Our Founding Chairperson

Mrs. Helena S. Y. Yuen has been a practicing solicitor since 1981 and is currently a partner of C. T. Chan & Co. She is an accredited General as well as Family Mediator and Supervisor on the panel of the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre (HKIAC) since 1998 and also participated in the court attached Family Mediation Pilot Scheme of the Family Court of Hong Kong. She has extensive mediation experience in handling disputes in the general as well as family areas.

She is a pioneer in the field of Mediation in Hong Kong and is one of the first local trainers to teach mediation skills to the community of Hong Kong (since 1998) and also professionally accredited Family Mediation Training Courses at the Law Society and the Hong Kong Mediation Council, HKIAC (since 2000). She conducts regular training as well as writes training manuals in negotiation and conflict resolution for the Law Society (since 2002). She teaches Mediation Courses at post-graduate level as visiting assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong (since 2002) and a trainer/lecturer for courses at Baptist University (since 1999) and a HKIAC accredited course for the Postgraduate Diploma in Family Mediation at the University of Hong Kong, School of Professional and Continuing Education ( 2001/2). She is the first mediator to be granted funding by the University of Hong Kong to conduct a research project on mediation in China with the Tsinghua University, Beijing (2002/3). She has taught mediation skills (since 2000) for the Judiciary for magistrates, judges and tribunal officers of the Labour and Lands Tribunal, for the Home Affairs Department, the Ombudsman, the Police Department, the Housing Society, the Telecommunication Authority as well as the Complaints Department of Legislative Council Secretariat. She also gives workshops to professional groups such as members of the Institute of Directors, Institute of Human Resource & Management and the Society of Chartered Accountants and to organizations and corporate groups such as Chase Manhattan Bank. She also specializes in adapting the mediation skills training to particular settings of Non-Government Agencies such as the Chi Lin Nunnery, Salvation Army and the Christian Services Centre. She is also the first trainer to introduce Peer Mediation in a systemic approach by teaching conflict resolution skills to students, parents and teachers in kindergarten, primary and secondary schools and universities in Hong Kong and at Tsinghua University. By the invitation of The Education and Manpower Bureau, Education Services Division, she initiated a Peer Mediation pilot project at the Maryknoll Secondary School in 2002. Since then, she has been conducting a series of workshops on negotiation and mediation skills training for principals and teachers at the Education and Manpower Bureau for all school districts in Kowloon, Hong Kong and the New Territories.

She was invited by the Labour and Manpower Department of Shanghai, China to train their mediators to handle disputes between their labour force and the Government (2003/4). She was also invited to teach mediation skills to students, teachers and principals in Guangchow, Shanghai and Beijing, China in 2002. She was invited to do Mediation training at Fudan University, Shanghai in 2006. Thousands of people have gone through her mediation training in Hong Kong and China since 1998 and with her extensive training experience she has successfully developed her own training packages in local community as well as in school settings where her training is in regular demand from year to year.

She received a Law Degree (LL.B) in 1978 from the London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London and a Masters Degree (M.A.) in 1995 from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, USA. She has been trained as a mediator since1994 and attended family mediation training at the Law School of the University of Oregon in USA, family therapy training at the Munichin Centre, New York, and Brief Family Therapy Centre in USA. She is also awarded the Ph. D. by The University of Hong Kong in 2008. She is trained and certified as a Peer Mediation trainer at the CRU Institute in Seattle, USA in 2001.

She was the Vice Chairman of the Hong Kong Mediation Council for years 2002- 2006 and elected as Council member from 1997 – 2006. She is the founding Chairman of the Community Committee and sits on the Family Committee of the Hong Kong Mediation Council, HKIAC. She is also a committee member of the ADR & Mediation Committee of the Law Society. She was appointed the Chairman for the first Mediation Committee for the Law Week in 1999 and 2000. As Chairman of the Community Group, she has initiated in 2002 the first pro-bono scheme on Community Mediation supported by a multi-disciplinary team of mediators organized by the Hong Kong Mediation Council with the Hong Kong Council and Social Service (HKCSS) and the Home Affairs Department. The launch of the scheme was publicized in all the major newspapers and considered an important contribution towards social cohesion and harmony.

She is the founder of Conflict Resolution Centre, a one-stop centre to provide services in mediation, counselling and legal advice for the community of Hong Kong. The Centre has over 80 registered members who are trained mediators with professional background such as lawyers, social workers, engineers, accountants, doctors and nurses, teachers, bankers and corporate personnel. The centre participated in voluntary work in running a hot-line service in association with the HKCSS and was awarded the status of Caring Company . She also sits on various consultative and advisory boards for the Hong Kong University Family Institute, the Caritas Group and St. James Settlement for whom she regularly runs workshops and seminars on mediation skills. She also appears regularly on radio talk shows and TV programmes promoting mediation. Her articles have been published in conferences, journals, magazines and by the Hong Kong Mediation Council. She was a member of the committee for Agencies Development and Partnership at HKCSS (2001-2005) and is currently appointed by Mr. Donald Tsang, the Chief Executive of HKSAR to be a member of the Independent Police Complaints Council from January, 2006. She is also a member of the Election Committee of the Chief Executive of Hong Kong (2006).