Willamette Valley NVC was formed to organize the efforts of our local team to promote the study and practice of Nonviolent Communication in Marion and Polk counties of Oregon. Our vision is to see the value for empathic connection infuse our community and its organizations and institutions.
We offer professional NVC training to organizations and individuals. We also provide regular introductory sessions and ongoing practice groups that are free. Check the Events page for updated information.
We welcome anyone interested in learning NVC, as well as those who would like to sharpen their skills and NVC consciousness with others.
Mathew Hudson
Though a friend first introduced Mathew to NVC several years ago, it wasn’t until he realized its powerful connection to his studies in co-regulation and therapeutic relationships that he embraced it fully. He began studying and practicing NVC in 2021 and most recently joined with Tim Buckley to set up the WVNVC organization.
Through coaching, educating, and facilitating Mathew has been helping people with their personal and interpersonal growth for decades. He specializes in applying principles of positive psychology to help individuals, groups, and organizations improve their experience of life under the banner of Mediterra Thrive. You can read more about Mathew here.
Mathew is employed at Chemeketa Community College, as a psychology professor. He also manages this organization and website and teaches NVC in the community, through classes and practice groups. He has a passion for teaching, loves to study and write, and enjoys swimming in open water and running in the mountains.
Tim Buckley
Tim began study of NVC in 2003 with NVC founder Marshall Rosenberg . After many hundreds of hours of subsequent training from him and other CNVC certified trainers, he started teaching and facilitating practice groups.
As a volunteer, he and his wife taught NVC with the Oregon Prison Project for almost 10 years, bringing NVC to those whose lives were marked by violence, poverty, and trauma. For that work, the couple won the 2015 Salem Peacemaker of the Year award.
Tim has since been hired for staff training at numerous places of business. In this decade alone, Tim has worked with couples, high school and university classes, nonprofit organizations and governmental agencies, adding NVC to a menu of other things meant to build culture, expand empathy, reduce conflict and the impact of past traumatic events. He prefers a “train the trainer” model by which NVC is shared widely at little or no cost to students.
Tim’s career as an award-winning journalist, freelance writer, and author blended in later life with his NVC practice.
Molly M.
Molly discovered Nonviolent Communication (NVC) in therapy in 2006. She was so moved by the curriculum that she attended a workshop by the late Marshall Rosenberg, founder of NVC. Marshall’s peaceful embodiment of compassion and self-assertion opened up new possibilities in Molly’s imagination. She studied NVC rigorously for several years and then fell out of practice. She renewed her commitment to the practice in 2024 after observing the negative impact of her habitual communication style.
She is enjoying her first year of practicum as a CNVC-certification candidate with the Center for Nonviolent Communication. Molly holds a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and is currently earning her graduate degree in Forensic Psychology. She enjoys reading Jane Austen on rainy days.
John Marshall
John first encountered Nonviolent Communication through graduate school coursework in 2019. Today, he serves as pastor with Church at the Park (C@P) in Salem, where the theories of the classroom are transformed into healing, community praxis. In his role with C@P, John supports the Outreach, Safety, and Safe Parking teams. He also serves as a staff-trainer, leading bi-weekly and monthly rhythms of NVC practice.
As a Willamette Valley native, John finds deep reward in serving our community and inviting all our neighbors to imagine and enact an environment of belonging rooted in kinship and mutuality. The frameworks of NVC and opportunities to facilitate training spaces have met John’s need to participate in this ongoing project.
John holds a B.A. in Peace Studies from Whitworth University (’17), and a Masters of Divinity from Portland Seminary (’24).