Duke Fisher founder and the lead trainer for Learning Laboratories pictured with
his two sons, Bud and Griffin


Duke with his family: eldest son Buddy, wife Sharon and youngest son, Griffin sporting their SWF shirts to raise awareness for
www.Sturge-Weber.com


Duke is a tireless advocate for collaboration, a New York State Certified trainer of Mediation and sought after presenter. He and his wife Sharon founded Learning Laboratories in 1998, dedicated to finding creative and effective ways to have groups consider and build skills around difficult topics. They have brought powerful workshops to schools, universities, conferences, prisons, agencies, and to graduate students at Hofstra Law School, where Duke is a Special Professor of Law.

 

As Learning Laboratories visionary, Duke specializes in:
- Designing experiences to meet your learning goals.
- Incorporating experiential learning activities, initiatives and trainer’s games in a way that takes groups where they didn’t expect to go. Activities are always debriefed in a way that highlights real learning, focuses on repeatable skills and moves a group emotionally to consider difficult material.
- Creative use of powerful film clips for sparking provocative discussion.
- Designing drama experiences like structured role playing that will create realistic experiences to try out new skills in a safe environment. Duke founded IFE (Improvisation For Education) which uses the element of surprise to raise difficult topics in a meaningful way.
-Assisting groups to have fun, take risks, learn from each other and build effective skills.
Duke excels in story telling and talks about what is really going on, for himself, his family, and the world. He is not afraid to ruffle a few feathers or show his passion for a training topic.


Duke, far right in a street theatre encounter with General Clinton and Dave Roberts, a family member.

An Excerpt From
Kendra Giffin’s Testimonial for Duke:
“Duke is exuberant and provocative and never shrinks from offending others if it brings to light an important issue; his concern is not one’s comfort level but one’s ability to leave one’s comfort zone and grow. Duke is at ease in any environment, is flexible but never fake, and is quick to call people on their crap but genuinely kind and sensitive to emotional needs. He never resorts to mean-spirited humor to get a laugh, for he has a genuine affection for people and faith in their ability to help themselves. Duke’s enthusiasm for both social change and ridiculous fun is infectious. He believes that we must get a working comfort and even embrace vulgarity and bigotry if we are to do something about them.”

Other testimonials in two cents:

“Unpredictable, borderline irresponsible, but always meaningful.”
(Gary Scavo, Director, Rotary Internation Youth Leadership Academy)

“Simply the best representative of mediation in our area, and if I were better traveled, I might say any where.”
(Peter Glassman, director of Mediation Matters Mediation Center Albany NY)

“The most important learning experience I ever had.”
(E. Hart, workshop participant)

“Realist man I ever met.”
(Chris Howard, Youth Workshop Participant)

“My situation was hopeless, but somehow how through mediation we ended up working together and doing it ourselves.”
(Anonymous Mediation Participant)

Training Topic Areas Including:

Mediation
-Community Mediation
-Divorce Mediation
-Mediation of Child Custody and Visitation
-Child Support Mediation
-Financial Divorce
-Parent-Teen Mediation
-Large Group Mediation
-Advanced Culturally Inclusive Mediation
-Special Education Mediation

-Interest-based Problem Solving
-Conflict Resolution
-Collaborative Advocacy
-Decision Making
-Drugs and Alcohol
-Connecting with Youth
-Mentoring
-Advocacy for Families of Children who are Differently-abled.
-Training Methodologies for Trainers
-Staff Development

For more information about Learning Labs Lead Trainer click the links below:

Duke’s Resume

An over the top bio written by Kendra Griffin used recently for TV producers who were looking for an on air personality to host a reality TV show about relationship and family mediation, excerpted for this biography page.

Letters of Recommendation

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