Dr. Beth Fisher-Yoshida, an expert on 360 feedback in the workplace, will appear at AFSA to discuss 360s in the Foreign Service context. This discussion takes place at AFSA HQ, 2101 E Street NW. Click here to register.

Beth Fisher-Yoshida is a faculty member and the Director of the Negotiation and Conflict Resolution program at Columbia University. Dr. Fisher-Yoshida teaches classes in conflict resolution and related fields and conducts participatory action research. Her focus in her classes is on improving communication through developing more self-awareness that leads to better relationships and improved negotiation practices. She is also Co-Chair of AC4, the Advanced Consortium of Cooperation, Conflict and Complexity, housed in the Earth Institute, also at Columbia University.

Some of the current projects in which Dr. Fisher-Yoshida is involved through AC4 are the Cosmopolis project in which she is working with a team of scholars and practitioners familiar with CMM, Coordinated Management of Meaning, to develop a virtual community in which people use CMM to co-create constructive communication patterns and better social worlds. Another project is the Urban Violence Prevention Program, which she co-leads with her colleague Aldo Civico. This initiative focuses on reducing violence in urban centers through a variety of grassroots and scholarly approaches working with youth and community leaders in Colombia and Newark.

She is the founder of FYI Fisher Yoshida International, LLC, a firm that partners with clients to develop customized interventions aimed at improving organizational performance. The firm focuses on professional and personal development to address change efforts through leadership development, conflict resolution management systems, intercultural communication and diversity, team development and effectiveness, and performance management. One major client is the United Nations and others have included organizations in the Fortune-100 private sector, nonprofit, and government sectors in the U.S., Canada, Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. She is a Certified Clinical Sociologist (CCS). She speaks conversational Japanese and lived and worked in Japan for 13 years.

Dr. Fisher-Yoshida is the author of numerous articles, chapters, edited books, and authored a book on transnational leadership. Her main areas of focus are Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM), intercultural communication, conflict resolution and peace building and transformative learning.

She received her Ph.D. in Human and Organizational Systems and M.A. in Organization Development from Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, California. She received her M.A., with honors, from Teachers College, Columbia University. She received both a B.A. and a B.S. from Buffalo State College. Dr. Fisher-Yoshida is also a Certified Clinical Sociologist (CCS).