Yves Labissière
Yves Labissière, Ph.D., a Junior Associate with LJS, is widely respected and admired by colleagues and friends alike for his skills as a facilitator, teacher, researcher and trainer. He brings a wide-range of expertise. His gentle style is engaging, collaborative, and intensely curious—bringing those around him to new levels of self-awareness and unanticipated insights.
Yves has received extensive training, including in the Institute of Cultural Affairs Technology of Participation (ToP), a methodology that increases participation and encourages consensus-building. A National Science Foundation Fellow and post-doctoral Ford Foundation Fellow, Yves is an Associate Professor at Portland State University where he teaches undergraduate and graduate level classes and conducts research on the psychology of oppression and empowerment, diversity, and inter and intra-group relations and conflict. He is a core member of the general education program, University Studies.
His research on intra/intergroup relations focuses on Blackness, black identity and racial and ethnic identities among groups categorized as Black in the US. Other areas of research include hate crimes, popular culture, and pedagogy. He is currently working on a project aimed at improving communication between police and community. Deeply committed to excellence in teaching, Yves led a University-wide program of assessment and evaluation to improve teaching performance and classroom learning outcomes. He is also an expert is survey design and programming.
In addition, Yves designs and facilitates workshops on managing diversity in the workplace, and on minimizing the influence of “group think” of highly diverse work teams. He was a lead trainer with the City of Portland’s Cultural Competency program for all city managers.
Raised in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Yves is fully trilingual in French, Creole, and English and learning Spanish. He received a BA from Yale, and a doctorate in Social Psychology from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Yves worked for Hewlett Packard as a statistician and programmer. When he is not working, he enjoys gardening, cooking, weightlifting and just “hanging out” with friends.
