Emilia Péch is a mediator and legal counsel with the Department of Justice of Canada in Ottawa, Canada. Emilia has recently been named a Fellow of the National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution (NCTDR) at the University of Massachusetts. She is also a member of the Alternative Dispute Resolution Institute of Canada (ADRIC) On-line Dispute Resolution Task Force. Emilia wrote a research paper on distance mediation and ethics as part of a Masters in Conflict Studies completed at the University of Ottawa in 2016, and collaborated with Leah Wing to present “Gift or Curse: Access to Justice and Ethical Implications of Technology in Dispute Resolution” at a national ADRIC conference in Montreal, in November 2018. Emilia is a departmental representative to the Autonomy through Cyberjustice Technology research project situated at the University of Montreal. The ACT partnership project brings together a multidisciplinary group of international researchers and partners to work on 16 research sub-projects researching the use of AI in justice, evaluating the impact of these situations with respect to enhancing access to justice, and developing best practices and a framework for governance of AI for justice. She is also co-chair of a departmental study group on Dispute Resolution and Negotiation.

Emilia has worked in several areas of government: as a foreign-service officer for Canada, a human rights investigator, a litigator in immigration law, and as a legal advisor in employment, labour relations, whistle-blowing, and alternative dispute resolution. Most recently, she worked as counsel providing legal technical assistance to the government of Jamaica courts, prosecution service, and government legal service providers for 3.5 years. Emilia has been a mediator since 2000, first, at the Provincial Court of British Columbia and then for the Department of National Defence. Emilia is an experienced trainer. She teaches Negotiation, Current Trends in Federal Law and Cross-Cultural Negotiation in the Faculty of Common Law, University of Ottawa, has taught Mediation and Organizational Conflict courses in the Conflict Studies program at Saint-Paul University, and has developed and delivered training to Justice counsel and other government employees for twenty years.