Patricia Arenas Bautista, Ph.D.

Centro de Investigaciones Psicologicas y Sociologicas (CIPS)
La Habana, Cuba

Email: arenas@infomed.sld.cu

Patricia Arenas Bautista facilitates “Cultures of Participation” for businesses and community groups as a psychologist, organization development (OD) researcher, consultant, and coach. She founded the Human Change Group at the Havana-based Center for Psychological and Sociological Studies (CIPS), where she served in various leadership capacities over the past 25 years. While officially “retired,” Patricia continues to lead a network of over 200 OD professionals throughout Cuba, and she facilitates a nation-wide Appreciative Inquiry Learning Community, addressing such systemic issues as the clean-up of the Bay of Havana, university curriculum reform, and a national campaign to eradicate homophobia. Partnering with The Taos Institute and The Vallarta Institute, Patricia coordinates the Human Change website where she posts Spanish translations of OD Practitioner articles, publications from OD practitioners in Cuba and throughout Latin America, and information on the annual International Workplace Empowerment and Communications Conference that she facilitates (www.cips.cu/gch/index.php). Patricia is a former director of the Society of Cuban Psychologists and lead of its OD Section. She has published numerous books and scholarly articles and is a regular presenter at conferences around the world. Her boundary-breaking book, Cultures of Participation at Work in Cuba and the US, is a compilation of workplace participation articles co-authored with 12 US and Cuban OD professionals, including OD pioneers Edgar Schein, Diana Whitney, Angela Casana Mata and Roberto Corral Ruso.