Andra Medea (born 1953) is an American writer and a project developer and theorist on issues of conflict and violence, specifically crisis prevention.

[1] She later founded Chimera, Inc., which for more than twenty years taught self-defense classes for women based on Medea's early theories of conflict.

Her video "Working with Emotional Clients: The Virtual Tranquilizer for Lawyers" (American Bar Association, 2010) has been a best-selling continuing education program for the ABA.

More recently, she developed this work on the continuum even further in "Safe Within These Walls: De-escalating School Situations Before They Become Crises" (Capstone, 2013).

Medea was the daughter of a Lithuanian American machinist, Edward Thomas, and his wife, Emily, who was a homemaker and community activist.

While she was growing up in Chicago's Marquette Park, the neighborhood was a racial battleground, and Medea learned her first techniques for dealing with conflict on the street.

Dr. Martin Luther King led two open housing marches in Marquette Park, which were met by white mobs who attacked the marchers and burned cars.

[4] In April 1972, Medea organized, at the Chicago Loop Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), the first conference in the Midwest on the subject of rape.

Other important books on the subject were published, including, Rape: A First Sourcebook for Women by the New York Radical Feminists (New American Library, 1974).

This innovative form of self-defense combined street fighting, some martial arts techniques, and a great deal of non-physical strategy that pre-figured Medea's conflict resolution theories.

For example, in 2009, she was called to testify on learned helplessness and barriers to ethical behavior before the Illinois Reform Commission in the wake of the Rod Blagoyevich scandal.

As conflict in schools increased in recent years, Medea turned her attention to practical techniques to de-escalate aggression and prevent crises.

The Virtual Tranquilizer: Managing Adrenaline for Veterans Returning from Deployment [Audio] Springfield, IL: Illinois National Guard and Prevention First, 2008.