Yohance brings nearly 15 years of experience serving in neutral roles across a wide spectrum of institutions, including federal agencies, higher education, and the judiciary. Yohance has conducted and supervised hundreds of campus and workplace investigations in those roles. Those diverse experiences enable him to understand the importance of thorough and reliable investigations from various perspectives. Yohance has expertise handling harassment, discrimination, retaliation and abusive conduct complaints, and has also developed and provided trainings on these topics for students, professors, federal judges, managers and employees. He also has experience advising executives, managers and administrators on discrimination and harassment issues. Yohance is equally adept at handling sensitive matters involving high profile professors, judges and leaders and matters involving everyday employees or students. He is trained in trauma informed practices and brings compassion along with a steady calm and a deep commitment to impartial fairness to every investigation.

Prior to joining Van Dermyden Makus, Yohance served as a Supervisory Attorney at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), where he led investigations enforcing federal civil rights laws, including Title IX, Title VI, Title II, and Section 504, at both K–12 schools and postsecondary institutions. He previously served as a Staff Attorney at OCR, where he managed his own docket of investigations.

Before returning to OCR, Yohance was appointed the first Director of Workplace Relations for the U.S. Courts for the Ninth Circuit. In that role, he led efforts to prevent and resolve workplace issues across 63 court units spanning nine states and two territories. He oversaw the investigation and resolution of discrimination, harassment, retaliation, and abusive conduct complaints—often supervising investigative teams—and developed circuit-wide training for judges, law clerks, court staff, public defenders, and probation officers.

Yohance also served as the Deputy Title IX Officer and Associate Director of the Office for Prevention of Discrimination and Harassment at the University of California, Berkeley. There, he conducted and supervised investigations involving Title IX and other discrimination and harassment matters affecting the entire campus community. In addition to investigative responsibilities, he advised a broad range of stakeholders on Title IX compliance and contributed to the development and revision of campus policies, procedures, and practices.

Earlier in his career, Yohance clerked for Judge M. Margaret McKeown on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and served as a staff attorney for the court, focusing on federal criminal and habeas appeals. He also spent six years in private practice as a litigation associate at Munger, Tolles & Olson, where he represented corporate clients and executives in complex litigation and agency investigations.

Yohance is licensed to practice law in California. He earned his Juris Doctor, magna cum laude and Order of the Coif, from New York University School of Law, and holds a Bachelor of Arts from Brown University, where he competed as a Division I soccer player on a nationally ranked team.

CA State Bar No. 237244