Teresa Ombres / Law + Mediation

Teresa Ombres is a divorce mediator, attorney and collaborative attorney, with a private practice in Great Neck, New York. After some disillusionment with matrimonial practice early in her career, she quit the law for eleven years. When the Peer Mediation Group in her daughter’s high school did a demonstration for the Parents Association she realized, in a light-bulb moment, that she was a mediator. Teresa was immediately trained in divorce and community mediation (that was in 1996) and has since devoted her career to understanding and helping people resolve conflict. Teresa spent many years on the Board of the Family and Divorce Mediation Council of Greater New York, where she served as Co-chair of the Education Committee. She also spent several years on the Board of the New York Association of Collaborative Professionals. She is a founding member of the New York Chapter of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts where she served on the Executive Board for over twenty years.

In the beginning of her mediation career Teresa worked part-time at Community Mediation Services in Jamaica, Queens, first at the director of the Bayside Satellite office and later managing the first pilot program in Custody-Visitation Mediations at the Queens Family Court.  She previously taught the Judicial Matrimonial ADR Externship at St. John’s School of Law, and now teaches the Family Law Practicum at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University. Teresa is currently enrolled in a seminar taught by Pauline Tesler, a founding member of the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals, where practitioners from around the world are taking a deep dive into better understanding how people’s brains and emotions work in order to help separating couples resolve, not only their immediate issues, but the underlying reasons for their conflict.

Teresa is a graduate of Fordham University and New York Law School.