BE Bigger with Royal Harris

Join the SAB Arts & Culture team for BEseries dinner with Royal Harris

Royal Harris is community strategist working to leave the world a better than he found it. Mr. Harris is a Northeast Portland native and alumnus of Franklin High School and Warner Pacific University.

For the past 30 years Mr. Harris has worked to serve the needs of the most vulnerable and at-risk community members in the city of Portland and the State of Oregon.  Mr. Harris started his professional career working with high-risk and gang-involved youth to reduce the prevalence and impact of gang and gun violence in the 1990’s. In the late 90’s Mr. Harris transitioned to working in community mental health as a program coordinator, case manager, crisis responder and counselor for Unity Inc., which eventually became part of  Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare.

In 2010 Mr. Harris returned to working with gang-involved youth and adults. In 2010 he formed his own non-profit called the Aristotle Project, combining his mental health experience with his violence intervention work. During that time he secured contracts with Multnomah County parole and probation, in partnership with Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare as the clinical liaison for the gang involved offenders unit and the City of Portland to provide gang intervention and prevention services. In 2013 Mr. Harris accepted a position with the Constructing Hope Pre-apprenticeship as the program case manager and workforce coordinator. During his time with Constructing Hope doubled the number of applicants and graduates. His “Six Attributes'' for success are still used as the standard for current students, and are memorialized on the wall of the facility.  In 2015 The Empowerment Clinic, a local culturally specific program reached out to Mr. Harris because of his vast experience to develop and implement a reentry program for Black and Brown men and women who were returning to the community from the criminal justice system. 

For the past six years Mr. Harris has been the Father Involvement Coordinator for the Multnomah County Health Departments Healthy Birth Initiatives Father Involvement Program. This program works with African American fathers to reduce infant and maternal mortality by providing fathers with the skills to be protective factors in the lives of their children and their mothers.  

Mr. Harris is active in the community and is currently a member of the board of directors of Parenting With Intent, a local non-profit that works with foster care youth to promote self-sufficiency and the Black United Fund of Oregon, whose mission is to assist in the social and economic development of Oregon’s underserved communities and to contribute to a broader understanding of ethnic and culturally diverse groups.

Mr. Harris is a Qualified Mental Health Associate (QMHA), certified community health worker (CCHW) and trained mediator. In 2021 as a result of the increase in gun violence Mr. Harris started a citywide initiative called “March Against Murder” that led several marches and community rallies across Multnomah County to stand up against senseless gun violence.