Three Days, One Team: Inside Collaborative Team Trainings Interdisciplinary Collaborative Training in San Diego
Collaborative Team Trainings just wrapped a three-day interdisciplinary Collaborative divorce training in sunny San Diego. Attorneys, financial specialists, mental health professionals, and mediators traveled in to learn the Collaborative process together, side by side, discipline by discipline. Attendees came from San Diego, from other parts of California, and from as far away as Washington State and Florida.
By the end of day three, the group of people who had started out as strangers was working like a team and friends.
Learning From People Who’ve Done the Work
The training was led by five trainers who between them represent decades of experience in Collaborative Practice:
- Shawn Weber, JD
- Myra Chack Fleischer, JD
- Mark Hill, CFP, CDFA
- Jaye-Jo Portanova, MD
- Nancy Ross, LCSW
Four of the five, Shawn, Myra, Mark, and Nancy, are recipients of the Eureka Award, the highest honor Collaborative Practice California (CP Cal) gives to practitioners who have shaped the field. Myra’s win is recent. She was named a Eureka Award recipient last month. Mark and Nancy are two of the OG trainers of Collaborative Practice, and it was an honor having these pioneers join the training team.
These are people who have built this field and are still actively practicing in it.
What Attendees Actually Said
The best measure of a training isn’t the syllabus. It’s what attendees say afterward, once they’re back home and the adrenaline has worn off.
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Cristina Trette put it simply:
“I’m very grateful to have spent my weekend learning the Collaborative Practice divorce process. I was stretched and challenged in the best of ways. Our excellent trainers held us together as we grappled with paradigm shifts and new ways of engaging in our various disciplines.”
Clinical psychologist Dr. Katie O’Dowd, called it personal as well as professional:
“Just completed training in collaborative divorce with some of the best in the field. This work holds a special place for me, both personally and professionally. Training with top experts in the field deepened my understanding and connected me with an incredible team of colleagues.”
Kimberly McNary, LMFT, founder of The Classy Girls Guide to Divorce, was just as direct:
“Great weekend of learning with some top notch instructors and professionals to learn with. A MUST training for anyone involved in divorce. There IS a better way.”
Three mental health professionals, three separate practices, and the same conclusion.
More Than a Credential
What made the training work was the mix of people who attended it, along with the content itself. Collaborative Practice depends on attorneys, financial specialists, coaches, and mediators knowing how to function as a team, not as separate professionals who happen to share a case. Building that muscle takes more than a manual. It takes three days of working through hard scenarios with people from other disciplines, pushing each other, and coming out the other side with real working relationships.
That’s exactly what happened. A number of participants have already submitted applications to join Collaborative Practice San Diego, ready to put what they learned into practice with a network of colleagues they now know personally.
Want In?
If you’re an attorney, financial professional, mental health provider, or mediator looking for a better way to help families through divorce, Collaborative Practice might be the model you’ve been looking for. If you want to learn it from people who help define it in California, CPSD’s training is where that happens.
There’s no date yet for the next training, but it’s coming. Watch for it.
If you’d like to be added to the mailing list so you don’t miss the announcement, email sdtraining2026@gmail.com.
Interested in Collaborative Practice or in joining CPSD? Visit collaborativepracticesandiego.com.
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