In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, Patty sits down with Ken Hyatt — Partner & Co-Founder of CMPartners and Executive Director & Co-Founder of the Global Restoration Institute (GRI) — to trace a career spent at the front lines of negotiation, conflict, and leadership.

Ken takes us back to winter 1981, when he was in law school with Roger Fisher, reading Getting to Yes in manuscript form and watching his mentor advise on the Iranian hostage crisis in real time. From there, his path runs through Bain & Company, two decades building the modern negotiation field at CMPartners and the Harvard Negotiation Project, a turn as COO of the US International Trade Administration, and now into the work he's doing through GRI — helping leaders, governments, and societies address the wounds of the past in places like Rwanda and the Middle East.

Along the way, Ken shares why managing conflict isn't the same as transforming it, why interpersonal relationships sit at the heart of organizational strategy, and how the toughest conversations often start not in the past, but in the future.