Susan M. Yates

Executive Director

Susan Yates has been Executive Director of Resolution Systems Institute (RSI) since 1997. In this role, she is responsible for implementing the organizational mission of improving the effectiveness of court-related alternative dispute resolution methods and for overall management of a national on-line Court ADR Resource Center, technical assistance to courts that are working to establish or improve their ADR programs, and monitoring and evaluation of court ADR programs.

As Executive Director, Ms. Yates assists state and federal courts throughout Illinois with their development of sound ADR programs. She uses her expertise and years of experience to help them navigate the complexities of program design, such as how to structure referral systems, how to deal with issues including confidentiality and neutrality, and how to ensure quality.

With the belief that the unexamined program is not worth creating, she works with the courts to develop the capabilities to implement monitoring systems to track the effectiveness of their court ADR programs so those programs can be improved. She also helps courts create innovative systems to measure the use of ongoing services.

Two of the more noteworthy publications by Ms. Yates include, Accessing Justice through Mediation: Pathways for Poor and Low-Income Disputants, a 2007 study conducted for the Illinois Equal Justice Foundation, and the ADR Handbook for Judges, which was published in 2004 by the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolution and which Ms. Yates co-edited with Donna Stienstra of the Federal Judicial Center. She has authored or co-authored numerous other studies and articles and has served on the Editorial Board for Conflict Resolution Quarterly since 2003. She is a regular speaker at ADR and bar association events.

Ms. Yates is active on a national level in the dispute resolution profession. She has served in many positions in the Dispute Resolution Section of the American Bar Association. Probably her most significant contribution was the three years she spent as one of the ABA’s two delegates to the six-person Joint Committee to Revise the Model Standards of Conduct for Mediators. This was bracketed by multi-year terms of service at the Council table of the Section. She also served on the Section's Task Force on Improving Mediation Quality.

Ms. Yates has been a mediator since 1983, and currently focuses on employment discrimination disputes. She also mediates other types of civil cases, including real estate and commercial disputes. In more than two decades as a mediator, she has handled employment, real estate, commercial, juvenile, housing, minor criminal and neighborhood disputes.

Ms. Yates has trained hundreds of lawyers, judges and others to mediate. She has written training manuals for major civil case mediation and for community mediation, designed competency-based training and evaluation instruments, and documented the community mediation model for the Center for Conflict Resolution. She has been an adjunct faculty member in the schools of law at DePaul University, Loyola University and Northwestern University. Ms. Yates is also a former Executive Director of the Center for Conflict Resolution, the not-for-profit mediation service with which RSI is affiliated. In 2004 she was named one of the 25 Most Influential People of CCR's 25 Years of Service.