Dan has been a student and practitioner of conflict resolution since the early 1970s. As a graduate student in counseling psychology, he learned a facilitative approach to family systems therapy. Among fellow counseling interns, he became the "go-to guy" for resolving marital conflicts. His doctoral dissertation was on the subject of workplace conflict.

Upon completing the Ph.D. in 1977, Dan developed one of the first Employee Assistance Programs in the federal government under contract with the United States Office of Education (Department of HEW) during the administration of President Jimmy Carter. There, he began to understand that managers and supervisors, with brief training, could perform simple mediation to resolve employee conflicts within their areas of responsibility.

As a professor of organizational behavior at the University of Hartford (Connecticut) in 1978, Dan initiated a graduate MBA course, "Managing Organizational Conflict," which he continues to teach there and at the Summer Institute of Conflict Resolution at Syracuse University (Maxwell School of Government). His course receives the highest student evaluations among all courses in the University of Hartford graduate school of business.

Upon leaving full-time academics in 1985, Dan founded the Mediation Training Institute International, a global network of Certified Trainers who conduct one-day seminars in managerial mediation and self-mediation based on his work. Dan's first book, Managing Differences, now published in six languages worldwide, serves as a sourcebook for those seminars.
In 1998, Dana Mediation Institute, Inc., was founded to advance the strategic management of organizational conflict.

He is a popular conference and convention speaker whose most requested keynote title is "Weaving Mediation into the Fabric of Organizations." Dan resides in Kansas City and works at www.mediationworks.com.