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Our Team |
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Dianne Hofner Saphiere, M.S.
Founder and Principal, Nipporica Associates LLC
Creator of the Cultural Detective® series, Dianne Hofner Saphiere is founder of Nipporica Associates LLC and has been active in the field of intercultural training and consulting since 1979. She is U.S.A.-born, lives in Mexico, spent twelve years in Japan, and also lived in Spain. Dianne has worked with people from over 80 nations. Her client list includes ABB, Cable and Wireless, Continental Airlines, Hyundai-Kia, Microsoft, Mitsui, Royal Dutch Shell, and Texas Instruments, among many others.
Dianne is a frequent author. Her newest volume is Communication Highwire: Leveraging the Power of Diverse Communication Styles, co-authored with Barbara Kappler Mikk and Basma Ibrahim DeVries and published by Intercultural Press. Her other works include the seminal Ecotonos: A Simulation of Multicultural Collaboration, now issued in its 15th anniversary packaging; Redundancía: A Foreign Language Simulation; Shinrai: Building Trusting Relationships with Japanese Colleagues; Doing Business with Japanese DIVERSOPHY; and contributions to International Journal of Intercultural Relations, Global Competence: 50 Training Activities for Succeeding in International Business, The Training and Performance Sourcebook, and The Pfeiffer Annual. She has been on the faculty of the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication since 1990. She holds an M.S. in Organization and Human Resource Development and a B.A. in International Studies.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Japan and Cultural Detective® Self Discovery, and Trainer of Facilitators
Culture-specific content in the Cultural Detective® series is a collaborative effort of more than 120 global management consultants, organizational behaviorists, educators, psychologists and experts around the world. They have distilled their knowledge from decades of cross-cultural experience in a wide range of settings, from business and government to academic and non-profit organizations. Read biographies of Cultural Detective® team members below.
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Asma Abdullah, Ph.D.
Intercultural Specialist
Dr. Abdullah recently retired from ExxonMobil after spending more than 22 years in human resource development. She considers herself a "corporate anthropologist" as well as an author, teacher and facilitator of learning. She received her bachelor's degree in Anthropology and Sociology and Diploma in Education from Monash University, Melbourne. She holds a master's degree in educational technology from University of Southern California (Los Angeles) and a master's degree in counseling education from University Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. She received her doctorate from Universiti Kebangsaan, Bangi, Malaysia in 2001.
Asma has written more than 40 articles on culture, corporate culture and women management. She authored Understanding the Malaysian Workforce: Guidelines for Managers and Going Global and Understanding Multicultural Malaysia. She co-wrote and co-directed two cross-cultural plays: Expat Comes to Town and Expat Files for local Malaysian theatre. For the past 20 years, Asma has designed, conducted and facilitated management courses such as problem- solving, consulting, negotiating, training and development, managing change and teambuilding in Malaysian organizations.
As a western-educated Malay, Asma is familiar with the challenges of the intracultural, intercultural, and cross-cultural issues at the Malaysian workplaces. She has worked with expatriate and Asian managers from many countries and with Malaysian managers at all organizational levels.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Malaysia
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Kairat graduated from the Kazakh National University with a science degree in psychology. He has worked as a psychological consultant in different areas of social assistance to the society, in particular, in a rehabilitation center for disabled children, in a psychiatric hospital, and in a rehabilitation center for juvenile lawbreakers.
Kairat started his career as a business trainer in 2002. At present, he works as a training manager for Ambition IBQ Company, which provides personnel learning services for various multinational organizations. He specializes in training, personal development and organizational culture.
Kairat has participated as a consultant in projects on training needs analysis in learning and development, and on personnel assessment projects. He has successful experience developing and adapting international certified programmes in Kazakhstan (ILM, ITOL), and has conducted projects on personnel training in accordance with international standards in the field of management. Kairat's specialty is coaching for middle and top managers.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Kazakhstan
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Abdulhamied Alromaithy, Ph.D., M.B.A.
Dr. Alromaithy is a consultant with the Sharjah Government HR Directorate and an adjunct faculty at Dubai University College. His work focuses on intercultural training, human resources consulting and microfinance. Born in Abu Dhabi, Dr. Alromaithy has attained a high level of international respect and recognition during the 34 years of his career.
Abdulhamied started his career as an economic researcher with the Abu Dhabi Fund for Arab Economic Development. For many years he was a faculty member with the School of Business Administration at UAE University. In 1983 he started his own firm, becoming the first UAE national management consultant and trainer. Dr. Alromaithy has conducted his pioneering work for such organizations as the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce and Industry, National Bank of Abu Dhabi, ADCO, ADGAS, GASCO, and the Abu Dhabi Businesswomen Council.
Abdulhamied has lived, worked and lectured in the US, Australia, Malaysia, France, India, Tunisia, UK, Malta, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Yemen, Syria, Thailand, Canada, Brazil and Ireland. He has published many articles and spoken at numerous international professional conferences. He has published two books and is working on two more.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Arab Gulf
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Gary Althen, MPIA
Editor
Born in Colorado, USA, Gary Althen retired after serving 30 years in the foreign-student office at the University of Iowa. His special interest in intercultural matters is reflected in two of his publications: American Ways: A Guide for Foreigners in the United States, which he wrote, and Learning Across Cultures, which he edited.
Gary has lived and worked in Peru and Malaysia. He has taught or co-taught several courses at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication, and conducted workshops on intercultural communication for audiences of students, academic staff, professional associations, and business and civic organizations.
In retirement, Gary continues to do some writing and editing.
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Maria Assumpta Aneas, Ph.D.
Universitat de Barcelona
Assumpta received her doctorate in the science of education. Her dissertation focused on cross-cultural competencies in multicultural teams across several sectors including tourism, industry, trade and farming. Her research was based on three main components of cross-cultural competency—the ability to access, communicate and create solutions.
Assumpta's intercultural experience was acquired through her work with immigrants and their social and occupational integration. At the university, she worked on numerous cross-cultural research and cooperation teams focusing on professional training, social integration, economic development and culture.
In Spain, she is known as one of the pioneers in the intercultural field in public administration and corporate research and training. She is a professor of cross-cultural competencies at the Universitat de Barcelona and the Universitary School of Tourism and Hospitaliy St Pol (Barcelona). Assumpta is a member of IAIR, Sietar Europa and other global networks. She is currently conducting research in Latin America as a member of GREDI, Research Team of Intercultural Education of the Universitat de Barcelona.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Spain
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Gilles Asselin, M.B.A.,
M.S.
French CPA
Founder and President, SoCoCo
Intercultural
Gilles Asselin's international business experience includes France, Africa and the United States. In addition to being a Certified Public Accountant and audit manager, he spent three years in French-speaking Africa, working with the French Peace Corps in Cameroon, and then conducting an organizational development assignment in the Congo.
In January 1990, Gilles took on a new academic adventure, moving to Wisconsin where he earned a master's degree in business administration and a master of science in industrial psychology. After completing his research project on the importance of work among French and American workers, his efforts focused on intercultural communications. Currently, he works in international business relations, designing and teaching training programs for employees of global companies.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® France
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Sally A. Baas, Ed. S.
Co-founder, Hmong Literacy Publishing, LLC
Co-founder and Co-director of Hmong Culture and Language Program, Concordia University St. Paul
Sally A. Baas directs the Southeast Asian Teacher Program, Hmong Culture and Language Program, English as a Second Language Program, and Special Education Program at Concordia University in St. Paul, MN. She is a USA-born educator, school administrator, school psychologist and university instructor who has spent many of her professional years working cross-culturally in P-12 grade settings. Her doctoral study is in the area of Hmong culture, language, and leadership with specific focus on "What does it mean to be Hmong?"
Sally's areas of expertise include Hmong culture and language, cross-cultural models, strategic planning, assessment, child and adolescent development, social emotional learning, children's mental health, crisis response, leadership, and training.
She has partnered with Nao Thao to develop, write, and edit numerous curriculum materials in English and Hmong literacy for elementary school students.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Hmong
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Felipe Bahamondez
Assistant Professor, Federico Santa Maria Technical University
Felipe is a civil industrial engineer specialized in human resources from the Federico Santa Maria Technical University (UTFSM) in Valparaiso, Chile. He is currently working at UTFSM as an assistant professor. His career is focused on qualitative models for cultural awareness and improving the skills of Chilean entrepreneurs to engage in better negotiation processes with foreign countries. Felipe is currently working with colleagues to develop an international negotiation handbook on this subject.
Felipe has had many intercultural experiences throughout his life. Since an early age he had to face constant flights from one country to another because of his father's work in a multinational company. Before he was twenty he had already lived in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Peru, which triggered his interest in the cultural and social differences between those nations and motivated him to work to close the gap between them as much as possible. After he finished his studies Felipe went to live in the United States, where he worked in the hospitality industry for a few years. In that position he learned a lot about dealing with people from various countries and cultures, including people from co-workers to costumers.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Chile
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Kate Berardo, M.A.
Founder, Culturosity.com
Founder of Culturosity.com, Kate specializes in cultural awareness, intercultural competency, relocation and teambuilding programs. She has developed and delivered training in ten countries with over thirty different nationalities using both online and traditional training tools. Her work has been featured in media worldwide, most recently on CNN's Business Traveller and the Dubai Daily Gulf News.
Kate holds a distinguished Master's in Intercultural Communication from the University of Bedfordshire, UK, and is a summa cum laude graduate of Northwestern University in the U.S. She is certified in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®. With George Simons and Simma Lieberman, Kate authored Putting Diversity to Work, a training guide for managers to leverage diversity in the workplace (Thompson Learning: 2003). Raised in California, she has also lived in Japan, Spain, France, and England. Her travels to over 30 countries and work in three continents has given her a deep understanding of the intricacies of working across boundaries and barriers.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Self Discovery and Cultural Detective® Bridging Cultures
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Kris Bibler
Director of Business Development, Cultural Detective
Kris holds a Bachelor of Science in Business, with a concentration in French, from the University of Kansas and a Masters of International Management from Thunderbird The Garvin School of International Management located in Glendale, AZ. Since graduation she has worked in sales/marketing roles for top organizations such as DHL Airways, Logistics Management, Inc. and Automatic Data Processing (ADP). After working in the United States domestic diversity training field for over a year, Kris began utilizing her 15+ years of sales and marketing experience to launch the robust global business solutions in the Cultural Detective training series to large organizations around the world. Her passion is to help organizations and their employees gain access to the rich intercultural learning that they need to transform their ethnocentric mindsets and structures in order to fully support and capitalize on the rapidly changing Global Workforce and a Global Economy.
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Bruce Bierman is a theatre artist and arts educator originally from Los Angeles. He is the author of several award-winning plays and musicals including The Passion of Carmen, The Blue Dress, and Wade in the Water, which received the Playwright's Commission Award from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. Bruce is currently the artistic director of the J Dance Theatre, bringing Jewish dance performances, workshops, lectures and youth education programs throughout California. Bruce received his B.A. in Asian Theatre and Dance from U.C. Santa Cruz, and recently completed the Karmiel Course for Foreign Dance Teachers in Israel. Bruce lives with his dance and life partner, Gilberto Melendez, in San Francisco.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Jewish Culture
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Axel Blom is the Owner and Managing Director of Blue Business Solutions Ltd., a company engaged in administrative outsourcing in Thailand and also the Norwegian Government's Trade Representative in Thailand. Axel was born and raised in Norway and has worked in Southeast Asia for more than twenty years. Over the last fifteen years, he has held senior management positions at Scandinavian Airlines with staff responsibility for more than 100 employees in Asia Pacific Region. In addition to his work, Axel is the current President of the Thai-Norwegian Chamber of Commerce in Thailand and has in the past been an active board member of several national Chambers of Commerce in Thailand as well as the founding President of Thailand's Board of Airline Representative Association, an organisation representing the airlines' interests in the country. Axel holds an MBA from University of Leicester.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Thailand
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Ms. Al Bloushi is head of the largest training section in HSBC's regional training division. She began her career with the Center of Gulf Studies, a non-profit research organization associated with the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) and the Gulf Institute of Management. She worked for the Arab Bank in Dubai before joining HSBC, where she started the guarantee section, has served as a risk analyst for the corporate banking team, been a member of the regionalization team, and served as leader of the regional collection department.
Layla's master's degree is from the Dubai campus of Wollongong University of Australia, and she holds a Banking Diploma from the Emirates Institute for Banking and Financial Studies. She completed the executive development program at HSBC, spending seven weeks in London at HSBC Management College, and is currently a doctoral candidate.
In her current job she is a full-time trainer and has conducted a number of training courses for local training institutions. She teaches marketing and customer service. Her first book was released in January 2006. Layla has conducted cross-cultural seminars in Europe and UAE. She was the recipient of the Top Graduate Award—UAE Nationals—in her MBA course.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Arab Gulf
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Born and raised in the Chesapeake region of the US, Kevin has worked in Latin America and Europe as an artist, writer and cultural diversity educator for the past twenty years. His educational background at Hampton University, Norfolk State University and the US Department of Defense includes studies in media, technology and pan-African arts philosophy.
Kevin is founder of Pop E B Media, a consultancy which develops live events, theatre and film projects devoted to intercultural, non-verbal and non-violent communication. He currently lives in Berlin, Germany with his wife Rita, and is a certified Cultural Detective facilitator.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Austria
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Rita Booker
Senior Partner, European Standards Consulting
Rita Booker is a leadership trainer, intercultural coach and organisational developer who grew up as part of the Hungarian minority in Romania. She emigrated with her parents to Austria in 1978. In 2001 she returned to Romania as a leadership and communication trainer for the international automotive industry and co-founded European Standards Consulting, a Romanian-German human resource provider in Timisoara, Romania. As a coach and trainer, she has helped her clients maximize the personally and professionally transformative potential inherent in the experience of living and working across cultures.
Rita's intercultural expertise is focused on the Eastern European transition during the post-communist era. She has prepared executives, managers and leadership teams of multinational companies for their first entry into Romania and for the differences between Romanian and other world cultures. Rita has accompanied the process of post-merger integration in Romania for the energy, petrochemical and banking industries.
Her educational background includes psychology, education, law, marketing, sales and music, which she studied in Salzburg, Austria and Berlin, Germany. She has been married to an Afro-American artist and has lived in Berlin since the Fall of the Berlin Wall and communism. Rita is fluent in Romanian, Hungarian, German, English, French, Italian and studies Russian and Hindi.
In addition to serving on community boards and committees, Rita regularly publishes articles on intercultural leadership topics and is a frequent conference speaker. She is co-author of the business and management book "Intercultural Teams in Sports," to be published in 2006. As member of the International Coach Federation and the Junior Chamber International, she continuously supports young entrepreneurs.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Romania and Cultural Detective® Austria
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Fran received her doctorate in organizational and cross-cultural psychology at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. She has published and extensively presented at international conferences on conflict and conflict management in the cross-cultural workplace, in particular, Western multinationals in Asia. She lectures in organizational behavior at the Sydney Institute of Business and Technology and runs workshops in cross-cultural psychology for masters students in organizational psychology at Macquarie University. Her current research interest focuses on career barriers for migrant groups in Australia.
Fran has traveled extensively throughout Asia, Europe, North Africa and the United States. She sojourned for 18 months in the U.K. and three years in Singapore, where she served from 1978 to 1980 as a committee member of the Australia and New Zealand Association of Singapore and in the library of the Tanglin Preparatory School.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Australia
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Robert Brown, Ph.D.
Director of Consulting, Pharos International SA
Dr. Brown is responsible for the Consulting practice of Pharos International, a Brussels-based company specialising in intercultural and human resources dimensions of business globalisation. As a clinical psychologist and former consultant with the World Health Organisation, Robert s expertise is in multicultural team building, and in the development or integration of organisational cultures. He serves as a personal coach of executives working internationally, and has led change programmes within global companies in Europe, Asia and the United States. Robert serves on the visiting faculty of Duke University s Fuqua School of Business, Insead, France, the IFL-Stockholm School of Economics and AFF Norway. Robert has a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the City University London, and has other degrees in Economics and Psychology. Robert is from Northern Ireland and after several international assignments, he now lives in Brussels, Belgium.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® England
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Eleonore Breukel
Principal Consultant, Intercultural Communication b.v.
Eleonore Breukel is an intercultural consultant, trainer and priincipal of Intercultural Communication, based in The Netherlands. She designs and delivers a variety of international, intercultural and diversity training programs for top 500 companies, for organizations in the public section and educational institutions across the world.
She assists organizations that are internationalizing their activities by helping them adjust local processes to global systems, stimulating an international and diversity mindset among personnel and securing a strong position for the organization on the international market. Eleonore has lived in six different countries and speaks seven languages.
Eleonore co-authored a book on how to do business in twenty countries, regularly publishes articles on intercultural subjects, and frequently speaks at conferences.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® The Netherlands
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Karima Vargas Bushnell, MA, is an intercultural relations trainer who teaches Intercultural Communication at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Minnesota. She has trained or taught courses for clients including the National Science Foundation, HealthPartners, MN Department of Employee Relations, the Center for Cross-Cultural Health, the Associated Colleges of the Twin Cities, Minnesota Humanities Commission, Antioch University and University of St. Thomas, Minneapolis and St. Paul Public Schools, the City of St. Paul, St. Paul Area Council of Churches and the Minnesota Catholic Education Association. Published writings include multiple articles for the Center for Cross-Cultural Health's Cross-Winds, an exercise for ASTD's Training and Performance Sourcebook, and a film script and manual, Keys to the Global Village, with the University of St. Thomas. She is also a recipient of the University of St. Thomas Student of Color Ally Award. A lifelong student of world religions, Karima embraced Islam in 1993 and has been speaking, writing and leading experiential sessions on Islam and Islamic Sufism since the 1980's. Other outreach activities include serving on interreligious panels and teaching the salat (Islamic prayers) to new Muslims. Karima is an advocate for the depth and breadth of traditional Islam, which for 1400 years has included a rich spectrum of scholars, lawgivers, mystics and ordinary people. She has presented her Honey of Islam workshop at churches and at the 2004 conference of SIETAR-U.S.A. Karima comes from a multi-ethnic, multicultural background.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Islam
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Carrie Cameron, Ph.D.
Principal, Culture and Communication
Dr. Cameron is a consultant and educator in global skills development and cross-cultural communication with more than twenty years experience working internationally and interculturally. She has consulted with leading companies in energy, health care, airlines, aerospace and space technology, as well as universities and government institutions. Her global skills expertise builds on field research working in places as diverse as Russia, Paraguay, Germany, Japan, Hungary and Mexico.
In addition to serving on community boards and committees, Carrie is past president and founding member of the Houston chapter of the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research. She is active in school and church efforts focused on increasing community and global integration.
Carrie received her B.A. in Russian language, magna cum laude from the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California, with studies at Leningrad State University. She received her Ph.D. in linguistics from Rice University in Houston.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Russia
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Pete Chatziplis is a Corporate Finance and Business Development advisor, with over 12 year of professional experience in Europe and the US. He became interested in multicultural management during his tenure with Deloitte US, where he worked for its Global Financial Advisory Services group and served on the Diversity and Inclusion Committee. He was drawn into further exploring the subject out of intellectual curiosity and a drive to address cultural traits in business environments to increase management efficiencies.
Pete holds an MBA in Finance from Manchester Business School, UK/Kelley Business School, and Indiana US, and a degree in Mechanical Engineering/Energy Management from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece. He is CFA Charter holder, a Fellow Chartered Certified Accountant (ACCA) and a Certified Corporate Finance Advisor (ICAEW). He has also studied and earned a degree in classical piano. Pete has worked with people from diverse cultural backgrounds and traveled to Europe, South America and Asia. He lives in New York, and is fluent in Greek and English and conversant in Spanish.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Greece
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Professor Khunying Maenmas Chavalit,
Library & Documentation Officer, SEAMEO
(South East Asian Ministries of Education Organisation)
Professor Khunying Maenmas Chavalit is currently working as library and documentation officer at SEAMEO Regional Centre for Archaeology and Fine Arts in Bangkok. She has served as director of the National Library and deputy director general at Fine Arts Department, Ministry of Education in Bangkok. In addition she held the position as director for UNESCO Regional Office for Book Development in Asia and Pacific and UNESCO representative in Pakistan from 1978 to 1982. In 1988, she received the Most Illustrious Order of Chula Chom Klao, fourth class (later upgraded to the third class) and was conferred the title Khunying. She has worked on several ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) cultural and information activities and has translated western European literature into Thai language.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Thailand
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Antimo Cimino, M.A.
Intercultural Consultant and Trainer
Born in Southern Italy, Antimo's life has been all about change. After receiving a diploma in hotel and restaurant management, Antimo lived in France and England to become fluent in the languages and knowledgeable about the cultures. In 1996, Antimo moved to the United States to obtain a degree in international business. However, the challenges of living abroad changed his mind and determined a new professional path. He will complete his M.A. in Intercultural Relations in November 2005.
Currently, he is working for the Intercultural Communication Institute and as an independent consultant and trainer for intercultural learning. He designs and conducts workshops on cultural awareness, pre-departure, multicultural team building and cross-cultural effectiveness. Clients include: Tokyo Electron in Austin, Texas, Concilio Latino de Salud in Phoenix, Arizona, and Friendly House Community Center in Portland, Oregon.
Antimo is also a published photographer and speaks Italian, English, Spanish, and French.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Italy
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Marie-Thérèse Claes, Ph.D.
Professor, ICHEC Brussels Business School
Marie-Thérèse Claes is a lifelong educator. She has been a professor at ICHEC Brussels Business School and at the University of Louvain in Belgium, and has been invited as a guest professor to universities in Europe, Asia and the United States of America. She was Dean of the Faculty of Business at Asian University in Thailand for two years.
She teaches and conducts research in the fields of intercultural communication and intercultural management, and has published widely in those fields. She has worked with several companies on issues of relocation, intercultural management and diversity management.
Marie-Thérèse is past president of European Women Management Development (EWMD) and of SIETAR Europa (Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research). She now divides her time between Asia and Europe.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Belgium
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Ruby Lee Cochran-Simms
Educational Advisor, Bi-National Center
Ruby Simms is an expatriate and has been living in Argentina since 1968. She has been a U.S. country specialist for cross-cultural trainings since 1996 and an EFL instructor since 1975. Currently Ruby is an overseas educational adviser at a Bi-National Center in Rosario. Her office is auspicated by the U.S. Department of State Education USA advising network. She was also a founding member for the re-establishment of AFS in Rosario, and from 1993 to 2000 she was coordinator of the hosting program. Ruby has been a screening officer for Amity Institute, (Intern Teacher, Exchange Teacher & Amity Volunteer Teacher Abroad) since 1993.
Ruby is a member of NAFSA: Association for International Educators, and has presented at national and international workshops. She has contributed to international education magazines. She is an alumna of the United States Based Training Program for Overseas Educational Advisers. She has studied speech & dramatic arts at the University of Missouri, Columbia.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Argentina
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Olga is a cross-cultural training consultant of Ukrainian origin and currently resides in the United States. She has worked in Germany, the UK and Italy and has traveled extensively throughout Europe.
Ms. Collin holds an M.A. degree in translation and cultural studies from the Johannes-Guttenberg University in Mainz, Germany. She is proficient in German, Russian and Ukrainian. As a Ukrainian editor of the SlavFile newsletter issued by the ATA (American Translators Association), Olga wrote articles on the Ukrainian language and culture. In addition to cultural briefings she offers language instruction to professionals moving abroad. Olga is a member of the ATA, Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research (SIETAR) and Chicago Sister Cities Program.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Ukraine
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Ariane Curdy
Founder, Ctrl Culture Relations
A bilingual French-Swiss raised in German-speaking Switzerland, Ariane Curdy is an organization development consultant and intercultural trainer. She has 20 years of international experience, working in over thirty countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas. Ariane is a skilled facilitator who likes to strategically introduce experiential learning tools drawn from the circus, the theater, performance, and the visual arts in her work.
In 2001 she founded Ctrl Culture Relations, a training and consulting company based in the Lake of Geneva Region, Switzerland. Ctrl's clients include corporations (Centerpulse, Magenta SA, NestlČ, Novartis) and humanitarian agencies (ICRC, UNITAR), as well as academia (Šcole HŮteliËre Lausanne, FH Liechtenstein).
Ariane is a frequent speaker on inter-cultural topics (OIF, PROMOVE, SIETAR USA/Europe, Whidbey Institute). Her intercultural column "Embracing Cultures" in the magazine Field Exchange is distributed among U.N. Organizations. She contributed to Margaret Oertig-Davidson's book Beyond Chocolate ‚ Understanding Swiss Culture (Bergli Books, 2002).
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Switzerland
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Kathleen A. Curran, M.A.
President/Principal Coach Consultant, Intercultural Systems
Kathleen Curran is the principal and managing director of Intercultural Systems, with offices in Singapore and Houston, Texas. Working in Asia since 1986, she has provided intercultural competency development consulting, training and coaching for multinational corporations and local organizations in Singapore and the Southeast Asian region. She held faculty positions with Institute Teknologi MARA, Malaysia; University of Maryland ń European/Asian Division; Ngee Ann Polytechnic, Singapore; Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Singapore campus.
Prior to her experience in Asia, Kathleen served as advisor/liaison to the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and King Saud University, while with the Saudi Arabian Educational Mission to the United States.
She holds a master's from the University of Texas at Austin in intercultural communication. Most recently, her practice takes her to the United States, Saudi Arabia, Germany and Southeast Asia.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Malaysia and Cultural Detective® Singapore
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Basma Ibrahim DeVries, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Concordia University
Basma is assistant professor of communication studies at Concordia University in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA. She specializes in teaching intercultural and interpersonal communication courses, facilitating campus-wide intercultural/diversity sessions and integrating service learning into the classroom. As an Egyptian-American, Basma has spent much time traveling and living in Egypt, Europe and the USA, and leading annual student travel and service-learning groups to Egypt, Mexico and Russia. Her previous teaching and curriculum development experience involved working with a variety of Arabic and ESL programs.
In addition to teaching, Basma conducts intercultural training with educational, community and corporate groups and co-authored, with Barbara Kappler Mikk and Dianne Hofner Saphiere, Communication Highwire: Leveraging the Power of Diverse Communication Styles (Intercultural Press 2005). She sits on the national board of SIETAR-USA (Society for Intercultural Education, Training, and Research) and is an active member of the Egyptian American Society, NCA (National Communication Association), and several other professional and cultural organizations. She focuses on living up to the root of her Arabic name, Bes—an ancient Egyptian god of fun and happiness.
Basma earned her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in Communication Studies, focusing her dissertation on Arab-American bicultural identity. She holds a M.A. from the University of Wisconsin and a B.A. in Psychology and Communication Studies from Gustavus Adolphus College.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Egypt, and Trainer of Facilitators
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Ricardo Eastman de la Cuesta, candidate to Ph.D.
Born in Medellín and trained as an industrial engineer, Ricardo possesses a wealth of career experience spanning the fields of international business, diplomacy, academia and politics.
Currently working in virtual and presencial classes and building intercultural material, Ricardo has served as his country’s Ambassador to Russia and in Colombia’s national Congress. He has founded about ten businesses (in such diverse sectors as mining, agriculture, hospitality, energy, metallurgy, finance, and education); held top management positions (in the financial industry, with the coffee guild, and in the harbor sector); served on the board of directors for 20 Colombian companies (including those in insurance, finance, government, energy, education, and workers unions); has been a full-time professor at the EAFIT University in Medellín; and taught at both the Technological University Pereira (Risaralda) and the Sergio Arboleda University in Bogotá.
Ricardo has taken post-graduate courses in banking and investment with the World Bank, and in senior management with INALDE, the management and business school of Universidad de la Sabana. He holds a degree in the internationalization of businesses from Universidad CEU San Pablo in Madrid, Spain. His published works include Crónica histórica de un imperio: Auge y caída de la URSS (“Historic Chronicle of an Empire: Boom and Fall of the USSR”), 1994, and Interculturalidad y negociación (“Interculturalism and Negotiation”), 2008.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Colombia
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Marianne Egelund is a Danish national now living in the United Kingdom. As a journalist, she has spent the past ten years living abroad and reporting on a wide variety of issues from countries in the Far East. She has lived and worked in Hong Kong, China, Thailand, Belgium, The Netherlands, and the USA.
Marianne has reported for the Danish National Broadcasting Corporation, and has also been a correspondent for a Danish business daily, ErhvervsBladet, reporting on industrial policy and economic life focusing on small- and medium-sized enterprises.
Marianne Egelund is a qualified journalist and has a master's degree in European Journalism.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Denmark
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Marc I. Ehrlich, Ph.D.
Clinical Psychologist and Organizational
Consultant
Dr. Ehrlich is a psychological consultant and psychotherapist in private practice. He has consulted with many Mexican as well as multinational companies such as Bell Atlantic, Cargill de Mexico, CitiBank-Banamex, General Electric-Mabe, General Motors de Mexico, Inverlat, Kluber Lubrications and Merck de Mexico. Additionally, Dr. Ehrlich has worked as a senior trainer for the Mexico City Branch of the Center for Creative Leadership and as a consultant to a national program for the prevention of substance abuse in the family.
Dr. Ehrlich is a special columnist for The News, Mexico's largest English language newspaper. He is the author of Husbands, Wives, and Their Children, (Editorial Trillas) Harmony, (Editorial Planeta) and The Challenge of Working and Living in Mexico, (Editorial Planeta). His new book, The Psychology of Teams (Editorial Trillas), will be published in 2004.
Dr. Ehrlich was born and raised in New York City. He met his wife, a Mexican citizen, in Austin, Texas, where he studied for his doctorate in psychology. Their two children hold both Mexican and United States citizenships.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Mexico
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Holly Emert has over 15 years' experience designing, facilitating, and leading change efforts with a focus on the role culture plays in all aspects of personal and professional life. She has extensive experience working with individuals and groups at all organizational levels in U.S. domestic and international settings, including work in government, corporate, education, and nonprofit contexts.
Holly's first career was as a high school foreign language teacher (French, Spanish) in the southern U.S. (a culture in its own right!), in the People's Republic of China and in France, via the Fulbright Teacher Exchange Program of the U.S. Department of State. Holly has a Ph.D. in comparative and international development education, international and intercultural education focus, from the University of Minnesota. She has conducted research for UNICEF and the World Bank, as well as researched culture and language learning strategies as part of a U.S. Department of Education three-year grant for the Maximizing Study Abroad guidebook series. Her own research includes the study of the preparation of intercultural trainers (MA thesis) and the lived experience and impact of teaching abroad on the development of intercultural competence in Fulbright Teacher Exchange Program participants (PhD thesis).
Holly currently works as a diversity development specialist at a large multinational agrifoods company, where she has been since 2007. Her work there focuses on enhancing individual and group intercultural competence; engaging in strategic planning and evaluation efforts to develop and build culturally relevant and appropriate systemic structures and policies; and working with clients in ways that build sustainability of culture-based initiatives.
Holly's professional activities include service on SIETAR-USA's board of directors and on SIETAR-Minnesota's board of directors. She is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® US K-12 Education
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Namita Eveloy, founder of Beyond Barriers Training and Development, Inc., is an experienced cross-cultural educator, speaker, trainer and consultant. She brings over ten years of experience in the areas of intercultural communication, language training and instructional design.
Namita holds a Master's degree in Second Languages and Cultures Education with additional coursework in Human Resources Development and Educational Policy and Administration, from the University of Minnesota. Namita has also studied at the Université de Paul Valery and La Sorbonne in France. In 2005, Namita's commitment to French language and culture was recognized by a scholarship from the French Embassy in Washington, DC.
In addition to teaching French and ESL, Namita's varied background includes extensive experience in the field of education, from program design to developing new programs from the ground up. Namita's business experience includes training professionals from several multinationals on topics around language and cultural competence in the United States and India. She has held positions such as project manager, training and content specialist and consultant. With experience working on three continents, in both public and private sectors, Namita offers an unmatched international perspective. Photo of Namita is courtesy Amber Procaccini.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® US K-12 Education
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Taruni Falconer, M.Ed.
Principal Consultant, Intercultural Dynamics
Faculty, Auckland University of Technology
New Zealand born and educated, Taruni is Founder and Principal Consultant of Intercultural Dynamics, her New Zealand-based intercultural consulting and training company. She has been active internationally in the field of intercultural communication since the mid seventies. Current projects include creating and facilitating programmes for multicultural teams- real and virtual- and designing a first for New Zealand- an intercultural train-the-trainers programme for selected New Zealand government departments.
To date, Taruni has prepared thousands of people for work-life or lifestyle transitions. She has raised four sons while working in multi-cultural business and education environments in South Asia, the Middle East, and East Africa. Her work has supported multicultural teams based in Japan, India, Yemen, Tanzania, USA, Australia and New Zealand. Her research, teaching and consultancy continue to take her to Asia, Australia and North America.
Taruni holds a Masters of Education (Massey), a BA in Asian Studies (Victoria), and a Diploma of Teaching (ACE). She currently teaches in her field at Auckland University of Technology. She serves as support faculty at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication (SIIC) held annually in Portland, Oregon, where she has completed over 400 hours in professional development programmes. She is a member of the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research (SIETAR) and is frequently invited to be a presenter on cross-cultural issues.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® New Zealand, and Trainer of Facilitators
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Tatyana is a founder and principal of Connecting Differences: Training, Facilitation, Consulting and Coaching. She provides intercultural communication and diversity training to corporate clients, educators and mental health professionals. She also trains business executives and their families in preparation for their moves overseas on global assignments. Her clients include Boeing, Hewitt Associates, NVIDIA, Sunstar Americas, Alcoa, Baker Hughes, ExxonMobil, Sara Lee, and GMAC, among others.
Tatyana serves as a Director of Cultural Competency Programs for Jewish Child and Family Services of Chicago, IL. In this capacity she designs and delivers a variety of cultural competency and adult learning trainings for agency staff and oversees a number of programs for training professionals who work with refugees from all over the world and with diverse populations. As a recognized expert in the field, Tatyana trains refugee service professionals nationwide in the USA. As a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor her professional experience includes providing resettlement services to refugees and counseling to individuals and families going through cultural transitions.
Tatyana is a past president of the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research (SIETAR-USA). She is a regular presenter and keynote speaker at professional conferences and a faculty member at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication. Tatyana holds an MA in journalism from Moscow State University (Moscow, Russia) and an MA in guidance and counseling from Northeastern Illinois University (Chicago, IL).
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Russia, Cultural Detective® Kazakhstan, Cultural Detective® Ukraine and Master Trainer of Facilitators
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Marjana Bidovec Finzgar, M.A.
Business English Teacher, IRC Business College
Marjana was born in Golnik, Slovenia, and has been an English as a Foreign Language teacher for many years, including at the high school, technical school, trading school, and business college levels. She has also worked as a translator for ISKRA, an import-export company.
Her university diploma is in French and English Language and Literature from Filozofska fakulteta Ljubljana (Faculty of Arts, Ljubljana), and her post-graduate specialization from the same institution is in Slovene-English and English-Slovene technical translation. Marjana enjoys music, hiking, cycling, cooking and dancing. She speaks English, German, Italian and Serbocroatian, and has a special interest in neurolinguistic programming.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Slovenia
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Monica Francois Marcel
Partner, Language & Culture Worldwide, LLC
Monica is a U.S.-national who co-founded Language & Culture Worldwide in the year 2000 as a research, training, and development consultancy. Her global ethics specialty is rooted in years of helping to manage the localization and delivery of global corporate compliance and ethics initiatives, in multiple languages on six continents for clients and thousands of their employees. She also directs an annual benchmarking survey to identify best practices in global ethics and compliance programs among the world's leading multi-national corporations. She is a frequent presenter and author in the ethics and compliance professional community, for groups including the Ethics Officers Association and the Ethics Resource Center.
Monica's perspective comes from fifteen years of first-hand experiences living, working, and traveling among 30 national cultures. She has been quoted in major newspapers, and has authored a university-level textbook chapter for McGraw-Hill/Irwin titled "Global Communications" for publication in 2005. Originally trained as an engineer with a focus on sustainable development, Monica is also a former U.S. Peace Corps volunteer. A handbook she co-authored for developing non-profit agencies in the former-Soviet Union has been translated into three languages. Her clients range from Fortune 500 companies and international professional associations, to U.S.-based manufacturers and the U.S. Peace Corps. Today Monica resides in Chicago, Illinois USA. Her passions are curriculum design, sustainable development, and training of trainers—all to support the business case for global diversity and intercultural competency.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Global Business Ethics
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Victor H. Garza, M.Ed.
Intercultural Trainer & Consultant
Victor H. Garza was born in northeastern Mexico. He grew up as a "blended-culture kid" spending his childhood and teenage years in the midwestern United States, Canada's Quebec, Germany's Bavaria, and northeastern and northwestern Mexico. He speaks Spanish and English fluently, and has a basic knowledge of French, German and Mandarin Chinese. He holds a B.Sc. in Aquaculture Management and a M.Ed. in International Relations.
Since 1991, Victor worked and developed international exchange programs for student and faculty at Mexico's esteemed ITESM, a 32-campus, private university system also known as "Monterrey Tech." In 1997, he moved to China to open a liaison office for ITESM and to work as a language instructor for a wide range of students—from kindergarten children to middle-aged businesspeople.
In the mid 1990s, Victor began devoting himself as a intercultural trainer within Mexico and China, working in academic, governmental and corporate settings, delivering cross-cultural awareness programs and "Doing Business in..." seminars. In addition, he conducts relocation programs at MNC's (Multinational Companies) for expatriate executives and their families to enhance intercultural competence during their living and/or working experience in China. In 2004 Victor was involved in CCTV's (China Central Television) Spanish Channel project. Victor has been a visiting scholar at Beijing's Tsinghua University, Shanghai International Studies University and Hangzhou's Zhejiang University.
Victor deeply enjoys outdoor activities such as trekking, photography and traveling. In his spare time he delivers seminars to Chinese high school and college students on world traveling, sharing his traveling experiences to more than 33 countries in the six inhabited continents.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® China
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Banu Golesorkhi, Ph.D.
Director of Research, Pharos International SA
Dr. Golesorkhi is responsible for the Research Centre of the Brussels-based Pharos International, a company specialising in intercultural and human resources dimensions of business globalisation. She oversees Pharos' commissioned and internal research projects that provide the foundation for the company's consulting and training interventions. Banu specialises in the area of Trust, its interpretation across cultures and its cultivation in multicultural relationships. She is a member of the international faculty of IFL-Stockholm School of Economics and Vlerick-Leuven-Gent School of Management in Belgium. She lectures on the subjects of Trust Building, Global Mobility and Women in Organisations. Banu has a Doctorate in Human and Organizational Learning from the George Washington University as well as a Masters in Sociology and a Bachelors in Human Ecology. She is a native of Iran and lives in Brussels, Belgium.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® England
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Tanor de Romão Gomes
Intercultural Consultant, Multicultural
Communication Consulting Ltda
Born in Brazil to Italian and Spanish parents, Tanor has lived and traveled extensively in Italy, England and the United States of America. He is the founder of Multicultural Communication Consulting Ltda, a Brazil-based intercultural business consulting and training organization, where he aids a variety of corporations in meeting the challenges of doing business internationally.
Tanor graduated in civil engineering in 1982, working on construction projects for many years. After graduation he began working in the area of human resources administration. This career change added to his international experience, changing his focus toward intercultural relations. He has been active in this field since 1992. Tanor currently supports multinational corporations in planning mergers and acquisitions in Brazil. He is also responsible for training programs in cultural awareness, pre-departure, in-country orientation, reentry, and multicultural team building for inbound and outbound international transfers. He is currently conducting research on the regional cultural differences in Brazil and the affect on today's business.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Brazil and Cultural Detective® Italy
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María Filomena González Canalda, M.A.
María graduated from the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (UASD) with a bachelor's degree in history. María also holds a master's degree in archives from the same university as well as from the Universidad de la Havana, Cuba. She holds a master's degree in Latin American studies from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).
Her professional career has included teaching history at the Instituto Technológico de Santo Domingo (INTEC), the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (UASD), the Universidad Iberoamericana (Unibe) and at the Centro Filosófico Pedro F. Bonó. She was awarded the National History Award in 2009 for her book, Gavilleros, 1904-1916.
María has been the Resident Director for the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE)-Santo Domingo program since 1998. She has been a consultant for the Ministry of Education in the Dominican Republic on several occasions, as well as for the Educational District 6 in New York, regarding the social studies curriculum. She has published a number of articles on Dominican history and the Dominican history curriculum. She has also published several books on Dominican history, as well as a series of social sciences text books for Dominican students.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Dominican Republic
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Susan is passionate about helping individuals and organizations realize their fullest potential. Her work is deeply rooted in multicultural awareness as a Southerner, bisexual woman, feminist activist, corporate executive, college professor, person of faith and student of the world.
By the age of 30, Susan had worked in television, earned her Ph.D., taught in the USA and Europe and become Executive Director of the National Women's Studies Association. She transferred the same energy into corporate marketing for two Fortune 500 firms, in addition to opening the Washington, DC office of a socially responsible money fund. She was a member of the planning committee for the UN Decade for Women World Conference (1985) in Nairobi, Kenya, and has also worked as guest lecturer at Airlaanga University in Suribaya, Indonesia and at the International Congress of Psychologists.
In 1991, Susan established The Mentor Group, specializing in diversity and inclusion, leadership development, and communication. Clients include AT&T, BP, Deloitte, GlaxoSmithKline, HP, Microsoft, Nortel Networks, PepsiCo, Shell Oil, Texas Instruments, the US Coast Guard, IRS and Postal Service and the Unitarian Universalist Association. She has written on a variety of topics, including Generational Differences in the Workplace: Collaboration or Conflict? (2008) and co-produced the DVD, How to BE With Someone Who Is Dying (2008). Her book, Gays, God and the Workplace; Not Mutually Exclusive is forthcoming in 2009.
Susan received her Ph.D. in social psychology from Vanderbilt University and completed advanced training in managing cultural diversity at The Equity Institute in San Francisco. Her mantra is "It's not whether you are going to mess up but what you do about it when you do."
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender
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Ellen Greenberg, Ph.D.
University of National and World Economics & American University
Professor Ellen Greenberg first came to Bulgaria as a consultant for what she thought would be a two-week assignment on graduate management education. Eleven years later she is still living and working in Bulgaria!
Dr. Greenberg holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an M.B.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia Universityís Graduate School of Business, in management of organizations. Before coming to Bulgaria, she taught at the University of Massachusetts Boston campus for twelve years, during which she also directed the M.B.A. program. Her primary research interests involve the encouragement and management of creativity and innovation, cross-cultural management, and problems of management in a transition economy.
Dr. Greenberg was twice a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Bulgaria, as well as a Civic Education Project Fellow (Open Society/Soros funded). She has taught full time at the University of National and World Economics and the American University in Bulgaria, and has taught in all the major universities in Sofia. She teaches organizational behavior, organizational change, cross-cultural management, leadership, corporate culture, strategic management, and human resource management, among other subjects. She has lectured throughout Eastern Europe, and teaches in both English and Bulgarian.
Dr. Greenberg has substantial entrepreneurial experience in Bulgaria, putting into practice ideas she had long studied. As the co-founder and co-director of a private medical center, the Dr. I. S. Greenberg Diagnostic and Consultative Center in Sofia, she has, for the past six years, built a successful medical business with two affiliates.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Bulgaria
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Lynne, who was born and raised in the U.S.A., is Resident Director for the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE)) program in liberal arts at the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic. In addition to her administrative responsibilities, Dr. Guitar has been involved since the pilot stage in teaching an innovative CIEE "Living and Learning in Santiago, Dominican Republic" seminar that provides students with the skills needed to achieve intercultural growth and understanding, which are so important in our increasingly globally interdependent and culturally diverse world. Lynne lived and worked in Canada for ten years and has been a permanent resident of the D.R. since coming as a Fulbright Fellow in 1997/98, having first visited for research purposes in 1984 and as an exchange student in 1992.
Lynne earned two simultaneous B.A.s, one in history and one in anthropology, from Michigan State University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Latin American history from Vanderbilt University. Widely published in academic collections and journals, she also writes historical novels and is collaborating with a U.S. producer on feature movies to be filmed in the D.R. She has appeared in documentaries for History Channel and Discovery Channel, among others, and has presented lectures as a guest speaker in more than a dozen countries on her research specialties: the history and cultures of the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, history and cultures of the Colonial Spanish Caribbean, and popular Dominican culture through the present day in its evolved, mixed form, which has blended customs and beliefs of the Taíno Indians with those of various African peoples and Spaniards, as well as other immigrants to the region.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Dominican Republic
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Judit Hidasi, Ph.D.
Dean, Budapest University of Economics
Professor, Szolnok University
Judit Hidasi is a native of Hungary who has studied, conducted research and worked internationally 14 years of her adult life. Her longest intercultural experience bonds her with Japan, where she taught intercultural communication for five years at Kanda University, Waseda University, and many other institutions of higher education. She holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Presently she is the Dean of the Budapest University of Economics, and a full professor at Szolnok University, Hungary. She is the author of a number of publications on intercultural communication in different languages. Her latest book, Intercultural Communication: An outline (Sangensha, Tokyo), appeared in 2005.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Hungary
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Denise Hill, P.D.M., B.SOC.SC, D.T.
Knight of the French National Order of Merit
Managing Director, Denise Hill and Associates
Denise Hill was born and raised in Apartheid-ridden South Africa. She has spent her adult years finding ways, both in her work and personal life, to build bridges of understanding. She holds a university qualification in communications teaching, a Cum Laude social work degree, and honors as top student. She holds a post qualification in business management. She is currently managing director of Denise Hill and Associates, a training and development consultancy.
Denise was the Executive Manager of Professional Development Associates and a director of the Joint Management Development Programme, a joint venture of the French Foreign Ministry, the Black Management Forum, the National African Chamber of Commerce and the Urban Foundation. Denise was awarded the distinction of Knight of the National Order of Merit, an award presented to her by President Chirac, for her work in furthering the vision of France in the redressing of imbalances in South Africa through her work for the Joint Management Development Programme.
She was invited to write the forward to the South African National Training Directory for 2004 in the field of management and supervisory training. She is accredited by the Services Seta of South Africa in the area of transformational leadership. Denise is an accredited trainer for ESKOM in the field of communications and mentoring.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® South Africa
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Thomas K. Holcomb, Ph.D.
Professor, Deaf Studies, Ohlone College
Thomas K. Holcomb comes from a multigenerational deaf family. He, his parents, grandparents, and children are all deaf. Currently, Tom is Professor of Deaf Studies at Ohlone College in Fremont, California, where he teaches courses related to Deaf Culture to both deaf and hearing students. Previously, he taught at San Jose State University and National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology.
Tom is considered a leading authority on Deaf Culture. He was awarded the Teacher of the Year Award by American Sign Language Teacher Association (ASLTA) in 2002. He is well known for the dynamic presentation style he uses to bring together deaf and hearing cultures. Tom has presented in 45 states and several countries, including Japan and Canada. He is also an accomplished storyteller and is the featured performer in the Boys Town Press videotape series, Read With Me: Stories for Your Deaf Child. His most recent production, a DVD entitled See What I Mean: Differences Between Deaf and Hearing Cultures, has received widespread acclaim for its humorous yet effective portrayal of the deaf experience. In addition, his book, Deaf Culture, Our Way, illustrates the unique experiences of deaf people living in the mainstream. It is now considered a classic in deaf literature.
Tom's academic credentials include a bachelor's degree in Psychology from Gallaudet University, a master's degree in Career and Human Resources Development from Rochester Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Rochester.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Deaf Culture
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Anders P. Hovemyr
Managing Director, Intercultural Management Consulting AB
Dr. Anders P. Hovemyr is currently managing director of Intercultural Management Consulting AB and director on a part-time basis of SAS Intercultural Communication, an independent consulting unit and profit center within Scandinavian Airlines System.
In 1986 he joined SAS Intercultural Communication taking the responsibility for designing and implementing training interventions at SAS. The focus of activities has been pre-departure training of Scandinavian executives and their families, bound for expatriate assignments.
In 1994 he founded an independent international management consulting company, implementing "culture management skills" in multinational corporations, focusing on effectivity and productivity improvements in international operations.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Denmark, Cultural Detective® Finland, Cultural Detective® Sweden, Cultural Detective® Norway, and Cultural Detective® Thailand
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Karen Huchendorf, M.A.
Managing Director, Global Interface
Karen has been involved since the early 1970s in the field of intercultural communication. To date, she has prepared thousands of people for work life or lifestyle transitions, ranging from high school and college students participating in international educational exchange programs to corporate executives and their families on long- and short-term assignments abroad. Destination countries are worldwide, ranging from Argentina to Zimbabwe. Recently she delivered multicultural team-building programs in Shanghai and Bangkok for a U.K.-based client firm. Executive coaching assignments have included clients based in Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand and The Philippines.
Moving from the United States to Australia in 1988, Karen established Global Interface, a cross-cultural training and development-consulting firm, in 1990 in Sydney. She holds an M.A. in philosophy and has completed graduate work in organizational behavior. She regularly attends the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication, held annually in Oregon, where she has completed 370 hours in professional development programs.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Australia, Cultural Detective® Global Teamwork, and Trainer of Facilitators
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Naira A. Istephanous, M.B.A.
Senior Manager of Marketing Research, Medtronic, Inc.
Naira is senior manager of marketing research at Medtronic, Inc, a global manufacturer of medical devices based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. As a researcher, her responsibilities include assessing opportunities and defining requirements for the introduction of medical therapies in new markets.
As a result of her father's career as an international news correspondent, Naira traveled and lived with her family in Germany, Italy and the United States. She worked in Egypt and Kuwait with multinational companies operating in the Middle East. In 1993, she moved to Minneapolis, where she is raising her own family.
Naira holds an undergraduate degree in Communication and Foreign Languages and a master's degree in Business Administration from the American University in Washington, D.C. She is fluent in Arabic, English, German and French.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Egypt
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K Pica Kahn is a cross-cultural trainer, publicist and freelance journalist for such publications as the Houston Chronicle and the Houston Business Journal. The daughter of a French father, her love of other cultures began during summers spent in France and other European countries.
Ms. Kahn studied in France and Belgium, and has worked throughout Canada and the Virgin Islands. Her diverse career includes owning and operating an import-export business, and producing television documentaries (joint ventures between U.S., France, and the UK's BBC).
During 13 years as a journalist, she has covered such people as Gen. Colin Powell, Steven Spielberg, Al Gore, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Zalmon Shoval, Secretary of State James Baker, Henry Kissinger, Mikhail Gorbachev, Dick Gephardt, Gary Hart and Walter Cronkite.
Pica has worked as an adjunct professor of English, Race Relations, Humanities in Western Civilization, and ESL on the college level. She teaches a course on Israel at Congregation Beth Israel in Houston and next fall will begin teaching a course on Jewish Heroes.
She lives with her son Yuri in the Clear Lake area of Houston, Texas, and is known for her great four-hour Shabbat dinners, especially her matzo ball soup!
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Jewish Culture
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Anat Kedem, M.A.
President, A&H International
Anat Kedem is an experienced professional with over 12 years of experience in cross-cultural training and facilitation. She was born and raised in Israel, and has lived in South Africa and the United States. Her experiences outside Israel and her re-entry into Israeli society shaped her cultural perspective on Israeli culture and triggered her interest in the nature of the cross-cultural encounter. Within Israel, she worked on the rifts dividing Israeli society, assisting Israeli Arabs, new immigrants and American Jews in trying to understand and interact with mainstream culture. As a consultant and trainer in Israel, she worked with government and nonprofit clients, focusing on internal diversity within Israeli society and its impact on organizational effectiveness. With Lucy Shahar in Israel, Anat worked within the corporate world assisting global teams. She facilitated workshops related to international employee relocation, multicultural team formation and management, as well as global cross-cultural business effectiveness, focusing on American-Israeli interaction.
Anat and her family relocated to the United States five years ago. Thus, her fourth expatriate experience, in Silicon Valley, has provided her with further opportunities to draw on her knowledge of cross-cultural issues, particularly as they relate to Israeli and American contact in the business world. Anat's insight into both American and Israeli cultures contributes to global professionals' abilities in communicating and navigating across cultures.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Israel
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Eun Y. Kim, Ph.D.
President, CEO International
Dr. Kim is President of CEO International, an international management- consulting firm based in Austin, Texas. Eun's undergraduate degree is from Seoul National University and her Ph.D. is from the University of Texas at Austin. She has worked in the United States and Asia as a management/communication consultant for over 15 years. With a mission to build and repair cultural bridges, Eun has designed and developed executive education programs for multinationals in North America, Europe and Asia. She has helped thousands of global managers work effectively across cultures. Clients include Applied Materials, Chevron/Texaco, IBM, LG, Motorola, NCsoft, Samsung, SEMATECH, 3M, and Texas Instruments.
Eun is an author of six books on business and cross-cultural communication, including Global Intelligence: Seven Pillars for New Global Leaders, The Yin and Yang of American Culture: A Paradox (Intercultural Press, 2001), A Cross- Cultural Reference of Business Practices in a New Korea (Quorum, 1996) and a Korean best-seller, Image-making. As a popular keynote speaker, Eun has spoken to as many as 6,500 people a day and appeared in numerous international media and conferences. Her recent appearances include: C-SPAN TV, the 3rd World Knowledge Forum (Seoul), Texas Conference for Women, NAFSA International Educators Conference, SIETAR Europe Globalization Congress (Vienna), and International Conference on Intercultural Communication and Diplomacy (Malta).
Born to be global, she is married to a native Texan and runs a cross-cultural lab at home, discovering new findings everyday with her first-grade son who has traveled to 20 countries on four continents.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® South Korea and Cultural Detective® USA
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Rui-ling King specializes in organizational effectiveness and cross-cultural interventions. Since 1989, her broad range of professional experience includes leadership development, coaching, team building, conflict management, cross-cultural/diversity training, change management, and organization development research in the People's Republic of China. She has worked with multinationals such as Philips Electronics Shanghai, Roche Shanghai, Bosch (China), Gemplus (France), Amersham/General Electric Shanghai, Proctor & Gamble (Beijing), Ubisoft (Shanghai), and many others.
Rui-ling reported directly to the CEO and worked with the executive team as Director of Human Resources and Organization Development for RAE Systems, Inc. and as Manager of Organizational Learning and Development for Rapid5 Networks, Inc. in Silicon Valley. She was Director of Training for a summer "Peace Camp" for USAID which successfully brought together youth from Georgia and Abkhazia to learn conflict management skills.
Rui-ling has travelled throughout Asia, Europe, and North America. She has lived and worked in Shanghai since 2003. Her favourite leisure activities are practicing taijiquan and cooking ethnic cuisine. She is conversationally fluent in Mandarin Chinese. She holds a Master's Degree in Organization Development from The Fielding Institute, and a Bachelor's Degree from Princeton University, in addition to a year spent at Beijing University.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Global Diversity and Inclusion
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Yuko Kipnis. M.A.
Intercultural Specialist
Yuko Kipnis is a native of Japan who has lived and worked in the United States for thirteen years. She holds a master's degree in cross-cultural communication and a Japanese language teacher's certificate authorized by the Japanese Ministry of Education.
Since 1985, Yuko has been working as a cross-cultural trainer in both Japan and the United States, developing and conducting language and cultural training programs that teach business people effective cross-cultural communication skills. She conducts relocation programs for expatriate executives and their families to enhance the productivity and meaningfulness of their cross-cultural transitions.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Japan
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Alena Korshuk, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of English and Speech Communication, Belarusian State University
Alena Korshuk holds a BA in English, French and Programming from the Minsk Linguistics University and a PhD in Psycholinguistics from the Belarusian State University, where she has subsequently taught English for Professional Purposes for over 20 years and has acted as a Reader since 1989. In the last seven years she has also been teaching Intercultural Communication.
Alena has 80 publications in the fields of intercultural communication, bilingualism, psycholinguistics and human rights. In 1999 she received a DAAD research grant (Chemnitz University, Germany), in 2000 a Fulbright Research Grant, and in 2002 and 2003 she participated in the Summer University program and a CRC (Curriculum Resource Centre) session at Central European University in Budapest. She is a Salzburg Seminar alumna (session 410, 2003), and in 2005 became the Educator of the Year at the Baltic University Programme, which includes 193 Universities in 14 countries.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Belarus
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Vanessa Landry-Claverie, M.Sc.
Vanessa was born in San Diego and spent her early childhood in Paris, her teenage years between Montreal and Washington, and she finished her high school in Bangkok. In short: she is a citizen of the world. How can she not have a passion for travel and intercultural encounters?
After earning a BA in political science at McGill University, she completed a master's degree in international negotiation in France. Weaving the two, she now works in negotiation and intercultural training.
She is certified with SMS for negotiation training and with Culture Detective for intercultural training.
When she has time, she volunteers with SIETAR and also translates for Culture Detective, SIETAR and Diversophy.
Photography is her passion. To see the world differently...
Translator of Cultural Detective® Canada
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Lionel F. Laroche, Ph.D., P. Eng.
President, MCB Solutions
Over the past five years, Lionel Laroche has provided cross-cultural training, coaching and consulting services to over 5,000 people in seven countries—Canada, the U.S., Mexico, Peru, France, Belgium and China. His specialty is in helping technical professionals reap the benefits of cultural differences in their work.
A dynamic, entertaining and educational speaker, he has presented at more than 120 conferences and venues, organized by a wide range of business, government, academic, professional and non-profit organizations.
He has authored nearly 100 publications, examining the impact of cultural differences on business in general and technical functions. His publications have appeared in over 30 trade magazines published in eight countries. He has also written a book, Managing Cultural Diversity in Technical Professions, published by Butterworth Heinemann, as part of the Managing Cultural Differences Series.
Throughout his training, coaching and consulting practice, Lionel makes use of his 15 years of international engineering, management and sales experience, working with people from more than 60 countries. He has worked in Canada, the U.S., France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, and the Netherlands, for several multinational companies including, Xerox, Procter & Gamble, British Petroleum, and Jeumont-Schneider.
Born in France, Lionel obtained his "DiplŮme d'IngČnieur Polytechnicien" from the Ecole Polytechnique de Paris, France and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, USA.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Canada
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Carmila Legarda, M.D.
Director, Seei2i
Founder, Mediation Academy
Carmila is Filipino-British, born in Manila and educated in England and the Philippines. She has over 15 years experience in cross-cultural training, human resources and mediation in more than 30 countries in Africa, South East Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, the Middle East, and South America..
Carmila is based in London and is a director of Seei2i (See eye-to-eye), specialists in cross-cultural marketing and business development services. Seei2i conducts assessment centres for leader selection and development as well as offers training services with a particular focus on cross cultural leadership, diversity and mediation skills.
Seei2i offers workshops in Leadership Talent Development using Modern Theatre Arts techniques. These unique workshops in association with Red Toad Theatre Productions in the UK cover all levels of management through to CEO levels—plus their equivalents in the non-corporate environment.
Carmila's education and affiliations:
Co-author of Cultural Detective® The Philippines
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An Austrian national living in Switzerland, Brigitte graduated in commerce from the Vienna University of Economics and is a certified expert on the Balkan region. She is founder of AFIA—Assistance For Intercultural Affairs, a competence center for cross-cultural management and communication, focused on the Eastern and Southeastern regions of Europe.
Serving now on the permanent delegation of Austria to the WTO in Geneva, she still gives lectures on international organizations embedding intercultural communication at various business schools as well as post-graduate programs.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Austria
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Ruth Mastron, M.A.
Vice President, SoCoCo
Intercultural
Ruth Mastron is vice-president of SoCoCo Intercultural, providing training, consulting, facilitating and coaching in all areas of intercultural relations. She was raised as a member of Conservative synagogues, attending Hebrew School (occasionally under protest) three times a week from the age of three through fifteen. Ruth celebrated her Bas Mitzvah (Parsha Miketz) and her confirmation, and is a lifetime member of Hadassah.
Ruth works with clients in the high-tech and IT areas, as well as industries as diverse as hospitality, manufacturing, property management, government, pharmaceuticals and agribusiness. She trains and coaches US and European employees and their families relocating overseas. She also trains intercultural project teams, works with French and international schools and teaches adult education through the Osher Institute at California State University, San Marcos.
With Gilles Asselin, she is co-author of Au Contraire! Figuring Out the French, Cultural Detective: France and Français - Américains: Ces différences qui nous rapprochent.
Ruth holds a Master's Degree in Intercultural Relations from Antioch University McGregor, and has earned over a dozen certificates at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication, and the Summer Peacebuilding Institute at Eastern Mennonite University.
She sets foot in both her synagogues: Congregation Shir Ami (Masorti) and the Chabad Jewish Center of Oceanside. Her father (z"l) was the world's greatest repository of Jewish jokes and her mother makes the best mandel brot in the universe. She lives in Oceanside, California, with a French husband and two bilingual cats.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® France and Cultural Detective® Jewish Culture
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Kelli McLoud-Schingen, M.A.
President, KMS Consulting
Kelli specializes in global and domestic diversity, dramatic presentations, cross-cultural communication, conflict resolution/mediation and teambuilding. She has facilitated workshops for educational, non-profit, government and corporate institutions in the USA and Europe since 1989. Kelli is certified as a professional mediator by the State of Texas and as an administrator for the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI). She is an accomplished actor and director with several theatrical credits for performances in the US and England. She holds a B.A. in communication and a M.A. in cross-cultural studies.
Kelli grew up on the south side of Chicago in the predominately African-American community of Auburn-Gresham. Her professional work in the area of African-American culture is focused on healing racism and includes the signature dramatic narrative, "Anything but Black": an examination of internalized racism through the power of storytelling that has been used to kick start the conversation for multicultural audiences in the U.S. and Europe.
Kelli's clients have included Shell Oil, Chevron Phillips, Texas Historical Commission, Texas A&M University, San Francisco State University, National Children's Advocacy Centers, and the City of Helsinki, Finland. Kelli served as the president for SIETAR Houston and has been a board member for SIETAR USA. She currently lives in Tulsa, OK with her husband and two children.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® African American
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Regine Mehl, Ph.D.
Executive Director, Peace
Research Information Unit Bonn
Since 1995, Dr. Regine Mehl has served as managing director for the Peace Research Information Unit Bonn (PRIUB), an international information service for academic related peace research and action research projects. She also served as deputy director of this institute (1989-1994). Regine holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University Münster (Germany).
In 1990, Regine co-founded the Network of Women Peace Researchers and the European Peace Research Association (EuPRA). In addition, she served as a member of the Council of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA), 1996 to 1998, and served as vice president of IPRA from 1998 to 2000. Since January 1999, she has been appointed member of the Selection Committee for Scholarships of the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation-Germany.
Regine's publications cover a broad variety from studies on Australia's black heritage (Aborigines) to articles on pacifist views to conflict transformation in violent conflicts.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Germany
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Anna Mindess, M.A.
Interpreter, Author, Educator
Anna Mindess has worked as an American Sign Language Interpreter for more than 25 years in business, medical, educational, and legal settings. While pursing her graduate degree at San Francisco State University, she discovered the field of intercultural communication and realized that it provided the perfect template to explain the cultural misunderstandings she observed daily between her deaf and hearing clients. She is the author of the ground-breaking text Reading Between the Signs (Intercultural Press, 1999), which was the first to describe deaf culture from a multicultural perspective. Her book is widely used in interpreter training programs worldwide.
Anna has presented workshops all over the U.S. and Europe and has been a featured speaker at several international conferences. Her articles have appeared in American, French, and German publications. Anna, and her Cultural Detective collaborator, Thomas Holcomb, are also co-producers of a popular video/DVD, entitled See What I Mean: Differences between Deaf and Hearing Cultures, whose goal is to sensitize viewers about cultural contrasts in an educational yet entertaining manner.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Deaf Culture
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Rossana Miranda-Johnston, M.A.
Founder, Miranda-Johnston Intercultural
Rossana Miranda-Johnston is an experienced intercultural trainer who delivers client-tailored intercultural training to improve intercultural business interactions, international relocation, teambuilding, customer service, doctor-patient cross- cultural communication, cultural diversity and intercultural marriage. She has delivered intercultural training on doing business in Mexico, the United States, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Venezuela, Spain, England and Italy.
Born and raised in Mexico, Rossana was awarded a M.A. in intercultural management from the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont, and has completed many training courses from the National MultiCultural Institute in Washington, D.C. She has lived and worked in Mexico, the United States, Portugal, Israel, England and Italy.
Her clients include: Lucent Technologies, Sprint, Kyocera America, Inc., Lehigh Portland Cement, Bell Atlantic, Millipore Corporation, Nordson Corporation, Philips Lighting, SBC Communications, Motorola, Minera Kennecott, SEI Investments, United Agri-Products Latin America, Navistar, Rohm and Haas, Federal Express and Volkswagen.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Mexico
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Stephen L. Murphy, M.S.E., M.B.A.
Management Consultant
Steve Murphy has more than 15 years' international consulting, nonprofit and manufacturing experience. As management consultant, he has provided competitive intelligence to organizations making decisions about market entry, overseas business and global partners. In Kansas City, he co-founded the International Professionals Networking Association and has authored marketing materials for the International Relations Council. Prior to consulting, he was Director, Corporate Development Projects for Huhtamaki Americas where he led M&A projects in the U.S. and Mexico (2000-2001). From 1989 to 2000, while based in Belgium and France, he served as Division Business Controller, Manufacturing Program Coordinator and Factory Manager with Van Leer, a $2 billion Dutch multinational. He started his career as Customer Service Field Engineer for a high-growth precision coating startup company in California. Steve earned an MS in Engineering from Princeton University and an MBA in Public & Private Management from the Yale School of Management.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® India
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Valli Murphy
Intercultural Trainer
Valli Murphy has spent most of her life involved in the international arena, bringing a unique combination of professional and personal experiences to her work as an intercultural trainer. Raised and educated in Greece and Italy by her Greek parents, Valli traveled with her family throughout Europe, becoming fluent in three languages. Her early years living as a "Third Culture Kid" led her to pursue degrees in international relations and Latin American studies.
As a former executive working for several global financial institutions including Mellon Bank, Daiwa Bank, Svenska Handlesbanken and The Bank of Scotland, Valli managed various international lending departments and worked closely with expatriates and culturally diverse staff. For over 15 years, Valli has consulted with global youth exchange programs, including World Learning's Au Pair Homestay and InterExchange, developing marketing and training programs for foreign youth, host families, field staff and international partner offices.
Valli's enthusiasm and commitment to the advancement of intercultural awareness propelled her to create Cultural Intersections, an intercultural training and consulting company providing comprehensive programs to corporate expatriate executives, foreign exchange organizations and educational institutions.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Greece
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Gyorgy Nanovfszky, PhD
Former Ambassador and Professor
Mr. Gyorgy Nanovfszky, a native of Hungary, graduated from Moscow State University Lomonosov (1967: Slavistics) and Moscow State Institute of International Relations (1968: South East Asian studies). He holds a PhD in Politological Sciences from the Russian Academy of Sciences. He has studied, worked and lived in many parts of the world, resulting in a broad knowledge of languages, cultures and a rich experience of international and intercultural affairs.
His career in civil service started at the Ministry of Foreign Trade, Hungary (1973-1981), followed by years of service at UNCTAD (Geneve, 1981-1986) and UNCTAD/GATT (1987-1988). Between 1986-1991 he was deputy secretary of the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce. Since 1991 he has been a member of the board of directors of WTCA, and president of the WTC Budapest.
From 1992-1998 Mr. Nanovfszky served as Ambassador of the Hungarian Republic to Moscow, and was later also accredited to Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. After completing his service as Ambassador to Singapore (2001-2005), he has been active as a professor of politology and intercultural studies at universities in Hungary and abroad. He has co-authored a number of books and studies on political and intercultural affairs, including Finnougric World (in Hungarian, Russian and English, 2004) and Christianity, Catholicism, Orthodoxy (in Hungarian and Russian, 1996). He is vice-president of the Finnougric World Congress and president of the Hungarian Esperanto Association.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Hungary
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Dr. Ndiaye is currently the Resident Director of the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE) in Dakar. Born and raised in Senegal, Serigne completed his undergraduate and graduate studies in English and American literature at Cheikh Anta Diop University, and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Emory University.
Serigne has extensive cross-cultural experience that involves teaching English in Senegal, French in England, and African and Caribbean literature at both the University of New York at Albany and at Emory. In addition to being the director of the CIEE Language and Culture Program in Dakar, he teaches a course on Senegalese society and culture and a seminar on living and learning cross-culturally in Senegal. A native speaker of Serer, Dr. Ndiaye is fluent in English, French and Wolof and has a conversational knowledge of Spanish.
A former Fulbright Scholar and a recipient of a teaching award from the British Central Bureau for Educational Visits and Exchanges, Dr. Ndiaye has presented in many conferences and is the author of a book and numerous journal articles.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Senegal
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Gretchen Neels
President, Neels and Company
Gretchen Neels is President of Neels & Company, Strategic Business Communication. She has over ten years of experience recruiting and retaining top talent at a number of prestigious professional services firms. At Neels & Company, Gretchen and her team consult with clients who wish to improve individual and organizational performance.
In addition to providing consulting and training in the areas of Recruiting and Retention, Networking, Business Etiquette and Cross Cultural Connection, Neels & Company lends substantial expertise in the area of Generational Harmony. With four distinct generations now working side by side, companies find it imperative to understand what each group wants and needs in the workplace, and how to foster awareness and understanding between staff and management, and among the generations themselves.
Gretchen holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Art History from Virginia Commonwealth University and studied abroad at Universitý per Stranieri di Perugia (Italy).
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Generational Harmony
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Emmanuel Ngomsi, Ph.D.
Founder and Principal, Universal Highways
An experienced educator and trainer, Dr. Ngomsi is a native of Cameroon and has lived in the U.S. and France. He specializes in teaching Americans about the cultures of West Africa, and in promoting a love of cultures, respect for diversity, and international experience among U.S. citizens.
Emmanuel has taught French, biology and chemistry to Cameroonians, French, and American students, and served as curriculum coordinator of international studies with the Kansas City, Missouri school district. As college adjunct, he designed and taught numerous courses related to African cultures and education, as well as on culture and diversity in the workplace. Dr. Ngomsi spent nine years as instructor, cross-cultural and chief-language coordinator for the United States Peace Corps in Cameroon. The National Endowment for the Humanities and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation honored Dr. Ngomsi in 1995 when he received the National Foreign Language Fellowship Award. This distinction allowed him to pursue his dream of researching African folkloric and children's games. He is the creator of YAN-KOLOBA: A Teamwork Game Rooted in Africa.
Dr. Ngomsi holds a multidisciplinary Ph.D. in public affairs and educational administration at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He is active in numerous cultural, educational and professional training associations, and has been a guest-speaker, lecturer and presenter at various national conferences.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Cameroon, Cultural Detective® West Africa and Cultural Detective® Senegal
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Dr Phuong-Mai Nguyen started her career as a journalist in Vietnam and travelled extensively around the world. In 2003, she obtained her Master of Science from Twente University, The Netherlands and in 2008, her PhD in intercultural communication from Utrecht University, The Netherlands. As a journalist and a researcher, she has been published broadly both in Vietnam and foreign countries.
Phuong-Mai currently teaches cross-cultural negotiation and management at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, where she is involved in a variety of research projects and training programs. Her own agency, Culture-Move, delivers consultancy and training in intercultural communication.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Vietnam
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Seraphine Ngyuyen-Ngoc is a teacher, facilitator and consultant. She has worked in both large and small projects in Australia and Vietnam, in industries as varied as telecommunications, medical supplies, education and training, and aged care, and as diverse as factory construction and Vietnamese language and cultural briefings. She has also worked as a tutor in Anthropology at the University of Sydney. Her unique abilities enable her to provide insights into Vietnamese culture not only to foreign business people working in Vietnam (of both European and Asian origins), but also to Vietnamese workers working for foreign companies, to enable them to reflect on the behaviour they project.
Seraphine was born in Saigon. She attended the University of Sydney, where she received a B.A. in Social Anthropology and an M.A. in Anthropology, focusing on the role of religion in the development of the Vietnamese national identity. Her Ph.D. dissertation is on the role of culture and its influences on foreign investments in Vietnam.
Seraphine is bilingual in English and Vietnamese. She has traveled extensively and regularly to Vietnam and throughout Asia.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Vietnam
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Charlotta Öberg is a cross-cultural training consultant based in Sydney, Australia and Stockholm, Sweden. She specialises in building competencies to manage domestic and international cultural diversity effectively. To date, she has a decade of experience training people who work across cultures, from expatriates to public servants to refugees.
Originally from Sweden, Charlotta has lived and worked in ten countries on three continents over the past decade, including Malaysia, the UK and the USA. She holds a Masters Degree in Sociology with a focus on intercultural communication from the University of Uppsala, Sweden and University of Colorado at Boulder, USA.
Charlotta's professional background is in the Public Sector and IT Sales management. Previously, she was an ethnic diversity specialist to the Swedish local government, where she won two EU projects to further cultural competencies and integration. Prior to that, she ran a cross-cultural firm in London and worked for the largest intercultural training companies in Europe.
Charlotta currently works as a freelance facilitator for global intercultural training firms and local diversity companies, as well as running her own training programs. She focuses on building thriving multicultural communities in Australia.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Global Teamwork
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Nancy O'Brien has been an LGBT activist for many years. In 1987, as an undergraduate at St. Cloud State University, she created and co-coordinated the inaugural Gay-Lesbian Awareness Day which, to this day, is still going strong as a week-long series of programming and events celebrating LGBT people and their allies. More recently, she worked as an Assistant Director in the GLBT Programs Office at the University of Minnesota. There she focused her work on developing safe space on campus for international LGBT students. Her academic work has included papers on advising LGBT students on study abroad programs and marriage in the LGBT community.
Nancy is a Ph.D. candidate in Educational Policy and Administration at the University of Minnesota. She holds a M.A. in International and Intercultural Management from the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont and has ten years of international training and teaching experience in corporate and institutional settings. She is a certified to administer the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) and holds certification in Diversity Training and Building Cultural Competency from the National Multicultural Institute. In addition to her Ph.D. work, she currently teaches intercultural communication classes at Metro State University in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® LGBT
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Stefan Palarie M.A.
Intercultural Trainer & Consultant—Interact Romania
Stefan is a native Romanian, having lived his childhood under the Communist regime. After the revolution in 1989, he was involved in intercultural affairs while a student at the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest and became a member of AIESEC. During a very active six-year membership, he worked for AIESEC in Romania, Turkey and Belgium. He was involved in preparing students all over Europe for successful international exchange experiences. He designed, prepared and delivered intercultural training sessions for hundreds of students, and delivered "Train the Intercultural Trainers" programs. He facilitated and chaired conferences in more than 15 countries all over the world.
After returning to Bucharest from Brussels, Stefan worked as an IBM Human Resources consultant for Procter & Gamble, where he was responsible, among other things, for the Expatriate and Relocation Services of P&G in seven Balkan countries.
After his experience with IBM and Procter & Gamble, Stefan started organizing "Integration to Romania" training programs for companies such as ABN AMRO and Electrolux. He recently joined INTERACT Romania where he is involved in designing and delivering intercultural training programs for expatriate top executives working in Romania.
Stefan holds a Master's Degree in Communication and Human Resources Management, and he is passionate about traveling (particularly in Asia and Africa) and exploring new cultures and continents.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Romania
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Born and brought up in India, Neelima went overseas at the age of 22 after earning a degree in hotel and tourism management. She has lived in France, Switzerland, Austria, USA, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Nigeria, Kuwait and Kazakhstan. She owned a successful Montessori school in Saudi Arabia catering to multinational kids.
Using her expertise in the tourism field, Neelima plans, markets and escorts cultural/educational tours to countries like India, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, China, Bulgaria, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. She believes understanding local cultures and traditions to be an integral process of adapting to new surroundings. She has volunteered with expat self-directed groups and multinationals to develop orientation and cultural awareness programs and served as a consultant for the "Lagos Easy Access" guidebook.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Kazakhstan
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Kiran Pandit
epandits Consultants
Kiran Pandit retired in 2008 from a 38-year career with Chevron managing risk, change and growth in information technology and project management. He has extensive experience in providing leadership and solutions towards client needs in international, multi-site, multi-disciplinary and multicultural environments. Kiran has worked and traveled in North America, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific with resident assignments in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Singapore, Nigeria and Kazakhstan. One of his favorite projects was to help nourish a "learning organization" which consisted of teams in China and the US collaborating across cultural divides and 15 time zones. Having moved to several countries and back to the US, Kiran and his family have been active in helping incoming families at each of his residential assignment locations.
Born and raised in Mumbai, India, Kiran received his Bachelor of Science in Technology degree from the University of Houston. He also has a teaching English as a second language (TESL) Certification. In retirement he continues to consult internationally as well as volunteering to teach English to students and business professionals in India.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Kazakhstan
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Joon-hyoung Park
President, Culture Compass
Joon-hyoung Park has authored numerous books on the intersection of culture and human behavior and on international manners. Joon-hyoung designed and conducted intercultural training programs for Korean government agencies, corporations, universities and churches. For eleven years he worked for the Samsung Global Management Institute.
Joon-hyoung specialized in intercultural relations at the School for International Training, U.S.A. In addition, he has served as a cross-cultural and change management consultant, author, TV host, and social worker for migrant workers' human rights.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® South Korea
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Fernando Parrado, M.S.
Founder/Principal of VYP Consulting
Fernando is an engineer and business consultant. He is founder and principal of VYP Consulting, an intercultural productivity consultancy.
Fernando graduated with two bachelor's degrees from Pontificia Javeriana University in Bogotá, one in electrical engineering and the other in industrial engineering. He left Colombia for the USA to pursue his graduate studies, receiving a master's degree in industrial engineering from the University of Tennessee. During his six years in Tennessee, Fernando marketed US brands to the Latino community, promoted events to engage and bridge the Anglo and Latino communities, and worked in IT for the University of Tennessee. The Knoxville city government and the local Hispano News both honored Fernando for his community contributions.
Fernando's educational background, experience and skills make him uniquely equipped to lead projects that involve optimizing technology and bridging different cultures in an entrepreneurial environment. He has conducted extensive research on the differences between Anglo Saxon and Latin worldviews, communication, business practices and culture. He speaks Spanish, English and Portuguese.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Colombia
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Rebecca Parrilla
Manager of Intercultural Programs, Language & Culture Worldwide
Rebecca Parrilla leads the design and implementation of intercultural development programs at Language & Culture Worldwide, supporting organizations in their goals to incorporate cross-cultural competencies and skills into their worldviews, systems, and workflows. She works specifically with global diversity and inclusion programs, incorporating a variety of cultural perspectives present across national cultures, ethnic groups, generations, genders, and LGBT experiences. She has lived and worked for extended periods in Asian, Latin American, and North American cultures and is a native of Puerto Rico.
A native of Puerto Rico and speaker of both English and Spanish, Rebecca got her start in developing cross-cultural skills when she moved to the U.S.A. mainland to attend university and rapidly realized that U.S. American culture cannot be "learned" from simply knowing the language and watching American TV. She spent several years with global banking giant ABN AMRO, where she designed solutions for corporate clients in Latin America, Europe, Asia and Australia. She later earned an MBA from DePaul University in Chicago, and then took a full-time teaching position at Shanghai Dianji University in China. In her years at SDJU, she was responsible for the development and delivery of creative English language programming.
Rebecca also has on-the-ground experiences in various European countries (west and east), Australia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and India. Clients include Discover Financial Services, Hewitt Associates, Monsanto, and the Project Management Institute.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender
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Tuula Piispanen-Krabbe, M.B.A., M.A.
Principal, The
Essex Consulting Group
Tuula Piispanen-Krabbe is a Finnish national, living in the United States since 1970. She is principal of The Essex Consulting Group, a cross-cultural consulting and training firm in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She holds a master's degree from the University of Tampere, Finland, and an M.B.A. from New York University.
Trained in Finland as a journalist, Tuula started her career in Finland and continued it in the United States in business communications and broadcast advertising. In 1985, after earning an M.B.A. in international business and marketing, she started her own cross-cultural consulting firm. She also taught marketing and business ethics at New York University and Marymount Manhattan College in New York City. She now specializes in one-on-one mentoring, online coaching, and custom training design.
Tuula and her Danish-American husband live in Santa Fe, New Mexico, after spending more than 30 years in the New York metro area. She has lived and worked in four countries, speaks four languages, and has written for publication in three of them.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Denmark, Cultural Detective® Finland, and Cultural Detective® Sweden
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Barbara Pirie
Principal, Pirie Associates
Barbara Pirie is a cross-cultural and cultural diversity consultant. Her area of specialization is on the development and use of cross-cultural perspectives, strategies and skills. Barbara has worked with clients in the corporate, government and nonprofit (NGO) sectors in the United States, Pacific Islands and Canada.
To meet a variety of client needs, she designs and customizes training programs, designs and adapts simulations and interactive learning activities, and facilitates organizational processes. She has published several articles on the complexity of ethnic conflict and working effectively with silent cultures.
Her graduate studies were supported by an East-West Center grant at the University of Hawaii where she met her husband. She has lived and worked in Fiji for over thirty years.
In 1991, in recognition of her outstanding contributions toward greater internationalization, she was awarded the East-West Center Elaine K. Kono Award. She was a member of the Governing Council of SIETAR (Society for Intercultural Education, Research, and Training) from 1997 to 2000, and is currently a member of the SIETAR Global Network Management Team as coordinator for the SIETAR associates.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Oceania
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Marcelo Priotti
Intercultural Specialist
Marcelo Priotti is a cross-cultural consultant for Eaton Consulting Group (Boston, USA) and is based in Rosario, Argentina. His focus is on assisting global managers of several key companies in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and the U.S. For over three years he has closely aided ACBL of Argentina, conducting multinational team building training sessions. He serves as coordinating manager for SBAM.net Language Services and specializes in foreign language training at International House, in Barcelona, Spain, speaking his mother tongue of Spanish. He holds an English Certificate from the University of San Diego and has studied Italian, Portuguese, French and German language.
Marcelo is also a licensed radio-television announcer for ComFeR, BA, Argentina. From 1984-85 he was an AFS exchange student in Minnesota, USA. He is a founding member for the re-establishment of AFS in Rosario, Argentina, collaborating in the hosting program and conducting intercultural training sessions for AFS students and families from 1993-1998. He has studied information systems analysis at UTNFRR, Rosario, Argentina and is currently finishing his studies in mass communications at UCU University in Rosario.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Argentina
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Rob Pusch, Ph.D.
Associate Director of Instructional Services, Syracuse University Project Advance
After obtaining a Master's degree in chemistry, Rob switched fields and became an instructional designer specializing in the design and development of online courses as well as multimedia materials. Currently Rob oversees instructional design, development, research and evaluation activities at Syracuse University's Project Advance.
Rob, whose dissertation focused on transgender youth transitioning in college, is also actively involved in working with LGBT youth at the Q-Center in Syracuse, NY, USA. Rob's work at the Q-Center focuses on transgender youth, providing support and advocacy. As a consultant, Rob has also done workshops and presentations on transgender issues at universities, businesses, and even at one Veterans Administration Hospital.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender
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Adelia Rejante-Nicholls,
B.A.
Management Development Consultant
“Dee” has been a management development consultant and educator since 1981. Currently, she is the human resource management and teamworking module tutor for the University of Warwick international certificate programme in engineering business management, as well as the tutor for graduate level change management. She delivers courses for senior executives from Hong Kong, the People's Republic of China, Malaysia, and South Africa. Dee is a regular contributor to the university's engineering graduate course in the areas of multicultural team management and project organization in international business. She also consults independently with global companies with a particular interest in developing multicultural project team competence.
Born in the Philippine capital city of Manila, Dee grew up in a multicultural environment on the southern island of Mindanao. After obtaining her B.A. in psychology from Ateneo University in Manila, Dee moved to Tokyo for studies focusing on Japanese value systems as they relate to indigenous forms of psychotherapy. She returned to the Philippines and embarked on a varied career, first as a university lecturer, psychometrician, and counsellor, and subsequently as a consultant innovating programmes to develop organizational effectiveness and enhance managerial competence within and across cultural boundaries. Taking a break from consulting, Dee lived in Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Sweden, Germany, and Portugal while managing economic research projects. Dee lives in the United Kingdom with her English husband.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® The Philippines
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Alan Richter, Ph.D.
QED Consulting
Alan Richter is the founder and president of QED Consulting. He has consulted to organizations for many years, specialising in strategic consulting services in the human resource development and change management arenas, curriculum design, leadership, business ethics, workforce diversity, globalization, marketing, technology and corporate communications. He is the creator of The Global/Diversity Game®, an award-winning training tool, and co-author of The Global Diversity Survey®, an assessment tool for global professional development. He also co-authored Lost in Cyberspace® a team decision-based tool that explores the nature of global virtual teams, and co-produced Global Words for Global Leaders, a short motivational video on global leadership.
In the area of global diversity he has worked closely with the following organizations: American Express, Avon, BellSouth, Chubb, Deloitte, Delphi, Detroit Edison, Gartner, GE, Home Depot, KPMG, NASA, Nokia, Pfizer, Principal, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Prudential, PSEG, RBS, UBS, the United Nations and many of its agencies (FAO, UNICEF, UNDP, WHO, etc), and Wharton. He has worked in Africa, Asia and Europe, in addition to the US.
Dr. Richter, who resides in New York, has an M.A. and a B.A.B.Sc. from the University of Cape Town, and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Birkbeck College, London University.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Global Diversity and Inclusion
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Bernhard is chairman and senior partner of Sariba AS, a consultancy firm based in Oslo, Norway focused on how to optimize human capital—through strategic and operative advisory, process change, project management, and IT system implementation. Statoil, Telenor, Gaz de France, Conoco Phillips, ABB, Coca Cola, Loomis, Falck, and Norway's ministries of Defence and Foreign Affairs are among the customers of Sariba AS. He specialises in HR Management Consulting, integrating business development and performance with dynamic human resources management, and organizational effectiveness and efficiency analysis.
In 1981 he joined Scandinavian Airlines in Oslo, Norway, where he worked until 2001, serving also as HR Director for Star Alliance (the global airlines alliance with SAS, Lufthansa, United Airlines, Air Canada, Singapore Airlines, All Nippon Airways, Thai Airways, and Air China among its members). Bernhard then shifted over to the airline's parent company—SAS Group, based in Stockholm, Sweden—where he worked until 2006. His responsibilities included the role of chief people officer, the corporation's shared services, communication and public affairs, as well as being chair or board member of several subsidiaries in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Estonia.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Norway
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Heather Robinson, M.A.
Founder, Success Across Borders
Heather Robinson heads Success Across Borders, a self-organizing network of consultants who, since 1988, have come together to provide the right blend of backgrounds: industry, national, language or technical, to increase the intercultural and organizational effectiveness of clients across the globe. Clients include DaimlerChrysler, Adobe, SAAB, Robert Bosch, BAE Systems, EADS, ThyssenKrupp, Stork/Fokker, Alenia Aerospazio and Jenoptik.
The child of a Swiss mother and a Canadian-born U.S. father, she has lived in India, Turkey, Switzerland, Germany, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Greece, Israel and Pakistan, her husband's country of origin. She now resides in the United States.
Heather has authored several articles on intercultural organization development and published numerous training activities and trainers' guides. She has a B.A. in biology from the University of California at Santa Cruz and a master's in whole systems design from Antioch University, where her area of concentration was strategic planning and systems design.
Heather served on the governing council of the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research (SIETAR). She has been honored with the Making a Difference Award, the Red Cross Unsung Heroine Award, a Presidential Point of Light, and a trusteeship of the Nobel prize-winning Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Blended Culture, Cultural Detective® Switzerland, and Cultural Detective® Bridging Cultures and Trainer of Facilitators
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Lisa Robinson, MA, MSc
Intercultural Specialist
Since 1996, Lisa Robinson has helped individuals improve their interactions with people from different cultural backgrounds through building a greater understanding of the role that culture plays in interpersonal communication.
In Buenos Aires Lisa helped executives understand intercultural interactions with colleagues from overseas and trained individuals to work and live abroad. Previously, she was employed by CIEE in New York City to orient professionals recently arrived to the US and to liaise with their employers to facilitate the adaptation process.
She has an MSc from The London School of Economics and Political Science and an MA from The Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, both in Global Media and Communications.
Lisa is currently working on media projects for social change and development.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Argentina
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Andriy Rubashnyy was born in a small but very nice city in the western Ukraine, called Ivano-Frankivsk. He was mostly brought up by his grandparents, and learned very much from them: language (Ukrainian Galician dialect), traditions, folk songs, religion and patriotism.
Since he was a small child, Andriy was delighted by languages. After finishing school he decided to dedicate himself to linguistics and entered the Precarpathian University in Ivano-Frankivsk, where he studied German and English languages and literature. He became a teacher of foreign languages, teaching German and English in two local schools and working as a German lecturer and foreign language assistant at the Technical University of Oil and Gas (Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine).
Andriy lived and conducted research in Austria, studied at the University of Mainz, School of Applied Linguistics and Cultural Studies in Germersheim (Germany), and since 2008 has worked as a translator of Russian, German and English.
Currently based in Germany, Andriy always remembers his roots. His diploma thesis was "When Luba Leaves Home by Irene Zabytko—Text Analysis and Reception of the Ukrainian-American Short Story Collection." Mr. Rubashnyy is currently planning research of modern American-Ukrainian literature.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Ukraine
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Sarah grew up in a tri-cultural community (Native American, Hispanic, Anglo American) in Taos, New Mexico. Her father is an immigrant from Switzerland and her mother was born in Holland. She earned her Bachelor's degree in Russian Studies from the University of Tulsa, under the expert tutelage of poet and activist Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Dr. Elena Doshlygina. She has traveled extensively throughout the former Soviet Union and for two years lived in Vologda in northern Russia. While in Vologda she conducted graduate studies and served as an assistant professor of English at the Vologda State Pedagogical University. Currently, she is an independent contractor in intercultural communication.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Russia
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Don Rutherford
Co-founder, Culture Connect
B.A. Sociology, Race & Ethnic Relations
Don Rutherford—husband, father, explorer, learner, teacher, trainer and author, began a lifelong journey experiencing new cultures and people during his first trip to Africa, in 1976. Although Don can be found almost anywhere in the world, the main office of the intercultural services company he co-founded, Culture Connect, is located in Calgary, Canada. Culture Connect's clients include Shell Oil, British Petroleum, Petro-Canada, Agrium, Jacobs Engineering, Telvent, NHK Japan and GNPOC Sudan.
Don's commitment to cross-cultural understanding and effectiveness comes from living and working on four continents. He has traveled to 35 countries and has provided clients' services in 42 countries. His expertise comes from his extensive business and international experience, a B.A. Honours degree in Sociology, Race & Ethnic Relations, and continuing Intercultural Communication Institute courses.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Canada
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Vivek is an intercultural trainer and consultant who enables individuals and teams to discover meaningful approaches to living and working across differences. His experience has taught him that the ability to communicate effectively with people of different backgrounds, cultures, or perspectives is essential to creating a productive, innovative and inclusive work environment. Reflective inquiry and deepening self-awareness are key learning themes in Vivek's work.
Vivek has a counseling certification and he is also a certified IDI administrator. He has degrees in management and engineering from India's IIT and IIM institutes. Vivek has traveled extensively and consulted with organizations like Microsoft, Wipro, Tesco, Nokia and Georgetown University.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender
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Barbara F. Schaetti, Ph.D.
Principal Consultant, Transition Dynamics
Founding Partner, Personal Leadership Seminars LLC
Barbara is internationally recognized as a leader in the field of expatriate and repatriate family services. She works extensively with corporate and diplomatic families worldwide and with expatriate and repatriate communities around the world. As a coach, trainer and consultant, Barbara helps her clients maximize the personally and professionally transformative potential inherent in the experience of living and working across cultures. Similarly, as a teacher of intercultural relations and as a mentor to professional interculturalists, she helps people translate intercultural theory into real-time practice—to "walk their talk" and thus live their vision of what it means to be effective across cultures.
Barbara grew up in ten countries on five continents, and moved internationally twelve times by the age of twenty-two. She has dual-nationality (American and Swiss), and speaks and reads French in addition to English. She holds a Ph.D. in intercultural communication with a focus on intercultural identity development. She also holds an M.A. in intercultural conflict resolution and a B.A. in international political science. Earlier in her career, she worked in multicultural community mediation and as a diversity trainer with U.S. corporations and government agencies.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Blended Culture
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Maria Schmitz, B.A.,
Founder of CABV Communication, Neu-Anspach, Germany
Maria was born and grew up in Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies, a pluralistic society with the motto "Out of Many One People."
Her conscious intercultural experience began with the study of French, Spanish and German at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica, and her encounter with the German volunteer service in Jamaica. The experience has been deepened by her marriage to a German national as well as more than 30 years of living and working in Germany, including work with immigrant students at two universities of applied sciences, where she teaches intercultural competence. She also trains on the topic of business English in large and middle-sized companies.
Co-author of "Die Andersmacher", 2008, a book from the series "Inspire" of Kamphausen Publishers, which deals with the role of creativity in the economy and in which she wrote about Martin Gillo of AMD Dresden as a manifestation of intercultural competence. The article is entitled "Leveraging the Power of the Extraordinary." Moreover, she has authored several intercultural articles published in the magazine of the University of Applied Sciences, Mainz, Germany.
Maria is a member of Sietar e.V., Germany, Frankfurt chapter and also holds an accreditation in Developing People Internationally from York Associates and the Cultural Detective Facilitator's Certificate.
Translator of Cultural Detective® Germany
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Werner Schubert
Socio, Director de Schubert Consulting S.L.
Werner Schubert has lived and worked outside his native Austria for over 30 years. He studied business administration before entering a career in international banking where he experienced cross-cultural environments working in Europe and the U.S. He has managed international, multicultural teams and successfully worked and negotiated in numerous cultures.
During the last 15 years, Werner has lived and worked in Spain, initially in a corporate environment and later as an executive coach. In 2000, he co-founded an organizational consultancy focusing on intercultural consulting and training in cross-cultural integration and communication. This includes individual and group work as well as integration programs for executives and their families.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Spain
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Andrea Semetkeova was born in Slovakia. She was confronted with different cultural values, beliefs and expectations early on, being a member of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia.
Andrea received her doctorate in economics at the University of Economics in Bratislava. Her dissertation focused on intercultural marketing in the People's Republic of China. She conducted extensive market surveys about marketing and distribution in China.
Andrea has lived, studied and worked in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, China and the USA. Today she lectures in intercultural management at Nuertingen-Geislingen University in Germany.
She is married to a Norwegian and has a young son. She loves to travel and feels it's a great advantage that she speaks Hungarian, Slovak, German and English fluently, and has basic knowledge of Russian, Norwegian and Mandarin Chinese.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Slovakia
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Lucy Shahar, M.A.
President, Lucy
Shahar Cross-Cultural Training and Consulting
Lucy Shahar is a specialist in cross-cultural communication and training. She has extensive experience as a consultant for corporate and organizational clients in Israel and abroad. She designed and directed courses in cross-cultural training and management for universities and social service organizations. Currently, she is a member of the faculty of Haifa University where she teaches intercultural training and communication.
Lucy Shahar and David Kurz are the authors of Border Crossings: American Interactions With Israelis (Intercultural Press, 1995). She is the author of Culture Compass Israel, a CD ROM produced by Trompenaars Hampden-Turner Intercultural Management Publishers, 1999.
Born in the United States, Lucy grew up in New York City. She received a B.A. in European history from Barnard College and a M.A. in teaching from Harvard University. She is a graduate of the SIETAR Institute in Foundations of Intercultural Training, the SIETAR Advanced Institute in Intercultural Training (Georgetown University) and the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland's Third International Program: "A Gestalt Approach to Organization and Systems Development." Lucy has lived in Ramat Hasharon since her immigration to Israel in 1969.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Israel
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Madhukar Shukla, Ph.D.
Professor, XLRI
Dr. Shukla is a professor of organisation behaviour and strategic management at XLRI, Jamshedpur, India. A Ph.D. in psychology from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, he earlier taught at the Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI), Hyderabad, and was a consultant (HRD) with the National Productivity Council, New Delhi. During 1993-1994, Madhukar was a visiting professor at Escuela Superior de Administracion y Direccion de Empresas (ESADE), Barcelona.
Madhukar has more than 20 years of consulting and training experience. His clients include American Express, Bharti Enterprise, Hindustan Lever Ltd., GE India, Infosys Technologies, ITC Ltd., Larsen & Toubro, Mahindra & Mahindra, Novell Software, Oracle India Ltd., Sasken Technologies and Timken Ltd.
Madhukar is the former research dean and a professional member of the Indian Society of Applied Behavioural Sciences (ISABS) and is a member of the Academic Council of Academy of HRD. He also serves as a member of the expert panel of Public Enterprise Selection Board for The Study of Competencies for CEOs. He has been the conference coordinator for the National Human Resource Conference in 1997, 1999 and 2001, and was the keynote speaker in the first Asian Human Resource Development Conference 2003, QAI Knowledge Management Conference 2001, NIPM Annual Conference 2000 and the National HRD Network Annual Conference 2000.
His professional interests include cross-cultural management, knowledge management and learning organisation, management of creativity and innovation, organisation design and strategy and organisational change and transformation. He has contributed more than 30 papers to professional journals and published two books—Competing Through Knowledge: Building a Learning Organisation (Response Books, Sage Publications, 1997) and Understanding Organisations (Prentice-Hall of India, 1996).
Co-author of a href="package.html#IND">Cultural Detective® India
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George Simons, Ph.D.
Founder, Diversophy
Dr. Simons is a richly experienced and creative trainer and presenter. His design and development experience reaches industries across the globe in electronics, communications, consumer goods, transportation, petrochemicals and energy.
Recent key achievements include:
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Belarus, Cultural Detective® The Netherlands, Cultural Detective® Self Discovery, Cultural Detective® The Return, Cultural Detective® USA, Cultural Detective® Women and Men, and Cultural Detective® Global Teamwork
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Seidu Sofo, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Southeast Missouri State University
An experienced teacher educator, Dr. Sofo is a native of Ghana and has lived and studied in the United States for seven years. He is currently an assistant professor at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
Dr. Sofo teaches in the physical education teacher education area in the Department of Health, Human Performance and Recreation. His research interests lie in the area of teacher preparation, multicultural education and postcolonial studies.
Dr. Sofo holds a Ph.D. in Human Performance Studies from the University of Alabama with minors in Educational Research and Health Education. He is active in numerous educational and professional associations and has presented papers on teacher preparation at national conferences.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® West Africa
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Jeremy Solomons is the UK-born founder/president of Jeremy Solomons & Associates. He provides customized coaching, facilitation and training in alliances and partnering, career development, conflict resolution, diversity and inclusion (both global and domestic), global leadership, globalizing organizations, interactive presentations, international meetings, multicultural teambuilding and strategic planning.
In the area of Global Diversity and Inclusion, he has done extensive work as an external consultant and facilitator for Royal Dutch Shell's Global Diversity Practice and People Services in the USA and Europe since early 2000. He has also consulted on D and I strategy and co-designed and -facilitated many interactive global D and I training sessions, most recently for 3M, Aerotek, Dell, Semiconductor Research Corp., Seton Healthcare Network, Sodexho and the University of Texas-Austin.
He co-founded the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research (SIETAR) USA and the Global Diversity Dialogue, which will hold its fifth meeting in Lille, France in May 2008.
Jeremy has been employed as a full-time banker, educator and journalist in six multinational institutions: Citibank, JP Morgan, Lloyds Bank International, Reuters News Agency, United Press International and the World Bank. He has lived, studied and worked for extended periods in eight countries: France, Germany, Hong Kong (and China), Israel, Italy, Switzerland, the UK and the USA. He has also traveled and done business in some 40 countries around Asia, Europe and North America.
Born in Manchester, England, Jeremy holds MA and BA Honors degrees in French from the University of Oxford.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Global Diversity and Inclusion
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Soo Kok Leng, M.B.A., B.E.
CEO, Singapore Cable Car Pte Ltd
From 1977 to 1996, Soo Kok Leng held numerous management positions in engineering, production and quality for Hewlett-Packard S. (Pte.) Ltd. He also worked at Hewlett-Packard in Oregon, U.S.A. for nearly three years. In Oregon he was responsible for the World Wide Supply Chain operations for the integrated circuits business. On return to Singapore, he accepted the responsibilities for human resource management for Southeast Asia.
In 1996, Mr. Soo assumed the position of Group General Manager and Executive Director in a Singaporean company that designs and manufactures industrial knitting machines for the world market, with plants in Singapore and China. He then joined 3-Com Technologies as their Vice President/Managing Director for Asia Pacific supply chain.
Since 2002, Mr. Soo has been consulting, holding the position of chairman of two companies and serving on numerous boards. His career has given him the opportunities to appreciate many cultures. He holds a bachelor of engineering (Elect.) with honors and an M.B.A. degree.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Singapore
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Misty Speck
Principal, Netgrafix
A graphic designer since 1984, Misty began her career in advertising design at a newspaper in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho before coming to her permanent home of Seattle, Washington; moving from the newspaper arena into magazine art direction and settling into the booming Seattle and San Francisco high-tech industries of the mid 1990s.
As the designer of all things Cultural Detective, she wields solid expertise in most areas of graphic design:
Clients have included Microsoft, Vulcan, Craft Architects, Able Opportunities, International Marine Management, Spark Online, GlobalGate, WebAccommodate, Starrow Manufacturing, Microscan, Dexter+Chaney, NBBJ, Onvia, Sierra Online, the Ronald McDonald House, PetShelter, Davis Wright Tremaine, Sellen Construction, The Seattle Times, Northwest High Tech Career Expos, Northwest Brewwerks, PAWS, and of course, Cultural Detective.
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Marilyn Stanton, M.S.
Illuminated Consulting LLC
Marilyn has over 25 years experience working internationally, including nine years in the private and public sectors of the Arabian Gulf and three years in southern Africa. She partners with global clients to effectively implement changes due to strategic initiatives such as supply chain redesign, offshore outsourcing and acquisitions. She also works with clients to increase global leadership and management competencies, build effective cross-functional and global workgroups, and create effective organization designs that support urgent business needs as well as longer-term strategies. Marilyn has a Masters of Science in Organization Development from the Graziadio School of Business, Pepperdine University. She wrote her thesis on "The Role of Islamic Values in Organizational Decision-Making and Policies." Clients include Levi Strauss & Co., SAP, Visa, Federal Reserve Bank, UAE Central Bank, Qatar National Bank, Archduchess of Austria Foundation, General Electric, Walmart.com, Genentech, Amgen, and Ingersol-Rand.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Islam
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Randall Stieghorst, M.B.A.
Partner, Language & Culture Worldwide, LLC
Randall Stieghorst is a partner at Language & Culture Worldwide where he brings more than 11 years of personal and professional cross-cultural experience—including living, working, and studying for extended periods in Europe, South America, and the Caribbean. Born in the U.S., Randall manages the translation, localization, and global delivery program for LCW's multinational clients. A core expertise is partnering with clients to communicate their key corporate compliance and ethics messages in the many languages, locations, and cultures of their global workforce and supplier network.
Randall speaks several languages and managed LCW's Buenos Aires, Argentina office for two years. He began developing his cross-cultural skills in 1987 as an AFS exchange student in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. His studies at Colegio Loyola, one of the country's most demanding high schools, opened his eyes to what would eventually become an international personal and professional life. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business. Clients include Liz Claiborne, Grey Global, Archer Daniels Midland, Discovery Communications, and Accenture.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Global Business Ethics and Cultural Detective® Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender
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Kathryn Stillings
Editor
Kathryn Stillings is a freelance editor specializing in intercultural topics. Her parents regularly hosted international students and scholars, which allowed her to experience and appreciate cultural difference from an early age. Formerly, she worked in and around intercultural education for nearly 20 years, half of it as Executive Assistant at The Intercultural Communication Institute, Portland, Oregon, where, among other duties, she coordinated the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication. Kathryn has edited academic books, papers, dissertations, and journal articles; was primary editor of the "What's Up With Culture?" website, a free online training resource for study abroad; and has been part of the Cultural Detective team since 2004.
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Donna Stringer, Ph.D.
President, Executive Diversity Services
Dr. Stringer is co-founder and President of Executive Diversity Services, Inc. (EDS), a management training and consulting firm specializing in cross-cultural issues based in Seattle, Washington. Clients include U.S. Fortune 100 companies, many of which have sent Donna and her colleagues to international settings to provide consultation and training programs.
Donna is a social psychologist with more than 30 years experience as a manager, teacher and trainer of multi-cultural issues. Her interest in gender issues was demonstrated very early in her professional career when she conducted her doctoral research on the relationship between parents' attitudes about sex roles and their daughters' self esteem.
Donna earned her Ph.D. from the University of California at Davis, and a post- graduate certificate in administration from Harvard University. An active researcher and writer, Donna has published a dozen book chapters, several dozen journal articles and two books in the areas of management, intercultural communication, sexual harassment, diversity, gender roles and self-esteem. The Intercultural Press published her most recent book, 52 Activities for Exploring Values Differences, co-authored by Patricia Cassiday, in 2003.
A featured speaker at many local, state and national conferences, she and has conducted training programs for thousands of people throughout the United States, Europe and Asia.
Donna is an adjunct faculty member on three campuses and has been a faculty member for the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication since 1989. Donna combines her theoretical knowledge, practical experience, and commitment to effective human relations to provide outstanding consultation and training in organizational settings.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Women and Men
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After a professional career as a social worker, Elisabeth Sultan began to study Arabic Language and Culture at the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO) in Paris. In the course of her studies, she lived in Egypt to study at the Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language Center (TAFL), University of Alexandria. On returning to France, she completed training in Intercultural Communication at INALCO, during which studies she became particularly interested in the challenges of expatriation. She received the Diploma in Research and Applied Studies by successfully defending her dissertation, "Expatriation and the Shock of Return: A Question of Cultural Identity: Examples from the French Experience." Currently she is an instructor at the Higher Education Institute for Social Work in Nice, France.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® The Return
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Sumartono Sumarsidik
President Commissioner
Executive Orientation Services of Jakarta
Sumartono Sumarsidik is a citizen of the Republic of Indonesia. He attended the University of Indonesia and holds a graduate degree in economics. Sumartono is fluent in English, Javanese and Dutch, and has competence in French and Russian. He started his career on the Tourism Board of KLM and NITOUR, and spent several years in the Indonesian Foreign Service, posted in Paris and Moscow. Sumartono now serves as the director of American Language Center (since 1986) and as the commissioner of Executive Orientation Services (since 1995).
Drawing on his extensive experience in the international sector, Sumartono brings great understanding and thoughtful insight to cross-cultural issues facing business in Indonesia today.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Indonesia
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Mária Tajtáková is a Lecturer and Researcher at the University of Economics in Bratislava in Slovakia. Her main fields of interest are marketing, applied in the arts, and culture and intercultural communication. She is multilingual and in addition to other topics she lectures on Intercultural Communication in Business in Slovak, English, French and Spanish.
She completed her Ph.D. in Arts Marketing, in the framework of which she also dealt with intercultural differences in perceptions of artistic products among different culturally conditioned audiences. Her current research focuses on consumer behaviour in the arts and culture, international cultural tourism, and intercultural advertising. She is a member of several international research teams, and regularly participates in international scientific conferences.
She is also guest professor at the University of Granada (Spain) and the University of Hamburg (Germany), where she gives courses on Intercultural Communication in Business. Prior to her current position she worked as marketing manager of the Slovak National Theatre, and as a consultant of the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Slovakia
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Kathi Lyn Tarantal, B.A., B.S., M.Soc.Sci
Cross-Cultural Trainer
Kathi Tarantal is an international cross-cultural trainer, an experienced international speaker, training course developer, team leader and founder of an international organization in Hungary. She holds a bachelor of arts in education and a bachelor of science in biology from the University of Nebraska, U.S.A. She recently finished her master's degree in cultural anthropology from the University of Pretoria, South Africa. For her research she "interviewed", via email, 150 people living in a country from where they grew up. The interviewees had 30 countries of origin and 60 countries of destination, thus giving her a wide knowledge and understanding of issues faced by expatriates.
Kathi has successfully adapted cross-culturally and gained significant training experience. She is an American citizen with permanent residential status in South Africa. She is married to a South African and has two children. She speaks four languages and has traveled or worked in more than 45 different countries.
Kathi's professional experience includes director of leadership development for an international organization where she created a program of teaching and training senior leaders; research consultant for an international company where she helped develop strategies for training leaders working across cultures, and lecturer and trainer for group and interpersonal relationships in the complex racial and cultural theatre of South Africa.
Kathi has been immersed in two significant transition points in recent world history. She lived in Eastern Europe for three years during the transition from communism and in South Africa during the change from apartheid to democracy.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® South Africa
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Nao Thao, B.A.
Founder and Principal, Paxeehmah Literacy Publishing, LLC
Co-founder and Co-director of Hmong Culture and Language Program, Concordia University St. Paul
Nao Thao was born in Laos. She grew up during the Vietnam War and spent most of her childhood in the jungle. Nao came to the USA as a refugee immigrant in 1987, with her first-born son and husband. She has worked in public schools as a parent liaison to build the cultural connections among parents, teachers, and students. She has also taught English as Second Language in the St. Paul public schools. Since 2004, Nao has worked closely with Sally Baas at Concordia University, St. Paul as the co-founder and cultural expert for the Hmong Culture and Language Program, a K-12 program whose mission is to preserve Hmong culture and language through storytelling, gardening and the arts.
Nao has partnered with Sally Baas to develop, write, and edited numerous curriculum materials in English and Hmong literacy for elementary school students.
As a community member, Nao has served on the board member of the Hmong Culture Center, as a content committee co-chair for the Minnesota Hmong Language Group, and as a sub-committee member on Hmong history for TakeAction Minnesota.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Hmong
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Sabine Tobback
Executive Coach, Trainer & Facilitator, ST Management
Sabine holds a masters degree in economics, with a specialization in corporate management. As a young graduate she supported her father's entrepreneurial business, building aluminum structure factories throughout Africa and the Middle East. ExxonMobil employed Sabine in its international human resources function for 12‡ years, enabling her to gain extensive experience in employee development, internal executive coaching, resource planning, job evaluation, job rotation, training, and recruitment and assessment for overseas assignments in Europe and USA. She was responsible for the management of 350 expatriate families (28 nationalities) within Belgium.
Early in 2000, Sabine founded a training and coaching institute devoted to intercultural management, personal skills, human resources management, and leadership. She has developed programmes on virtual team effectiveness, and is a certified Coach (ICF) as well as MBTI, DISC, OPQ, Core Qualities, Covey, Transactional Analysis, NLP, Professional Coaching, Self Coaching and Practical Psychology certified.
She currently lives in both Belgium and France and travels about 50% of her time.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Belgium
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Roxana Toro, M.A.
Federico Santa Maria Technical University
Roxana is a social anthropologist, obtaining her master's degree from the University of Chile with an extensive specialization in organizational development, gender and ethnicity. Her professional career has been oriented not only towards organizational development but also to teaching and researching in the public and private sectors in Chile. With more than 20 years as an organizational consultant in four consulting companies, she has advised countless Chilean and South American enterprises in subjects such as organizational climate, development of working competencies, cross-cultural relationships in multicultural teams, teamwork and leadership. Roxana has dedicated her research work as an anthropologist to issues such as gender and social change in the Rom people in Chile, which she has published and presented at international and national congresses and seminars in anthropology and social sciences.
Roxana lived and worked in the United States for four years and then she went to Japan, where she studied an important part of her specialization in gender through JICA. She has lectured in Tokyo and Akita about the working situation of women in Chile.
She is currently working as a professor of human resources at the Industries, Economics and Business Department in the Federico Santa Maria Technical University in Chile. She also participates in various investigations for companies along with the Market Engineering Center (CIMER), where she is in charge of the qualitative area in social investigations.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Chile
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Jolanda is a human factors consultant on the use and design of multicultural virtual teamwork systems. She has a B.Sc. in psychology from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and a PhD. degree in usability design and evaluation of collaborative virtual environments from the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom. She has been involved in the design and evaluation of collaborative virtual environments since the 1990s, working as a human factors research scientist on large, long-term multinational projects for and with academic and industrial partners. She specializes in creating rapid usability evaluation tools for virtual teamwork systems and other types of novel telecommunication systems and devices. She did consultancies for British Telecom & 3D Vision Dome, 3D AvatarMe booth, British Government, and the European Commission and others.
Over the past 15 years she has conducted several longitudinal studies of computer-mediated multicultural small-group collaboration, and written a code of good practice for the design and evaluation of collaborative virtual environments for a large EU-funded project (VIEW of the Future, IST-2000-26089). She has published in the MIT Journal Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, the British Human Computer Interaction Journal Interfaces, the IEEE, Journal on Computer Graphics and Applications, the British Telecom BT Journal, the Apple Computer Apple Newsletter, the Royal Dutch Telecom KPN Newsletter, the Journal of Intelligent Systems, the Dutch National Radio Service Newspaper and many conference proceedings. She was co-initiator and co-organizer of the first independent Internet provider Simplex in the Netherlands, the first international workshop on the evaluation of virtual environments, the first international conference on collaborative virtual environments and on the program committee of the 2nd one. Currently she lives in Spain where she advises north European immigrants on cultural adaptation and integration issues, via coaching, workshops and articles. She speaks Dutch and English fluently and is communicative in French, German and Spanish.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Global Teamwork
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Dr. Ügeöz holds a doctorate in Adult Education and Intercultural Education from Berlin Freie University, and has completed post-doctoral studies in Human Resource Management and Organisational Development from KLETT WBS in Berlin. She was an assistant professor for human resource management and intercultural communication at the Istanbul Commerce University, and lecturer for adult education at the Berlin Freie University.
Presently residing in Istanbul, Perihan works as a trainer and consultant. In addition to training and consulting in intercultural communication and management, she designs and delivers events in organisational development and human resource management, and develops and evaluates adult training concepts both for the private and public sectors. In addition to her business and educational endeavours, Perihan has published several international articles and books dealing with comparative educational policies as well as intercultural communication. She speaks German, Turkish, and English.
Author of Cultural Detective® Turkey
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Pawel is a Poland-born intercultural trainer and consultant with a broad knowledge of the Central and Eastern European regions. After his education in Poland he moved to the Netherlands and received an MA degree in organisational sociology from Tilburg University. After eight years in The Netherlands he moved with his family to Brussels.
Pawel is the owner of EstEnter, with headquarters in Amsterdam and representative offices in Brussels and Wroclaw (Poland). EstEnter provides intercultural services for managers working with or in Central and Eastern Europe, with a focus on Poland. He has provided intercultural trainings in Poland, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, and The Netherlands.
After EU enlargement in 2004 he started training managers from new member states (mostly Polish, Czech, Slovak and Hungarian) who work in international teams.
Pawel speaks Polish, Dutch, English, German, Czech, Russian and some French.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Poland, Trainer of Facilitators
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Radoslaw studied Dutch Language and Culture at universities in Poland (Wroclaw) and The Netherlands (Utrecht and Tilburg) and received an MA degree. The subject of his master's thesis was "Cultural differences between Polish and Dutch based on interviews with Poles living in the Netherlands and Dutch living in Poland."
Radoslaw is a founder of InterPoint, a company providing consultancy and training for Western companies and individuals willing to do business or live in Poland. He has provided intercultural trainings in Poland and The Netherlands and has supported expatriate managers to Poland from Western Europe and the US and expatriate Polish managers in Western Europe, the US and Russia. On a regular basis he conducts training and coaching sessions for Berlitz Cross-Cultural and Prudential Intercultural Services.
He speaks Polish, English, German, and Dutch, and is communicative in the French and Russian languages.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Poland
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Bill Watson, M.A.
Director, Acess Asia Ltd.
Adjunct Faculty, Auckland University
Bill is Managing Director of Access Asia Ltd. A specialist in Asian business strategy, he provides guidance and support for firms seeking to fast-track entry into Asian markets.
Born and raised in multicultural San Francisco, Bill is a psychologist, educator and consultant. He is former Director of Organization Development for Kaiser-Permanente Medical Care Program, senior consultant with Levi Strauss & Co., and Director of EJC Ltd., a career counseling firm. He has been active in the fields of organization development and intercultural training since 1969.
Bill has taught in the graduate program of international business at the University of California, the Executive MBA programme at Auckland University, and the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. He was guest professor of Psychology at South China Normal University in Guangzhou in 1996.
A keen outdoorsman, Bill sailed his own yacht to New Zealand in 1975 and has conducted both land and water-based experiential training programs for managers in eight Pacific Rim countries. He has been a dual USA-New Zealand citizen for more than twenty years.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® New Zealand
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Wang Weiliang, M.B.A.
General Manager, Zhejiang Foreign Service Corporation
Wang Weiliang or "William Wang," grew up in eastern China's Hangzhou city, a city known to the Chinese as "Paradise on Earth" for its majestic scenic points.
William received his bachelor's degree in English Language and Literature in the late 1980s. He began his international career working at the Foreign Affairs Department of the Zhejiang Provincial Government during an interesting economical reform period for China. In the early 1990s, he entered Zhejiang Foreign Service Corporation where he developed his managerial career in China. During this time he became a visiting scholar at the University of London. In 2000, he began an M.B.A. program at Zhejiang University, one of China's most prestigious universities. His studies focused on Intercultural Management.
Currently he serves as general manager of Zhejiang Foreign Service Corporation, a company focused on human resource services, international exchange and cooperation programs, trade services and import/export interacting with many MNCís (Multinational Companies) operating.
William has traveled extensively in Europe, Asia and North America. In recent years he has attended several courses on leadership and management in and outside of China. In his free time he enjoys swimming and spending time with his wife and teenage daughter.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® China
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George Buckmaster Whitfield, III, J.D.
President Director, Executive Orientation Services of Jakarta
George Whitfield is a U.S. citizen. He attended university in the United States and Europe and holds a B.A. in history and a J.D. with a concentration in transnational business transactions and comparative legal systems. A resident in Indonesia since 1988, he is now with Executive Orientation Services of Jakarta, which he co-founded.
George has an advanced level of Indonesian language ability and knowledge of Indonesian business customs and culture. With more than 18 years business experience in North America and abroad, his specializations include cross-cultural business management and program coordination. He has extensive experience in conducting training programs in the Southeast Asia. He also brings three years experience in staff management and operations in Washington, D.C., and five years legal practice in the private sector.
Professional affiliations include: the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Indonesia, where he holds the chair of the Security Committee and serves as Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Board of Governors; the Indonesian-Australia Business Council; the Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC) for Indonesia, where he is a member of the executive board; and the State Bar of Michigan and the Federal Bar for the Western District of Michigan, U.S.A.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Indonesia
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Rita Wuebbeler, Ph.D., Ed.D.
President, Interglobe
Rita Wuebbeler is a German-born intercultural trainer, consultant and coach, specializing in helping people maximize effectiveness in a global business environment. After living in Germany, England, Spain and Luxembourg, Rita moved to the United States in 1986 to work as a project coordinator for an Atlanta-based, German-American consulting firm. In 1990, Rita started her own consulting company, INTERGLOBE Cross-Cultural Business Services, Inc., offering relocation programs for individuals and families moving abroad, business briefings on a variety of cultures, and multicultural teambuilding programs.
Rita holds a master's degree in applied linguistics from Mainz University in Germany. She completed four courses at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communications in Portland, Oregon: Training in Transnational Business, Building Diverse Teams in Corporations, Interactive Experiential Activities for Multicultural Teams and Transforming Intercultural Conflict. Rita is a founding member of the U.S. Chapter of the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research (SIETAR U.S.A.), and continues to be an advisory board member of the organization.
Rita's clients include Advanced Micro Design (AMD), CNN International, DaimlerChrysler AG, Emory Clinic, Erbe USA, Inc., Georgia Power Company, Georgia State University, Marriott Lodging, Novartis Ophthalmics, Random House, Robert Bosch GmbH, Siemens, Solvay Pharmaceuticals, The State of Georgia Department of Technical Training & Adult Education, The Weather Channel and UCB-Group.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Germany and Cultural Detective® Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender
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Robin received her Bachelor's degree from Lewis & Clark College in 2007, with a double major in sociology/anthropology and hispanic studies, and a minor in ethnic studies, and earned an MBA from Florida International University in 2010. Following graduation from Lewis & Clark College, she moved to the Dominican Republic to research gender-based violence and conduct support groups with a Fulbright Grant.
In 2008, she became Resident Coordinator and Internship Coordinator for the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE)Santo Domingo program. Robin works extensively with local non-profit and community-based organizations on a wide variety of issues as a result of directing the internship program. She has completed a seminar through the Summer Institute on Intercultural Communication in Portland, Oregon, and teaches a CIEE-designed seminar to university-age students on intercultural communication and learning.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Dominican Republic
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Alex Eunkyeong Yu, M.A., M.B.A.
Intercultural Consultant, ITIM International
Born and raised in Korea, Alex worked as a project manager and later as a marketing director for the leading interior design firm catering to multinational companies in Seoul. There she had a great chance to observe how different cultural assumptions affect business in intercultural environments. She also worked as an independent consultant for corporate restructuring, the formation of life-style businesses, and telematics in the Korean market.
She has a BA and an MA in English Literature from Ewha Woman's University in Seoul, and an MBA in International Management from Thunderbird, The School of Global Management, in Arizona. She loves to explore the delicacies of intercultural interaction, and is happy to provide relevant insights and encouragement for people who want to be players in the global business arena. Her major interests are maintaining creativity in intercultural conflicts, and building intercultural competencies in communication, team building, and leadership.
Alex is fluent in Korean and English, and comfortable in Japanese. She also vaguely remembers there was a time she could read French novels in French.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® East Asia
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Stanislava Zaprianova, M.A.
Organizational Psychologist and Trainer, Clinical Psychology,
Educational and Training Research
Stanislava is an internal consultant, managing the Training and Internal Communications department at Cosmo Bulgaria Mobile, a Greek owned, GSM Operator in Bulgaria.
In 1996, she joined the team of Peace Corps Bulgaria, where she worked as a language and culture instructor, and later, as Cross Cultural Training Program Coordinator. Under her leadership, a three-month Cultural Adjustment Training Program was created and successfully delivered to hundreds of US Peace Corps volunteers. Combining the rich US Peace Corps' know-how in intercultural issues, with her experience in Bulgarian culture specifics, values, beliefs and common behaviors, and her knowledge about Bulgarian political history, folklore, art and business development, she developed training materials which have been used during pre-service training in the Peace Corps since 1998.
While attaining her MA degree in Training and Educational Research at the VUB, Brussels, Stanislava studied the Bulgarian immigrant population in Belgium and their individual and group culture adjustment patterns. After her return to Bulgaria in 2001, she worked as a senior human resource consultant and trainer in an English-Bulgarian consulting company, a representative of Hay Group. She trained middle and top management entering the Bulgarian market in intercultural issues. She has extensive experience as a cultural coach, working with commissioners of the EU Commission in Sofia, and to high-level employees of the World Bank.
Currently, Stanislava has been working as a cross-cultural consultant and trainer on private projects with colleagues from Germany, The Netherlands and UK. She is preparing for her Ph.D. project in the field of knowledge management and intercultural communication at the University of Regensburg, Germany.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Bulgaria
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John Zerio, Ph.D.
Thunderbird: The Garvin School of International Management
John M. Zerio is an international marketing professor of the Global Management Department in Thunderbird: The Garvin School of International Management. His major areas of teaching and research are international business-to-business marketing, international sales and negotiation, and electronic commerce.
Dr. Zerio has consulted extensively with domestic and foreign multinational corporations in Brazil, Japan and Mexico, and has taught at universities in Mexico, Chile, Ecuador and Brazil. He has extensive experience in the area of executive education, having taught and directed in-house programs for Vitro S.A. (Mexico), Scott Paper, Warner Lambert, Pharmacia and Upjohn. He is also the academic director of Thunderbird's Global Marketing program.
After his M.B.A. John worked for Ford/Philco do Brazil, where he gained extensive experience in the development of foreign markets for consumer and industrial products. His major market areas were Latin America and Africa. He recently added a Master of Science in Information Management degree to his existing BS, MBA, MA and Ph.D. credentials. His Ph.D. is from Syracuse University.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Chile
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Zheng Wei
Professor, Researcher, Trainer
Zheng Wei is a Chinese researcher born in Shanghai. He received his BA in International Business and an MA in Intercultural Communication in Japan. He began his academic research on inter-Asian communication in 2000 and has conducted field research in various international business settings. He has designed several inter-Asian training programs, including a series of tailored 1- to 3- month online orientations as well as individualized feedback and advisory followups. He now teaches intercultural relations and communication-related courses at five Japanese universities, and is a Director of the Board of the Communication Association of Japan.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® East Asia
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