a licensed Marriage & Family Therapist with a private practice in Newport Beach. She is the author of The Conscious Parent’s Guide to Coparenting published by Simon and Schuster. Dr. Flowers has worked with court mandated coparenting cases as well as with mediators. She developed an online coparenting class call called CoparentWell.com to help separated and newly divorcing individuals develop their skills for effective coparenting. She is a Parenting contributor for Fox 11 news GOOD DAY LA, and has a podcast called the Mainspring Family Wellness show where she discusses all things parenting, all things family wellness. Dr. Flowers has previously been an Adjunct faculty member at Azusa Pacific University Graduate Studies in Psychology, speaks frequently at marriage and family therapy conferences and school on coparenting and parenting issues.
Laura McGee, JD, Divorce Mediator & Coach
Laura McGee is the founder and vision behind Leave Strong Divorce Services, a family-focused mediation and coaching practice located in the Village of Carlsbad, California. She is a highly accomplished speaker, mediation trainer, and mentor with a very hands-on approach to her teaching and training. Laura began her career almost 40 years ago, first as a successful trial lawyer in Vancouver, Canada and then she shifted her focus to mediation in the late 1990s. Laura acquired over 350 hours of training in various styles of Alternative Dispute Resolution from such prestigious institutions as The Justice Institute of British Columbia and the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine.
Laura has always had a family-centric focus. To advance her own skills and knowledge about how to best mediate with families Laura has been certified as a co-parenting specialist obtaining the Mosten-Guthrie CoPS certification with Christina McGhee and with Bill Eddy in his high-conflict mediation techniques program, New Ways for Families. Laura recently participated in a year-long co-parenting master-mind group comprised of a diverse group of parenting-focused professionals.
Laura has been a speaker at several SCMA Family Law Institute events and offered Mediation certification training for CALDA. Laura is honored and excited to share her skills, training, and experience as a lifelong student of family re-organization to this hands-on approach to training the participants of this workshop to be more confident and skilled when working with divorcing and separating families.
Bill Eddy
Bill Eddy is a lawyer, therapist, mediator and the President of High Conflict Institute. He developed the “High Conflict Personality” theory (HCP Theory) and has become an international expert on managing disputes involving high conflict personalities and personality disorders. He provides training on this subject to lawyers, judges, mediators, managers, human resource professionals, businesspersons, healthcare administrators, college administrators, homeowners’ association managers, ombudspersons, law enforcement, therapists and others. He has been a speaker and trainer in over 25 states, several provinces in Canada, Australia, France and Sweden.
As an attorney, Bill is a Certified Family Law Specialist in California and the Senior Family Mediator at the National Conflict Resolution Center in San Diego. Prior to becoming an attorney in 1992, he was a Licensed Clinical Social worker with twelve years’ experience providing therapy to children, adults, couples and families in psychiatric hospitals and outpatient clinics. He is the author of numerous articles and several books, including:
High Conflict People in Legal Disputes
It’s All YOUR Fault! 12 Tips for Managing People Who Blame Others for Everything
SPLITTING: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder
BIFF: Quick Responses to High Conflict People, Their Personal Attacks, Hostile Email and Social Media Meltdowns
He is also the developer of the “New Ways for Families” method of managing potentially high conflict families in and out of family court.
Carlie Berke, CDFA, CVA
Carlie Berke is the Founder of Your Money Advocate and obtained her certification as a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst (CDFA®) and a Certified Valuation Analyst (CVA). I have worked on hundreds of marital dissolution cases over the past ten years that were predominantly settled through alternative dispute resolution in addition to providing expert witness testimony. My experience in the field of marital dissolution includes business and asset valuation, income and expense analyses, separate property tracings, executive compensation and related equity awards, commercial and residential real estate economic analyses, post-divorce budgeting, division of assets, calculating support arrears, income available for support analyses and other financial analyses needed for marital dissolution or post judgment cases.
I bring over 35 years of experience in the field of finance with extensive expertise in business and asset valuation, corporate and asset purchases, sales and financings across multiple industries and asset classes, financial modeling and budgeting, and distilling and presenting complex financial analyses. I am also an alternative assets specialist on topics such as private equity, venture capital, hedge funds and real estate to name the key types and provide unique expertise to clients with complex financial assets.
Prior to founding Your Money Advocate, I spent over 25 years in the field of finance, analyzing companies, industries, financial products and investment structures. I completed numerous debt and equity public and private offerings, managed a $1.3 billion commercial real estate portfolio and was an officer of a publicly-traded REIT in charge of finance. My expertise is in distilling and communicating simple to complex financial analyses into coherent, concise and persuasive presentation formats. I work with clients throughout the state of California. My office is located in San Diego County.