Camille Ventrell

I’m a modern change agent - a lawyer, author, trainer, integrative hypnotist, and skills coach. In my 34-year professional career, I have been a prosecutor, a small boutique firm civil trial lawyer, and a large firm litigator.  And in the last 10 years, I have also become a change agent.

 

Ten years ago, my life abruptly shifted.  Almost everything I had come to believe about my life stopped.  I found myself in the middle of an unpleasant divorce from a controlling, abusive alcoholic; I lost my job and my way of life.  I woke up in a Dark Night of the Soul.  I felt broken.

 

As I gathered myself to figure out how to keep going, I moved to New York City and began my search for how to pick up the pieces of a life out-of-control.  I spent time in the rooms of Al-Anon, read widely about religions, philosophies and spirituality.  I learned how to meditate.  Then I discovered the idea that everything is energy and information. And working with that makes sense to me.

 

I had been exploring the idea of focusing on teaching trial skills.  I had done that in the past, and I enjoy showing people how they can access confidence to excel.  To improve my own teaching skills, I had a session with an integrative hypnotist.  And what she taught me changed everything.  As she took me through tapping and other energy techniques, I could feel something I hadn’t been noticing about how my own body was communicating with me all the time.  I wanted to learn more.

 

I did learn more. I worked with hundreds of people who want to learn how to change.  I was certified as a Hypnotist by the National Guild of Hypnotists and as an Integrative Life Coach by the International Association of Counselors and Therapists, an association of wellness practitioners.

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So who am I now?

 

I am a lawyer, author, a teacher, a skills coach, and a . . . On some level, these are just labels - ones that tend to limit the way I see my world of possibilities.  So these days, I'm more apt to think of myself as someone who is exploring - learning to see in new ways.  And I feel alive when I am guiding others to see in new ways, too.

 

And yes, I am also all those other things I have learned in the past.  My more traditional experience reads this way:

In the mid-1990's, I began coaching competitive mock trial teams with great success, including a second place national finish. I have served as trial skills faculty for the basic and advanced trainings of the National Institute of Trial Advocacy (NITA). Many regard NITA as one of the nation's premier trial skills training institutions. My faculty rating at NITA is among the highest in the country. I have also served as faculty at the University of Colorado School of Law trial skills programs, teaching students of this tier-one law school the art and skills of trial advocacy.

I have been licensed to practice law in New York, Colorado and Montana. I am an honors graduate of the University of Montana School of Law where I served as a legal writing teaching assistant and was selected for the National Moot Court Competition Team. I received the AmJur Award in Torts. Upon graduation, I was selected as a member of the distinguished Order of Barristers based on demonstrated excellence in trial skill.

In addition to my litigation and training work, I have been a special project director for the National Association of Counsel for Children (NACC). I developed the NACC's child welfare attorney certification program to train and certify lawyers as child advocacy specialists. I was also responsible for the implementation of the certification program, including curriculum and examination development and delivery, testing procedures, and awarding the credential to qualified attorneys. I am a skilled legal writer, the author of many articles and trial practice materials.


 

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