Rubén Flores helps people have brave conversations.
Through Ready Brave Go, he mediates disputes and trains leaders and teams to manage conflict, have difficult conversations, and negotiate differences in high-stakes environments.
What he most loves to do is help people prepare for and rehearse specific difficult conversations.
Rubén began his career in hospital operations in New York City before moving into global health with humanitarian organizations including Doctors Without Borders. He coordinated emergency healthcare projects during natural disasters, epidemics, and armed conflict. Those experiences led to opportunities to teach and coach leaders in other fields on how to have difficult conversations, manage conflict, and negotiate differences.
His fascination with negotiation eventually led him to mediation, where for the past decade he has enjoyed helping business partners work through conflict, understand the interests beneath their positions, and develop more durable agreements.
Rubén is particularly interested in the role of power and gender in conflict: who is permitted to speak, whose needs are treated as legitimate, how influence is exercised, and what makes it difficult for people to challenge authority. Alongside Kasia Urbaniak, he collaborated on the book Unbound: A Woman’s Guide to Power.
He has extensively studied how people are recruited into coercive systems and pressured to act against their own values and interests. He has studied these dynamics in contexts ranging from the recruitment and indoctrination of child soldiers to self-development groups, multilevel marketing sales teams, and spiritual communities.
Rubén is a graduate of the George Washington University and holds an International Diploma in Humanitarian Affairs from Fordham University. He has studied negotiation and mediation through the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School and other professional training organizations.
He later earned a Master of Science in Marriage and Family Therapy from Colorado State University and practices psychotherapy with individuals, couples, and families.
A proud Mexican-American immigrant, Rubén is fluent in English, Spanish, and French, and is conversant in Portuguese and German.
Outside of work, he is an avid ice climber, skier, and mountain athlete
Services & Fees
Prepare for Difficult Conversations
Asking for a raise.
Negotiating for a fairer distribution of housework at home.
Giving difficult feedback.
These conversations are challenging and easy to avoid.
I can help you show up ready.
Together, we get clear on the context, what is at stake, and what you most want to happen. Then we practice and role-play the conversation, including how the other person might respond and how you want to handle it.
I find that one or two hours are usually all we need to help you show up confident and prepared.
My fee is $250/hour, and $125/hour for healthcare professionals who are still in training, recently graduated or new to management.
Conflict between cofounders can lead to better ideas, clearer decisions, and meaningful growth. It can also damage trust and leave important conversations stuck in the same familiar patterns.
Mediation creates a structured space to slow the conflict down, understand what each person needs, and find a workable path forward.
Together, we revisit the issues that have reached stalemate, identify the interests beneath each position, and develop agreements that protect both the business and the working relationship.
My fee is flexible and depends on the financial resources of the organization. I also provide mediation for family businesses, nonprofits, and neighborhood associations.
Mediation for Cofounders
Speaking, Training & Media
Speaking & Corporate Training
Rubén helps leaders and teams navigate the conversations that determine whether organizations fracture or move forward. He is passionate about bringing these skills particularly to emerging leaders in healthcare. He has taught on difficult conversations and conflict management in numerous healthcare organizations, including the Physician Leadership Certificate Program at Stanford.
His trainings are practical, participatory, and built around the real conversations people are struggling to have. Recent clients include Red Bull North America.
Rubén is available to assist investigative journalists, researchers, and law enforcement professionals understand high-demand organizations with greater accuracy and nuance.
His perspective combines study of coercive systems with firsthand experience as a survivor and witness of OneTaste. He can help reporters think through recruitment, coercion and bound choice, group dynamics, survivor experiences, and the language used to describe these systems responsibly.
Rubén is available for interviews, background conversations, and investigative consultation.