Bruce Dienes creates customized trainings for not-for-profits and small businesses. The goals are to shift the organizational culture to address the new challenges of our times, and to introduce the practical tools and resilience needed to effectively and compassionately manage staff and deliver services.
Bruce has a PhD in Psychology and teaches courses in Community Psychology and in Masculinities at Mount Saint Vincent University. His doctoral thesis looked at the impact of emotion on cognition. Bruce has worked with local community organizations training peer supporters and group facilitators, as well as managing projects designed to reduce gambling harms and gender-based violence.
For insight into the mix of resources that Bruce uses to design your custom programs, see the Inspirations page. For recent projects, see the Portfolio page.
Recent projects include a collaboration with *heart wide open* to deliver Facilitate with Heart, an innovative training for group leaders, and staff training in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) tools for Cape Breton Family Resource Centres. he worked with a local business to transform the culture of sexual harassment in the workplace.
He is a strong, empowering community leader and creative teacher with extensive experience initiating, organizing, facilitating and networking community groups and organizations. Bruce builds bridges and partnerships in challenging situations and inspires groups and individuals to move beyond their perceived limits.
With a degree in Photographic Arts from Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University), Bruce has also worked professionally in photography, specializing in performing arts. He has a life-long involvement with Quakers, which helped shape his approach to collaborative community development.
Profile
- A strong, empowering community leader, creative teacher and researcher.
- Extensive experience with initiating, organizing, facilitating, training and networking community groups and organizations. Strength-based approach.
- Able to build bridges and partnerships in challenging situations.
- Inspires groups and individuals to move beyond their perceived limits.
- More than thirty-five years’ experience working with peer support and self-help groups
- Twenty years’ experience teaching academic courses
- Develops and implements interactive and practical workshops, engaging the wider community.
- Experience across business, community organizations and academia.
- Working with men’s issues and gender-transformative facilitation since 1979.
Summary of Qualifications
- Ph.D. and M.A. in Psychology from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Able to apply Community Psychology principles to all aspects of professional and volunteer work. These include: understanding the importance of both individual and community settings, appreciating diversity, taking a strengths perspective, understanding how values impact community dynamics and working to ensure adaptive and healthy change as communities grow.
- Proven leader at both the small group and organizational levels.
- Understand the challenges of teaching in the context of a broad range of backgrounds.
- Certified Dialogue for Peaceful Change advanced facilitator
- Completed seven professional courses in ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy): ACT for Beginners, ACT for Trauma, Focused ACT, ACT as a Brief Intervention, ACT for Grief and Loss, ACT and Values, and ACT Immersion.
Skills
- Expert in group facilitation, peer support, and training in these areas
- Success at grant writing, implementation and reporting.
- Effective conflict management and mediation skills.
- Extensive use of consensus-building in decision-making groups.
- Excellent listener and speaker.
- Works with a variety of populations and skill levels to build synergistic teams.
- Able to create a productive environment for committee work. Chaired, minuted for and participated in a diverse range of committees and working groups.
- Project management, coordination and supervision.
- Assisting people to define and reach their learning goals and inspiring them to push their limits.