Featured Trainers

Melissa brings 25+ years of HR leadership experience specializing in communication, employee relations, and workplace violence prevention. She creates and delivers "Words Matter," a popular training on effective workplace communication, and coaches managers on conflict resolution and courageous conversations.

Melissa led efforts to create a national workplace violence prevention program for federal courts and initiated interagency Crisis Advisory Teams with the U.S. Marshals Service. She has extensive experience with complex employee relations issues, mediations, investigations, and sensitive employment separations.

Melissa holds an MBA from the University of Washington and a JD focused on employment law and mediation from Seattle University School of Law.

Michael Dean has over three decades of experience working in IT for the federal judiciary. Michael started with the judiciary in 1991 at the Circuit Executive's Office for the Fifth Circuit, where he was instrumental in creating the Court of Appeals' first email system and local area network. He later moved to the Circuit Executive's Office for the Fourth Circuit, where he worked from 1996 until he retired in September of this year.

Michael provided network support for both WAN and LAN systems for all court units in the Fourth Circuit. During his time with the Fourth Circuit, Michael worked closely with the Administrative Office on various evaluation boards and advisory and working groups, including the Technical Advisory Group (1996), the Email Technical Evaluation Board (1999), the Networx Technical Evaluation Board (2007), the Network Coordination Board (2008 and 2010), the National IT Infrastructure Services Working Group (2012), and the Court IT Operations Working Group (2016-2023).

During the COVID pandemic, Michael was instrumental in helping courts move to teleworking and in setting up virtual hearings and oral arguments via first the National Video Teleconferencing System and then Zoom.

In September 2023, Michael took a TDY position with the AO working in the Enterprise Operations Center on the EIS network transition from Networx, Cisco WAN router upgrades, Out of Band management procurement and WAN/LAN monitoring and support tools and reports.

Michael looks forward to helping federal court units with their IT needs and, in particular, with LAN design, documentation, and/or troubleshooting; Cisco router and switch configuration and software upgrades; and video teleconferencing and virtual courtroom proceedings.

Danny Kuhn (MA, West Virginia University) is a former social worker, high school teacher, and Deputy Chief U.S. Probation Officer for the Southern District of West Virginia. But if you've worked for the courts for any length of time, you probably know him from his amazing training programs.

Danny has conducted training -- primarily in the areas of writing, team building, and communication skills -- for the federal courts for over 30 years. His training work has taken him from Maine to Guam, and Anchorage to Miami. He moved to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina when he retired from the court in 2010 and has written 13 books!

Danny also books training via his independent website Favoritetrainers.com.

Luta is a highly respected training professional with more than 25 years of broad court experience developing training, managing projects, building innovative solutions, and supporting technology and leadership initiatives for the federal judiciary.

Luta holds a bachelor's degree in Education and a master's degree in Organizational Leadership. She is a graduate of the Federal Court Leadership Development Program sponsored by the FJC and a founding member of the Automation Training Community of Practice (ATCoP).