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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 cross-cultural training and consulting since 1979. She is U.S.A.-born, spent twelve years working in Japan, has lived in Spain and Mexico, and has worked with people from over 50 nations. Her client list includes ABB, Cable and Wireless, Continental Airlines, 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 Ecotonos: A Multicultural Problem-Solving and Decision-Making Simulation; 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 100 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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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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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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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
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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, M.B.A.
Director, SAS Ground Services
Axel Blom is director of SAS Ground Services for the Asia Pacific Region and managing director for SAS Ground Services in Thailand. Axel is Norwegian and has worked in the region for more than twenty years. During the last fourteen years he has held the position as director and general manager for Scandinavian Airlines for Thailand, Indochina, Taiwan and the Philippines. His staff responsibility covers more than 100 employees in the Asia Pacific Region. In addition to his work for SAS, Axel is a board member of several national Chambers of Commerce in Thailand. He serves as president of the Board of Airline Representatives Association in Thailand, an organisation representing the airlines' interests in Thailand. Axel holds an MBA from the 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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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
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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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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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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, Nestlè, Novartis) and humanitarian agencies (ICRC, UNITAR), as well as academia (Scole Hùteliëre 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 ñ 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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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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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 Fertelmeyster, M.A.
Russian Program Consultant, Kochman Mavrelis Associates, Inc.
Tatyana Fertelmeyster is a licensed clinical professional counselor and a cultural consultant. She has worked in the intercultural field for the last 14 years, providing adjustment counseling to refugees, cross-cultural communications training to business travelers, educators and mental health professionals, and diversity training to corporations and nonprofit organizations.
In 1989, Tatyana moved to the United States from Russia. Differences between Russian and other world cultures have been a subject of her personal and professional interests.
Tatyana is actively involved in the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research (SIETAR-U.S.A.) and has been instrumental in reviving and organizing Chicago-SIETAR.
Her education includes a master's in journalism from Moscow State University, Russia, and a master's in guidance and counseling from Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, IL. She has spent five years in an internship at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communications, Portland, OR.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Russia, and 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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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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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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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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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, 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, 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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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 "DiplÙme d'IngÈnieur 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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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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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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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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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 and Cultural Detective® West Africa
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Nancy OíBrien 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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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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HuQing Piemonte
Harvard University
HuQing Piemonte has worked as an immigration and cultural advisor to students and scholars at U.S. colleges for the past twelve years. She currently serves as an advisor at Harvard University, where she coaches the international population on immigration matters, cultural adjustment issues and life learning skills. Prior to Harvard, HuQing worked at Wheaton College and Brandeis University.
Born in northeastern China, HuQing holds a Master's degree in Higher Education Administration from Northeastern University, and is fluent in Mandarin Chinese.
Co-author of Cultural Detective® Generational Harmony
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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® Fiji and 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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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 War
