Introducing Maia Taub, Case Manager,
Monroe County,
Custody & Visitation
Hi, my name is Maia Taub. I'm one of the two new staff members with The Center's Monroe County Custody and Visitation program. I come from a hybrid background of human services, paralegal studies, and, on a volunteer basis, case management.
I graduated from Empire State College with my Bachelor's in human services and I wasn't sure what came next for me. I had once thought I would be a guidance counselor; then I shifted focus to social work, except that I was gradually becoming aware of the difficulties inherent in cracking into the field as a counselor, including my distaste for the treatment modality in vogue at the time. If I did not go on to pursue mental health-based social work, I could always try my hand at casework -- but caseworkers, I found, usually had the unenviable task of visiting people in their homes, which meant driving all over Monroe County. I not only had no car, I wasn't driving more than five minutes from my house to the local grocery and post office due to driving anxiety. Hm. What would come next, then?
While I was asking this question, my mother got a job at Bryant and Stratton College, at their Henrietta location, as a financial aid advisor. She heard me considering my future out loud and I suppose she must have done some investigating of her own, because she mentioned one day that tuition was free for family members of employees, and would I be interested in, say, their paralegal program? I was, after all, so very fond of "Law and Order".
Thus I spent two years learning how to be a paralegal. 2018 and 2019. I'll bet you can guess what happened when I graduated. So there was really no going anywhere for a time, especially for my aging parents' sake; we share living space and I wasn't about to endanger their health. I checked, periodically, to see if any firms were hiring remotely -- they did not appear to be – and many of them were asking for experience I did not have for less than a living wage.
Throughout the whole pandemic, I remembered with fondness my internship for a sole practitioner in Pittsford. Her name was Cynthia Rochford, and she specialized in mediated divorces. Mediation, I thought. That was where it was at. Ever since I'd seen "Fairly Legal" on USA Network lo these many years ago, I'd admired mediators. They'd carved out an alternate way of doing things, one that was much more to my taste than litigation. Meeting Cyndy, I was hooked. I wanted to be a mediator. I looked up who was doing mediation training in the area, and I contacted this Center for Dispute Settlement place I'd heard so much about.
In October of 2021, I was invited to an orientation for potential volunteers. I'll call it serendipity, because CDS did happen to be hiring at the time, and I said, and I quote, "Me. Yes, I'm interested. Very interested." Maybe a month passed between that orientation and my start date here. To this day I'm amazed, because I'd spent the past decade in school and... oh. Honing my case management skills as part of my medieval recreation hobby. Let me encourage you never to overlook a single skill you gain, even if you gain it in a less-than-conventional way.
Today, I (and my infamously dry humor) spend most of my days in a cozy office on the eighth floor of the Reynolds Arcade, reaching out to clients and -- I won't say helping them figure out if mediation is right for them, necessarily. I talk it over with them, but they're the ones doing the figuring out. I'm just there to bolster their thought process. As a trainee mediator, I'll eventually support the conversations our clients need to have with each other.
If there's one thing I appreciate, it's the understanding that this is a client-driven experience. I have a particular fondness for the work of Carl Rogers, who pioneered the concept of client-centered therapy beginning in the 1930s. Rogers' On Becoming A Person had lived on the family bookshelf for years, but I never felt the need to read it until Bush and Folger referenced him in The Promise of Mediation. I highly recommend Rogers if you want to really understand the roots of transformative mediation, but if you don't have time, I have written a brief paper on the relevant aspects of his work. You can email me at mtaub@cdsadr.org for a copy.
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