Katerina Yiannibas is an Associate Professor of international law and business at the University of Deusto in San Sebastián, Spain, and an international negotiation strategist working at the intersection of international law, organizational behavior, and conflict systems design. She designed and now instructs the International Negotiation Workshop at Columbia Law School and provides executive training for diplomats, corporate executives, and government representatives.
Her practice focuses on skills development and the design of people-centered architectures for conflict prevention and resolution across global brands and cross-border workforces. Her work equips decision-makers to navigate complex stakeholder environments, cultivate inclusive and high-trust cultures, and advance early, collaborative approaches to dispute resolution. Yiannibas has served as a strategic adviser and coach to entities ranging from Fortune 100 companies to global labor unions and United Nations diplomats, helping them transform how they negotiate internally and externally.
Yiannibas’s academic research examines innovative, rights-centered remedy frameworks, the role of business in human rights governance, and the evolving landscape of conflict resolution in global supply chains. She is a drafter of The Hague Rules on Business and Human Rights Arbitration and a member of the Business and Human Rights Arbitration Working Group.
Before developing her current practice, Yiannibas led several European Union initiatives on access to justice and public participation and worked across government, NGOs, and international education in Central America, Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Her early anthropological fieldwork on cultural identity informs the human-centered lens she brings to system design, negotiation pedagogy, and executive coaching.
Yiannibas holds a J.D. from Columbia Law School, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, and an A.B., summa cum laude, from Duke University. She is fluent in Spanish, French, and Greek, and is a certified mediator with the New York Peace Institute, a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and an Expert to the European Commission.