Gary Dumais, Psy.D., SPHR
Business Psychologist & Human Resource Consultant
I’m very lucky that my parents emphasized education. They instilled that school was a great opportunity – a key to success. With that in mind, I consistently earned the highest grades.
I graduated with honors from the State University of New York at Buffalo with two Bachelor degrees: one in Psychology and another in Health & Human Services. While studying psychology in college, I interned at Buffalo General Hospital’s neurodiagnostic lab. There, I shadowed a psychologist and learned about psychometric assessment. I was fascinated by assessments’ ability to evaluate patients’ thinking, personality, and other aspects of their psychology.
My fascination with psychometric assessment inspired my next step – earning a doctorate in clinical psychology from the Illinois School of Professional Psychology in Chicago. Through my graduate school studies, I became well-versed in a variety of clinical assessments, including intelligence testing like the Wechsler IQ and personality assessments like the Rorschach inkblot. I also developed my clinical interviewing, assessment, and treatment skills over two years at Cook County Hospital in Chicago.
While studying in the big city of Chicago, I was introduced to global management consulting firms like Personnel Decisions International (now Korn Ferry) that employ psychologists to consult with Fortune 500 companies. I discovered how they used psychometric assessment to evaluate executives for high-level positions, and how psychological methods could be applied to coach business leaders. It was a perfect blend of my interest in psychometric assessment and my desire to help people in the world of work.
So rather than endeavoring to be a psychologist working in a hospital, I shifted the course of my education to focus on management consulting. I finished my doctorate with an internship at a management consulting firm where I learned more about applying psychometric assessments in the workplace, and how to translate my counseling know-how into executive coaching.
After completing my doctorate, I…click here to learn more about my career…