Discover how you can catapult your company onto the top of the “Best Places to Work” list by trimming turnover, lessening lawsuits & cutting, in-house diversity training at a fraction of what your might expect to pay!
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ABOUT US

Who We Are:

We are a multicultural team of management and staff development professionals committed to shaping a better workplace for our clients.  Our team is comprised of skilled consultants with relevant diversity, communication, conflict resolution, leadership, corporate and outdoor team building, strategic planning and communication experience to implement and monitor projects.  All consultants are highly qualified and bring national and international experience, focusing on corporate and government clients.  Each team member has extensive experience in a variety of cultural settings worldwide and a long-standing commitment to advancing people's ability to improve personal effectiveness in an atmosphere of cooperation.

C. Harris Companies, Inc. has formed mutually productive relationships with our clients. In the areas of customer service, teambuilding, conflict resolution, communication, diversity, and leadership development, we have a reputation for producing results - especially when it comes to major culture-change initiatives.  Participant evaluations from our diversity programs are consistently rated 9.14 and above on a ten-point scale.  We take pride in leaving participants with new insights and ideas that will sharpen their skills, improve their performance and create a more harmonious work environment.

The processes that we have developed support employees with high performance goals by allowing them to learn and practice in real-life challenges.

What We Value:

Respect, Integrity, Quality, Accurate Information, Effective Management Policies and Timely Communication. 

We have a high regard for the worth and dignity of each individual.  Trust is an essential element in any change we affect.  We insist on impeccable integrity by C. Harris Companies, associates in forming any relationships with our clients and workshop participants.

We are committed to producing the highest quality in any service we present.   We use feedback from participants and managers to constantly improve our process and program delivery.  We collaborate on adjustments as well as receive and give timely feedback between and among our facilitators to assure the highest quality during and after workshops. We demonstrate techniques others can use to improve the quality of their communication in personal and organizational settings.

Our Approach:

Our approach is objective, non-judgmental, non-threatening and blame-free.  Our facilitators create an environment that is conducive to open communication.  We focus on dialogue skills, which allow individuals to resolve issues at the lowest possible level. The focus is always prescriptive and not punitive.  We work with people to define problems and collaborate together in ways that work for them and for the organization.  We allow groups to acknowledge any difficulties that they are facing and then lead them constructively to reducing these obstacles to move forward.   

We aid individuals in advocacy for open communication and dialogue about the issues they feel most need attention within the organization.  We also collaborate with organizations to install management systems to encourage a high level of employee involvement.

Our Methodology:

Our design is predominantly experiential with strong adherence to adult-learning principles.  We then balance the appropriate measure of live presentation, reading, audio-visual presentations, small group discussions, experiential activities and exercises, as well as individual reflection to keep participants engaged and learning.  More importantly, our design encourages participants to take action as individuals and groups to advance the changes that will help your organization grow in addressing diversity issues and concerns.

We have used our expert knowledge of adult learning principles to address all learning styles with a variety of teaching methods.  We anticipate tapping into the collective wisdom of the group to apply the most significant learning points possible.  The learning experience will be fun, engaging and pertinent so participants can directly apply their learning in their own individual work setting.

Several consultants with relevant corporate leadership development, teambuilding, diversity, conflict resolution, and communication experience lead the Training Team available to implement and monitor projects.  While each consultant is highly skilled to conduct training individually, some programs are team-facilitated.  Two of three facilitators will lead the workshop.


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ABOUT US

A Brief Biography of Each Lead Team Member Follows:

Cathy Harris:
Cathy Harris is founder and President of C. Harris Companies, Inc., a management and staff development firm focused on the strategic planning and implementation of strategies in leadership development, customer service, diversity (including sexual harassment prevention and generational differences), conflict resolution, cross-cultural communication, and team building. She is a skilled facilitator, trainer and consultant for businesses, corporations, universities and government organizations.  Cathy explores their challenges and assists in improving their corporate culture, morale, productivity, team and personal effectiveness. She’s known for her ability to move people beyond their personal biases and assumptions toward one another and engage in dialogues that build healthy, working relationships.  She specializes in fostering diversity, communication and dialogue skills, team building and conflict resolution.

Through experiential, highly interactive, engaging and humorous presentations, Cathy personally connects with her varied audience members, consistently earning a 9.14 and higher performance rating on a ten-point scale. She encourages unity, harmony and cohesiveness with a friendly, natural and fun style. Her impact is positive and long-lasting. Cathy deals easily with sensitive issues and encourages others to do the same.

Cathy has more than 22 years’ experience as a small business owner. As such, she led major change initiatives for Chevron Chemical Company and the USDA’s National Finance Center. John Ortego, the center’s Director, said Cathy’s work "… has been a factor in creating a unified, productive, and positive workforce and atmosphere." He also said that it was the "best diversity training he ever attended." After major improvements in equity, performance and morale at the National Finance Center, officials in Washington, DC took notice and commissioned Cathy to train USDA managers and supervisors in the DC area. Cathy is also a volunteer with the Global Facilitators Service Corps, www.globalfacilitators.org, which sponsors workshops in disaster and crisis intervention, resiliency and trauma debriefing.

Honors:
Cathy has received the New Orleans Peace Foundation’s 1996 Peacemaker Award. She also was given the George Washington Medal of Honor from the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge along with Dr. Stephen Ambrose, creator of Saving Private Ryan and the hit HBO mini-series Band of Brothers.  Cathy is featured as one of 10 Top Female Achievers in the July 2008 issue of New Orleans Magazine and was recognized in Ebony Magazine for outstanding community service.

An overview of her challenges and triumphs is captured in the book, Discovering Your Inner Strength, along with Steven Covey, Ken Blanchard and others.

Community Service:
Cathy is co-founder (along with Sally-Ann Roberts) and past president of Each One Save One, a mentoring organization for New Orleans’ schools. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Advocates for Science and Math High School and was involved in the design and development of the Just for Boys program at Vorice Jackson Waters Elementary School. Cathy also serves on the Board of Directors of Knowledgeworks, a resource organization for non-profits and the executive committee of the Horizon Initiative, an organization committed to bring new business to New Orleans and retain and grow existing businesses.  She further authored a column for El Vocero, a bi-monthly Latino newspaper in New Orleans. Cathy is past president of the National Speakers Association/New Orleans Chapter and an active member of the American Society for Training and Development and the Society for Human Resource Management.  She is a six-year member of the Diversity Professional Experts Group of the National Speakers Association.

Michael P. Kane, Ed.D.:
Michael Kane is an international facilitator and training consultant who also serve as an adjunct instructor for School of Continuing Studies at Tulane University. In addition to his twenty-six years teaching management courses, he has extensive experience as a facilitator and trainer of managers and staff in both the private and public sectors.  This includes fifteen years experience as a Spanish-speaking facilitator/trainer and contract consultant in training and development projects for NGOs numerous corporations, USAID, and government ministries in Latin America, the Caribbean and Middle East.  He was, until 2001, an American Management Association course facilitator and contract trainer in sixteen Latin American countries, and Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Canada and Mexico. His international specialties included training and group facilitation projects in judicial administration, educational and fiscal administration processes or projects.  He is also, on a parallel track, experienced in the design and facilitation/training of seminars and workshops in diversity, antiracist dialogues,  negotiations and management training, corporate retreats, strategic planning, SWOT analysis,  diversity strategy, communications, leadership, group process, decision-making, employee performance appraisal, customer service and time management, as well as  meeting facilitation, outdoor teambuilding, and  consultations in general human resource administration.
Dr. Kane is bilingual in Spanish/English, relatively fluent in Portuguese and in French.

In New Orleans, Kane is, since 1986, a co-founder with Ted Quant, and volunteer associate of the Twomey Center of Loyola University’s Twomey Training Center and a faculty member of Tulane’s Professional Development Institute.   In 2006 he was appointed a Fellow the Market Umbrella organization, the sponsor of the Crescent City Farmers Markets.

At the School of Continuing Studies, Kane is a Faculty Fellow (2002-2007), received the Emily Vokes Service Award in 2005, and has received two outstanding teacher citations for his courses in management and organizational behavior. 

Since Hurricane Katrina, Dr. Kane has volunteered as the local coordinator for the GFSC Disaster and Crisis Intervention training process, www.globalfacilitators.org, and is one of the organizers of the local DCI NolaNetwork of facilitators who volunteer or contract their services to deliver the workshop to numerous participants.  Currently the group is conducting workshops at Tulane University and in other venues statewide and nationally.

In October 2007, Dr. Kane was a co-facilitator for a midlevel executive development course, which he taught in Spanish for Exxon Mobil, Guatemala City.  In June 2006, Kane conducted interviews with key staff of the Workforce Management Group at Tulane University, to assess leadership skills, potential, for Senior Vice-President and Chief of Staff, Tulane University.

Education:
BA, honors, Loyola University New Orleans, philosophy and history, May 1968
M.S. in Education, Peabody College at Vanderbilt University, May 1978
Ed.D. in educational change and leadership (higher education), Peabody College at Vanderbilt, May 1980.
Coursework towards a Masters in Public Administration, University of New Orleans, 1970.; coursework towards as Masters in Latin American literature, Tulane University 1971.  Member of the International Association of Facilitators (1998) Associate of Amauta International and the Global Leadership Alliance.

Ted Quant:
Director of the Twomey Center for Peace through Justice, Loyola University.  The Twomey Center is an expression of Loyola University's Jesuit commitment to social justice. 

The Twomey Center programs’ include:
•  Bread for the World, which lobbies on hunger and homelessness issues;
•  Twomey Training Center, which provides training for grass roots community organizations
    non-profit corporations, school systems, government agencies, and corporations;
•  Resolving Conflict Creatively, a conflict resolution program for public schools, created by
    Educators for Social Responsibility.
•  Marketumbrella.com, an ecologically sustainable economic development project and farmer’s
    market, linking inner city growers with rural farmers, restaurants and general public.
•  Urban Partners, which links university resources to community needs.
•  Twomey Publishing, which publishes pamphlets and books such as Little White Lies: The Truth
    about Affirmative Action, by Tim Wise.

Education and Training:
Bachelor of Arts in Sociology, California State College at Los Angeles 1970
Educators for Social Responsibility: Resolving Conflict Creatively
New Mexico Center for Dispute Resolution: Peer Mediation

Diversity Train-the-Trainer Workshop

Wednesday-Friday

September 21-23, 2011

Times: 8:30am-4:30pm


Location:
Board Room at 2640 Canal Street, New Orleans, LA 70119  

* HRCI approved for 18.25 hours

Sponsored by:   
  

C. Harris Companies, Inc.• SDB, MOB/WOB • GSA Contract Number GS10F0372P • P.O. Box 871537 • New Orleans, LA 70187 • 800.924.2284 • Fax 504.242.0423