True Colors: Out Youth Theater at The Theater Offensive is a Boston based program that focuses its theatrical and social mission on engaging Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered (GLBT) at-risk, youth and the community that surrounds them. Through the process of generating an original touring production, True Colors employs theatre as a tool for personal, social, and artistic expression, empowerment, and activism. The program's balance of both process and product focused goals creates an environment of multifaceted engagement and provides an example of how art can thrive in a structure of youth outreach. Though directors and facilitators guide the process and final product, a fundamental mission of True Colors is to provide a student or youth-centered experience where inspiration, decisions, discussions, and leadership generates directly from participants. By observing and participating in the creation of one of these productions, I explore the impact of this student-centered structure on the personal perspectives and artistic growth of the GLBT participants and the artistic process of creating the production. My goal is to discover True Colors' effectiveness of achieving its mission to both create an impactful and positive process for the youth and also develop a final product that is artful and evokes social change. Additionally, by studying similar programs, I establish a basis of comparison against True Colors in order to develop a broader view of the field and evaluate the variances in methodology and the impact on youth and communities.

Effective conflict management in the workplace can reduce the negative consequences of conflict. These negative outcomes can include low productivity, health-related stress, increased employee turnover, or litigation. A Human Resource (HR) professional can help mitigate these negative outcomes in the workplace when using effective conflict management behavior with employees. However, there is a void in research pertaining to HR professionals’ use of conflict management behavior. This quantitative, correlational research study examined whether personality has an impact on assertive or cooperative conflict management behavior of HR professionals in the workplace. Statistical testing found a significant relationship between the harmonious, people-person (a Blue personality in the True Colors personality model) and the assertive conflict management behavior. Another finding of this study sheds light on the need for conflict resolution (CR) education and training in the HR field. The majority of HR professionals in this study said “yes” to wanting and needing training and education in the CR skillset. This skillset includes many of the same specific strategies that are used by mediators (reflective listening, reframing, building rapport, step-by-step problem-solving, etc.). These skills would also enable HR professionals to manage and resolve interpersonal employee conflict before it escalates and leads to negative outcomes.