Sarah Federman
Sarah Federman is American author and Professor of Conflict Resolution|Educator and scholar (born November 14, 1976)
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Sarah Federman (born November 14, 1976) is an academic, scholar and author who studies conflict resolution and corporate atonement. She is an Associate Professor at the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego.[1]. She is recognized for her research on corporate accountability for mass atrocities, transformative negotiation theory, and innovative pedagogy.
Biography
Sarah Federman is an Associate Professor of Conflict Resolution at the Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego. Her work focuses on how businesses are connected to mass atrocities. She’s the author of Transformative Negotiation and Last Train to Auschwitz. She also co-authored two books on conflict and atrocity narratives and has written for publications like Harvard Business Review, Journal of Business Ethics, and Smithsonian[2].
In 2022, she testified before the United States Congress on how U.S. banks should address their ties to slavery. Alongside her teaching at the Kroc School, she also trains diplomats through the U.S. Department of State.
Before academia, Federman spent ten years in international advertising, working with companies like Google, Discovery, and the NFL in more than ten countries.
Education
Federman graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in Intellectual History. She earned her M.A. in International Affairs from the American University of Paris and her PhD from the Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University, where she was awarded a Presidential Scholarship.
Teaching and professional experience
From 2002 to 2015, Federman worked as an advertising executive at Telmar, serving major corporate clients and advancing to Vice President of Sales before relocating to Paris as Global Brand Executive (2008-2011) where her work spanned across North America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Her experience in Europe, particularly exposure to World War II historical sites, prompted her transition to academic study of historical accountability.
Federman joined academia as a faculty member at the University of Baltimore (2017-2022) before accepting her current position as Associate Professor at the Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego in 2022. She has served as a regular instructor at the Foreign Service Institute since 2020 and was designated a Fulbright Peace & Conflict Specialist (2021-2025). Federman has also been the most frequent speaker at the Ralph Bunche Library Speaker Series within the U.S. State Department, presenting on each of her published works. She has delivered keynote addresses and lectures at prestigious institutions, including Harvard Law School's Program on Negotiation, Yad Vashem's International Institute for Holocaust Research, and the United Nations Working Group on Business and Human Rights in Geneva. Her research has been presented internationally at institutions across the United States, Canada, France, Italy, Brazil, and the United Kingdom.
Personal Life
Sarah Federman is married to anthropologist Ronald Niezen[3].
Professional contributions
Corporate Accountability for Mass Atrocities
Federman's primary research examines the role of corporations in historical mass atrocities and pathways to accountability. Her doctoral research focused on the French National Railways (SNCF) and its role in World War II deportations, involving extensive archival work in French and interviews with over 120 individuals, including 90 Holocaust survivors. This research examined the company's wartime activities and subsequent efforts at making amends in both the United States and France. The subsequent book, Last Train to Auschwitz: The French National Railways and the Journey to Accountability, won a Nautilus Silver Award for journalism and investigative reporting.
Vichy scholar Sharon Fogg writes about Last Trains, “It is not a traditional history of the SNCF or simply a study of the legal cases brought against it. Rather, Last Train to Auschwitz is a book about both the present and the past through a transnational and interdisciplinary lens that foregrounds the complexity of attempting to repair irreparable harm.”
Expanding this work to American contexts, Federman researched corporate involvement in slavery, leading to her testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee on April 5 and December 2, 2022 regarding the obligation of American banks for their historical participation in slavery. She has been a participant in Yale University's Slavery & Emancipation Working Group. In 2023, she briefed the U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice Beth Van Schaack on her research findings regarding narratives of mass atrocity. She published an article with Harvard Business Review on 'How Corporations Can Address their Historical Transgressions.” Her related TEDx talk 'Can Companies Atone for their Dark Pasts?' was selected by TED for global distribution in 2025.[4]
Transformative Negotiation Theory
Working with her students at the University of Baltimore, Federman developed theoretical frameworks around "transformative negotiation." Her approach extends beyond important, traditional "win-win" models she learned in business and as during the Key Executive Training program at Harvard Business School. Beyond just those at the negotiation table, her work considers impacts on marginalized communities and broader stakeholders, including environmental considerations. She advocates for a "win-win-win" approach that improves outcomes for anyone affected by negotiated decisions. This work resulted in Transformative Negotiation: Strategies for Everyday Change and Equitable Futures (2023), which won a Porchlight Best Business Book award.
Innovative Pedagogy
Federman's exposure to the innovative pedagogy at the Scarsdale Alternative School launched a commitment to educational innovation. As an undergraduate, she developed and directed the University of Pennsylvania's Preceptorial Program. The program offered short, noncredit courses on unconventional topics designed by students and taught by faculty to promote student-teacher interaction and enthusiasm for education. The initiative was featured in The New York Times in 1998 for its innovative approach to experiential learning and drew hundreds of applicants for individual courses. The University of Pennsylvania has continued to offer preceptorials.
Research and development
At the University of San Diego (USD), Federman developed the experiential learning course "Crossing the Divide," which takes graduate students on a two-week cross-country train journey to examine social and political divisions in American society. The course visits cities across the Southwest and Southern United States, with students engaging diverse stakeholders on issues including criminal justice, environmental policy, and racial reconciliation. Stops include meetings with Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, engagement with the fossil fuels industry in Texas, and visits to historically significant sites such as the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham and the Legacy of Slavery Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. Federman designed the train-based format to expose students to communities often characterized as "flyover country" and to encourage direct engagement across political divides during a period of national polarization. The class attracted the attention of KPBS[5] and Inside Higher Ed[6]
Federman also developed a pedagogical approach where students design and implement their own role-play simulations addressing ethnic and cultural conflicts in their communities. Beginning at the University of Baltimore and continuing at USD, students research community-level conflicts and create convincing roles representing different stakeholder perspectives. Several of these student-designed simulations are now distributed through Harvard Business Impact as educational resources, designed to help universities (and communities) facilitate more diverse classroom dialogues and teach perspective-taking skills in conflict analysis.
Selected works
Books
Transformative Negotiation: Strategies for Everyday Change & Equitable Futures. University of California Press, 2023. ISBN: 978-0520386938[7]
Last Train to Auschwitz: The French National Railways and the Journey to Accountability. University of Wisconsin Press, 2020. ISBN: 978-0299331702[8]
Narratives of Mass Atrocity: Victims and Perpetrators in the Aftermath (with Ronald Niezen). Cambridge University Press, 2022. ISBN: 978-1009100298[9]
Articles
"How Companies Can Address Historical Transgressions," Harvard Business Review, 2021[10]
"Corporate Leadership and Mass Atrocity," Journal of Business Ethics, April 15, 2020[11]
National awards
Federman's work has received recognition through various awards and honors:
Sarah Federman’s book Transformative Negotiation was named the 2023 Porchlight Business Book Award winner in the Big Ideas & New Perspectives category by University of California Press.[12]
Last Train to Auschwitz won a Silver Nautilus Award for Investigative Journalism and Reporting in 2021.[13]
In 2017, she was selected for the Amtrak Writing Residency.[14]
References
- ↑ "Sarah Federman Biography". sandiego.edu. Retrieved 28 July 2025.
- ↑ Federman, Sarah. "Table Talk: Never Eating Alone Is Easy on Amtrak". Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 28 July 2025.
- ↑ Combs, Seth (27 November 2022). "For San Diego author, 'Last Train' was a hard journey". San Diego Union Tribune. Retrieved 28 July 2025.
- ↑ "Can companies atone for their dark pasts?". YouTube. TEDx Talks|Sarah Federman|TEDxSan Diego Studio. 7 July 2025. Retrieved 28 July 2025.
- ↑ Julianna Domingo, Leslie Gonzalez, Andrew Bracken. "Crossing political divides, one train trip at a time". KPBS.CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list (link)
- ↑ Mowreader, Ashley. "Learning to Bridge Differences by Talking to Strangers". Inside Higher Ed.
- ↑ Federman, Sarah. "Transformative Negotiation". sarahfederman.com. Retrieved 28 July 2025.
- ↑ Federman, Sarah. "Last Train to Auschwitz". sarahfederman.com. Retrieved 28 July 2025.
- ↑ Federman, Sarah (2022). Federman, Sarah; Niezen, Ronald, eds. Narratives of Mass Atrocity. Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781009110693. ISBN 978-1-009-11069-3. Retrieved 28 July 2025. Search this book on
- ↑ Federman, Sarah (January 2022). "How Companies Can Address Their Historical Transgressions Lessons from the slave trade and the Holocaust". Harvard Business Review. Retrieved 28 July 2025.
- ↑ Federman, Sarah (2021). "Corporate Leadership and Mass Atrocity". Journal of Business Ethics. 172 (3): 407–423. doi:10.1007/s10551-020-04506-4. Retrieved 28 July 2025.
- ↑ "UC Press November Award Winners". UC Press. Retrieved 28 July 2025.
- ↑ "Past Nautilus Winners". nautilusbookawards.com. Retrieved 28 July 2025.
- ↑ Sarah, Federman (16 April 2021). "Starting the Amtrak Residency, Writing About French Railways & The Holocaust". sarahfederman.com. Retrieved 28 July 2025.
External links
Can companies atone for their dark pasts? | Sarah Federman | TEDxSan Diego Studio
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