Faculty

Patricia (Tish) Robinson supports people in conflict to come up with their own solutions through a fair and impartial process. Her recent book published by Nikkei Shinbun Press, focuses on how to prevent conflict and resolve disputes at work in a way that is voluntary, impartial, and confidential.

Tish has mediated conflict in Japan, Australia, and the U.S. She has also taught conflict intervention at Stanford, Keio EMBA Program and in Yale’s Global Network of Advanced Management, as well as at Hitotsubashi University ICS, and has served on the faculty at Harvard, UC Berkeley, and NYU Stern School. Her interest in conflict intervention stems from two decades’ worth of educational and corporate training and consulting in companies such as Berlitz, Denso, Dentsu, Goldman Sachs, JTB (Japan Travel Bureau), Mitsui Trading, Mizuho Financial Group, Nikkei Shimbun, SMBC Mitsui Sumitomo Bank, Yamaha Music, and Yamaha Motors, among others. Tish is a certified mediator with an MA in Conflict Facilitation. She is also a member of the International Ombuds Association and has passed the Ombuds Practitioner Certification Exam (CO- OP®).

Tish received her MBA and Ph.D. from the MIT Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her BA from Pomona College. She has received awards that include the Academy of International Business Farmer Prize, the Academy of Management Richman Prize, a Fulbright Fellowship, a Fulbright Hayes Fellowship, a Fulbright Faculty Fellowship, a Carnegie Bosch Fellowship, a Japan Foundation Faculty Fellowship, and a Shintaro Abe Fellowship, among others. Her research has been published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Perspectives, and Human Resource Management Review, among others.

Tish has served as a Commissioner on the Fulbright Japan-US Educational Commission appointed by Ambassador Caroline Kennedy, as an outside board director to Eisai Pharmaceuticals, as a Governor on the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan Board of Governors, as a researcher at the Japan Institute of Labor Policy and Training, and as a Founding Director of the Society of Organizational Learning Japan under the auspices of Peter Senge. In all of these pursuits in Japan, she has been very active in spreading conflict transformation best practices to students, and managers and their organizations.