Stephon Kibs

Stephon Kibs grew up in Newark, New Jersey as a first generation American with two sisters and immigrant parents from Eastern Nigeria. When Stephon was 13, they sent him to a boarding school in a remote part of their home country.

When Stephon returned from Nigeria after three years of boarding school, he started to focus on basketball back home in New Jersey. He moved to Portland in 2004 to play for Portland State University. But right before his first season began, he injured one of his ankles, putting his basketball dreams to rest. Stephon finished his studies at PSU and decided to pursue a law degree instead.

He was accepted to a law program in Florida, so he packed his things and drove down to the Sunshine State to follow his dream of earning a law degree. Stephon started a career in Human Resources as a HR Assistant while he was a Student in community college.

Most recently, Stephon worked at the City of Portland as the Deputy Chief Human Resources Officer.

Prior to that, He spent years as HR manager for a staffing company in Florida and also managed HR for several branches of the same company in Houston, Texas. When the company decided to close up shop, Stephon was at another crossroads. “I realized how much I missed the Northwest,” he says. “So I came back – but this time with a different set of eyes.”

Since returning to Portland in 2013, he’s worked in Human Resources for Legacy Health, OHSU and Multnomah County.

“I really love connecting with people,” he says, “and that’s really what I do in HR: connect people with resources and opportunities.”

Stephon attributes much of his outlook to his mother, who seemed to get a heartfelt thank-you from people in the community whenever she left the house in Newark. “I’d see all of these people showing gratitude for what she went out of her way to do for others. Just seeing that lets you know that it’s so important to do what you can, when you can, for other people,” he says. “That’s part of where that got instilled in me.”

Stephon says community is also a huge factor, and that he’s very connected to not only the African community here in Portland, but also many other communities: he is a member of both Urban League of Portland, Native American Coalition, Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Partners in Diversity, Portland Black employees resource group, Active Military and Veteran communities.

He definitely hasn’t forgotten about his roots. Stephon – who speaks both Igbo and Yoruba – often visits Nigeria and other parts of West Africa to mentor minority students and young African professionals around their career opportunities in Humans Resources. He says it’s essentially a continuation of the work he does in Human Resources.

“When you work in HR, with every single person you engage with, it’s like throwing a pebble in a river. There’s a ripple effect,” he says. “What you see immediately is that you helped this one person. But what you don’t realize is how many people behind the scenes are affected by that one person you helped.”

“It’s really just one person at a time,” he says.