From the inception of our field, mediators have promoted two fundamental purposes—helping people work on their disputes in a more productive way and influencing how we handle conflict on a systemic level. While these have been our essential purpose, we have also attached our identity to that of being neutral facilitators with no stake in the outcome of the disputes with which we have working. Ironically, defining ourselves as neutral has not only been misleading, it has interfered with our focus on our more basic purpose. While we may aspire to be neutral, we inevitably have a significant impact on the specific conflicts we work on and more broadly on efforts at social change, whether we wish to or not. While we may wish to see ourselves primarily as resolvers, connectors, and agents of agreement, we are also disrupters—we disrupt patterns of interaction on both interpersonal and systemic levels. Unless we are aware of this, we can’t fulfill our true potential or even evaluate the full impact of our work. In this presentation, we will discuss the lessons we have learned over the past 40 years about our role as disrupters and connectors, as agents of peace and change. We will also look at the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead of us at this time when we are in the midst of societal turmoil and intense social conflict.