About LaCrisia
LaCrisia Gilbert built a career around conflict resolution and institutional problem-solving. She earned a Master of Dispute Resolution from Pepperdine University School of Law in 1997 after completing a Bachelor of Science in Business Management at LeTourneau University in 1994. Her earlier academic record includes time at Paul Quinn College in 1976.
Her first public-sector work included a role as a housing rehabilitation specialist for the City of Plano in 1990. She moved into court-based alternative dispute work in the late 1990s, serving as ADR coordinator and assistant district court administrator for Dallas County in 1998. That post placed her inside the day-to-day administration of court-connected mediation programs and exposed her to case management at scale.
By 2006 Gilbert had taken on executive responsibility as chief executive officer of Dispute Mediation Service, Inc. She then established a private practice, the Mediation Office of Cris Gilbert, where she listed herself as mediator, educator and trainer beginning in 2010. Alongside practice work she has accepted board duties, including membership on the Collin County Child Protective Services Board starting in 1998, and served as a certified ombudsman for organizations such as The Senior Source in 2012 and as university ombudsman at National University in 2018.
Gilbert has also worked in the classroom. She served as an adjunct professor at the University of North Texas at Dallas in 2007 and later returned to a teaching role at Pepperdine Caruso Law as an adjunct in 2020. Her academic appointments have generally aligned with dispute resolution and campus conflict management, bringing practical program experience into academic settings.
Her credentials include certification as an ombudsman through the Texas Department on Aging and Disabilities and a John C. Maxwell Certification from the John Maxwell Team. Those credentials accompany decades of mediating, training and administering ADR programs for courts, universities and nonprofit organizations.
Colleagues describe her work as methodical and procedural. She has combined administrative roles and hands-on mediation to build a practice model that addresses systems as well as individual conflicts. She continues to operate the Mediation Office of Cris Gilbert where she offers mediation services, organizational training and ombuds services for institutions and individuals. Her current practice concentrates on mediation, ombuds services and ADR education.
