Office of the Director

The FMCS Director, appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, has the responsibility for establishing and directing policy and for the overall administration and strategic direction of the Service. The Director serves as agency liaison with the White House, members of the President’s Cabinet and the Congress, and also provides direction for and participation in mediating major disputes.

Director

Richard Giacolone

Director Richard Giacolone has led FMCS as Deputy Director since 2018, before receiving his nomination from President Trump and subsequent confirmation by the Senate as Director.

Director Giacolone had served in the Chesapeake, Virginia field office since 1995. In that capacity, Director Giacolone functioned as a senior mediator handling cases of national significance, as well as serving as the former Director of the FMCS International/ADR Department and Special Assistant to the Director of FMCS. Prior to receiving his commission with FMCS, Director Giacolone served as a Labor Relations Advisor for the Department of the Navy and has an extensive background in labor relations as a management representative.

In his capacity as FMCS mediator, Director Giacolone mediated thousands of domestic labor and employment cases during his 25-year tenure. Comprising many cases of national significance, his work has ranged from labor disputes involving multiple symphonies and orchestras, to bus and transportation disputes, and scores of cases involving shipbuilding and repair industries with national impact. His international experience at FMCS includes both mediation and the development and delivery of dispute resolution programs in some fourteen countries, including: Peru, Argentina, Panama, Dominican Republic, Spain, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Thailand, and the United Kingdom. He led the Agency’s mission to provide transition assistance during the transfer of the Panama Canal to the Republic of Panama. Director Giacolone represented the United States in the Peoples’ Republic of China, lecturing on the benefits of labor-management cooperation. In addition, he presented mediation training in Yangon, Myanmar.

Director Giacolone’s long Agency career included leading the facilitation of public meetings during the investigation of the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings on Sept. 11, 2001 as well as negotiated rulemaking cases (Reg/Neg) as a means to avoid unnecessary litigation. He helped to bring an end to the lengthy 2020 strike at Bath Iron Works in Maine, and has also mediated numerous significant collective bargaining agreements covering nationwide bargaining units in the federal sector.

Among his professional honors, Director Giacolone was awarded the Meritorious Civilian Service Medal from the Department of Navy for his contributions in labor and employee relations and the Society of Federal Labor and Employee Relations Professionals Lifetime Achievement Award. He was elected National President of the Society of Federal Labor-Management Relations Professionals.

Director Giacolone holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Psychology and a Master of Public Administration degree from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA. He has served on the faculty and has regularly lectured at a number of universities on topics such as collective bargaining and arbitration. These include Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, Tidewater Community College, Old Dominion University, the College of William and Mary Law School, and Virginia Commonwealth University.

Click here to download a copy of Director Giacolone's biography in PDF format.

Deputy Director

Gary Hattal

Gary Hattal is the Deputy Director for the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, appointed by Deputy Director Richard Giacolone.

Hattal has served as a Commissioner assigned to the Seattle, WA field office of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS). As a Federal mediator, Mr. Hattal acts as a confidential neutral working toward amicable contract settlements primarily between management and labor unions. He received his commission in 1995.

For five years, he was the director of the FMCS Institute for Conflict Management, responsible for the creation and delivery, of courses in: Conflict Management, Mediation, Arbitration, Interest-based Problem Solving and other alternative dispute resolution (ADR) systems across the U.S. and internationally.

In addition to dispute settlement, Mr. Hattal works in the arena of preventive mediation, providing training, assessment, coaching, and facilitation skills that will achieve enhanced work relationships. He has varied and extensive experience in the phases of interest-based negotiations procedures, organizational culture, and labor-management partnership development.

He has served FMCS as a field mediator in three field stations (Washington, D.C., Oakland, CA and Seattle, WA), director of Arbitration Services for the FMCS, and as a special assistant to the FMCS’s former Agency Director. International assignments included diplomatic missions in Hanoi, Dublin, Stockholm, London, Canada, and Ecuador, and on the Agency’s behalf, he worked extensively in Panama prior to the Canal transition in 2000.

Mr. Hattal’s experience, prior to receiving his FMCS appointment, includes over 15 years in labor relations, contract negotiations, as well as directing training and development departments, supervising staff, and administered labor contracts for both labor and management.

Mr. Hattal has served as an adjunct professor for numerous colleges and universities (University of Maryland, George Mason University, The American University, Northern Virginia Community College), teaching semester length courses on a wide variety of topics in the organizational communication and development disciplines, as well as serving as the associate director for the Center for Professional Development in the Office of Continuing Studies at The American University in Washington, D.C. He has consulted for many corporations and businesses in the United States and internationally, as a facilitator and trainer, conducting seminars in interpersonal communication, public relations, group dynamics, team building, strategic planning, and oral presentations.

Mr. Hattal completed his formal education at the University of Maryland. His MA is in organizational communication and his Ph.D. research was in the field of organizational development. Post graduate work included advanced negotiations training at Harvard University and the Strauss Institute for Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine University.

Click here to download a copy of Deputy Director Hattal's biography in PDF format.

National Representative

Scot Beckenbaugh

The National Representative reports to the Director and serves as the Agency’s “master mediator” of high profile collective bargaining disputes and is responsible for developing and coordinating increased engagement with FMCS customers for future relationship development and mediation opportunities in key industries and occupations.  The Deputy Director also is responsible for mentoring the Agency’s next generation of major dispute mediators and serves as the management Chair of the Mediator Partnership Council. The Deputy Director handles a variety of assignments to support the initiatives, policies, and programs of the Director of FMCS and represents the Director in meetings of various national, state, and area organizations concerned with labor relations and conflict resolution matters to explain and promote the use of FMCS services by employers, unions, and government entities.

Scot L. Beckenbaugh, who serves as FMCS National Representative, joined the Agency in 1988. He was appointed Western Regional Director in January 2004, having served as Regional Director for the Upper Midwestern Region since 1997. He was the Director of Mediation Services (currently Regional Director) for the Upper Midwestern Region for two years and, before that, he was a field mediator stationed in Des Moines, Iowa. In addition to providing the full range of FMCS services to the labor management community in Iowa, he served as the Minneapolis District Alternative Dispute Resolution Coordinator.  Mr. Beckenbaugh has also served on an interim basis as the Agency’s Acting Director on three occasions.

Mr. Beckenbaugh is the Agency’s “master mediator” of high profile disputes. He  has mediated national master agreements in the aerospace, national defense, professional sports, cereal, heavy equipment manufacturing, aluminum, grocery, health care, meatpacking, and maritime industries. He has extensive experience in public sector dispute mediation, as well as in regulatory negotiations, public policy, land use, and civil rights disputes. A long-time member of the Association of Labor Relations Agencies, Mr. Beckenbaugh also serves on the ALRA Executive Board.

From 1986 to 1988, Mr. Beckenbaugh was a Member of the Iowa Public Employment Relations Board (PERB). Prior to his appointment as Member, he was an Administrative Law Judge and Director of Mediation Services for Iowa’s PERB. He also had a private arbitration practice and was listed with FMCS. He has served on the Twin Cities Labor Management Committee and for two terms as Chairman of the Industrial Relations Advisory Council at the University of Minnesota. He has taught at the high school, junior college, and university level and was a bill drafter and research analyst for the Iowa Legislature.

Mr. Beckenbaugh holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Northern Iowa and an M.A.P.A., with an emphasis in Industrial Relations, from the University of Iowa.

Click here to download a copy of Mr. Beckenbaugh's biography in PDF format.

Senior Advisor and Chief International Affairs Officer

David Thaler

FMCS Commissioner David Thaler currently serves as the Senior Advisor to the Director of FMCS as well as the Agency’s Chief International Affairs Officer. In his role as Senior Advisor to the Director, Commissioner Thaler develops medium and long-range policy initiatives for the Agency in matters of mediator performance management, service delivery, and education and training. He also advises the Director regarding the implementation of the same. In addition to his role as Senior Advisor, Commissioner Thaler also serves as the Head of the FMCS Office of International Affairs. In that role, he designs, administers and delivers U.S. technical assistance programs that involve the training of foreign governmental mediators in advanced mediation and labor relations skills. He often delivers services in Spanish and, in November 2019, he delivered a program in Portuguese. Commissioner Thaler has worked in Argentina, Bangladesh, Canada, Colombia, the Czech Republic, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Hungary, Italy, Mexico, Mozambique, Panama, Peru, Portugal, South Korea, Thailand, Uganda, and Vietnam, in addition to training incoming delegations from China, Haiti and Tajikistan. In 2015, Commissioner Thaler was named to the international roster of mediators for United Nations and United Nations Staff Management Committee.

From 2005 until 2018, Commissioner Thaler served as a field mediator in the Metropolitan New York Field Office, mediating disputes in the areas of collective bargaining, grievances based on violations of collective bargaining agreements, and equal employment opportunity. While in the New York Area, Commissioner Thaler also trained labor and management partners in relationship development and conflict management and designed mediation and conflict management systems for educational and health care institutions, working with several large hospitals to design systems for managing conflict workplace conflict on a departmental level on an ongoing basis. Commissioner Thaler has also served as an instructor of incoming classes of new federal mediators and on the faculty of the FMCS Institute for Conflict Management.

Commissioner Thaler holds a master’s degree in Public Policy from Harvard University, a J.D. from New York University, where he was a Norman Ostrow Scholar and an editor on the Moot Court Board, and a B.A. in International Relations and Spanish, Summa Cum Laude, from Tulane University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Commissioner Thaler has also authored or co-authored several publications relating to workplace issues for several international organizations and U.S. government agencies. Since 2014, Commissioner Thaler has been an Adjunct Professor of Conflict Management at Drew University, where he was the 2018 recipient of the Thomas H. Kean Award for excellence in graduate teaching.

Click here to download a copy of Senior Advisor Thaler's biography in PDF format.

Chief Operating Officer

Gregory Goldstein

Gregory Goldstein is the Chief Operating Officer of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS). In this capacity, he is responsible for overseeing FMCS’s critical operations initiatives which include budget, finance, human resources, information technology and procurement activities.

Prior to joining FMCS, Mr. Goldstein held executive positions at the Department of Health and Human Services where he was the Executive Officer and Director of Operations, Management and Technology and the Deputy Director, Center of Substance Abuse Prevention for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. In these roles he provided executive leadership to federal, public, and private organizations in developing public health initiatives.

Mr. Goldstein was previously the Assistant Branch Head for Behavioral Health Integration at Headquarters Marine Corps (HQMC), In this capacity he led public health initiatives which included research and program evaluation, data surveillance, program development and information technology for Marine Corps behavioral health programs. His previous positions include Senior Drug Policy Advisor within the Immediate Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, Department of Health and Human Services, a program analyst at HQMC, Drug Demand Reduction program manager at Edwards Air Force Base. Mr. Goldstein is also a Virginia Army Nation Guardsmen with over 27 years of military service.

Mr. Goldstein has a Masters degree in Health Science from Touro University and a Bachelors of Science in Management from Park University.

Click here to download a copy of Chief Operating Officer Goldstein's biography in PDF format.