About
Joyce D. Yaffee – Biography
Joyce D. Yaffee serves as Director’s Staff for Organizational Development. She joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory in 1994 as Director of Human Resources and was named to the Lincoln Laboratory Steering Committee in 1995. She became Assistant to the Director in 2003. She is also a member of the Laboratory’s Senior Management Council.
Before joining the Laboratory, Ms. Yaffee was both Director of Compensation and Benefits and Vice President of Human Resources at a division of Colgate-Palmolive Company. Previously, she was Director of Employment and Compensation at a Boston utility company and Director of Placement Services at a non-profit agency training and placing the disabled in employment.
Since joining Lincoln Laboratory, Ms. Yaffee has had Presidential appointments to serve on the MIT Council on Family and Work and the Task Force on Medical Care for the MIT community. She also co-chaired the MIT Lincoln Laboratory Special Committee on Diversity and Inclusion. She has been certified by the Center for Creative Leadership to administer the 360-degree Benchmarks assessment and by the Massachusetts Commission against Discrimination to provide workplace discrimination prevention training.
Ms. Yaffee holds the BA degree from Kirkland College, at the time a coordinate school of Hamilton College, in Clinton, New York, and she spent a year of her undergraduate work studying in Colombia, South America. She holds the MA in teaching from Simmons College, where she gained teaching certifications in Spanish and as a guidance counselor.
While working in industry, her varied human resources responsibilities at headquarters and at manufacturing field sites led her to pursue legal training, with an emphasis on employment law. She attended law school evenings, received the JD degree from Suffolk University, and was admitted to the Bar in Massachusetts.
top of page