Jeff earned a bachelors degree in political science from Ohio State University and a Juris Doctor (law) degree from the University of Cincinnati.  His university years included studies in Europe and Asia.  Jeff later became certified to deliver and interpret a number of quality assessment tools including MBTI, OPQ, Harrison, and DISC. 

Jeff’s 19 years of experience in the technology and human capital consulting industries includes functional specialization in business development and in talent assessment, development, and transition.  His organizational clients include Fortune 500 firms in the technology, consumer goods, and financial services industries, plus educational institutions.  Clients have included Juniper Networks, QAD, Tellabs, CSFB, Deutsche Bank, MAST Industries, SHL, and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. 

Coachees benefit from Jeff’s ability to help them gain and leverage greater self-awareness leading to performance improvement for themselves and their direct reports.  They also enjoy his practical and humorous personal style, characterized by one client in the phrase, “he must be the Mr. Rogers of Asia!”  Jeff’s efforts have caused his associated firm to be nominated on two occasions for a “Best Training Firm in Hong Kong” award – about which Jeff cautions that the nomination was actually about coaching “but they didn’t have a ‘best coaching’ award.”

Jeff is a founding member of the Hong Kong Coaching Community and the author of numerous articles on career transition (“Excellently succinct!” in the view of one reader), including articles written for the China Staff and Career Times magazines. 

Jeff is a board member of the non-profit Getting Back to Work Foundation.  In his spare time he enjoys practicing taichi, reading, traveling, and simply being with his multinational family.
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Vivien was born and raised in Hong Kong, and is fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese as well as in English.  She completed her bachelors degree at the University of Hong Kong and an MBA at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.  During her career she lived and worked for four years in Chicago and Toronto.  Her early corporate experience was gained at Citibank, British-American Tobacco, Colliers Jardine, and Royal Trust Canada.  In all, she now has over a quarter century of marketing and management experience in the banking and professional service industries. 

Vivien’s most significant corporate experience was her six years with A.C. Nielsen, the world’s largest market research company, where she served as Managing Director of Hong Kong and China, then as the Director of Change Management for the Asia-Pacific region.  While managing over 250 employees of multiple nationalities, she helped to build the business at a double-digit rate every year, improve the efficiency of the operational processes, and boost both employee and customer satisfaction.  During her time with A.C. Nielsen, the company went through a major acquisition, a substantial reorganization, and a culture change. Vivien spent a significant amount of time coaching A.C. Nielsen executives at all levels to help improve their effectiveness within these shifting and complex conditions. 

Vivien is a Certified Facilitator and Certified Action Learning Coach.  She has coached and facilitated workshops for senior executives at Standard Chartered Bank, ExxonMobil, Merck, Novartis, Altera, Bax, Epson, Levi Strauss, CLP Power, Abbott, Intercontinental, CIGNA, Unilever, and the Li & Fung Group, among others.  Her executive coaching clients have included company heads, managing directors, general managers, and CFOs – Chinese, Indian, Filipino, New Zealander, Australian, Italian, Norwegian, English, and American – at firms such as Johnson & Johnson, IDS Marketing, Swire Beverages, and Schmidt Electronics. 

Vivien also is active in the non-profit sector with organizations such as the United Nations, Caritas, and the Salvation Army in their strategic and people-development needs.  She is a founding vice president of the Hong Kong Coaching Community, a member of International Association of Certified Coaches, and member of International Association of Facilitators. 

Vivien loves reading, learning, practicing meditation and qi gong, and doing voluntary work for the Hong Kong University Graduates Association, of which she is the president.
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Donny was born in China and received his undergraduate education there.  He came to the U.S. in 1992, where he completed his MBA in international management at the Garvin School of International Management (“Thunderbird”) in Arizona.  He also did graduate work on culture and leadership at East-West Center in Hawaii.  Besides living in the U.S. on several other occasions, he has gained experience relative to other world regions through extensive travel and by studying and working side-by-side with people from many nations.  He is fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese, and English.

Donny started his professional career in 1988 with Standard Chartered Bank in China. In 1995, following his MBA studies, Donny moved on to serve as international operations supervisor and representative for Allied Domecq Retailing International, the parent company of Baskin-Robbins and Dunkin’ Donuts.  In this capacity, he was personally responsible establishing the first Dunkin’ Donuts store in China.  Later, he served as vice president of Datahouse, a Honolulu-based management and technology consulting company, and still later as managing director of Pilot Marketing Management Consulting Company.  His final corporate responsibility before entering full-time consulting was as vice president of sales and marketing for Oztime, a publicly traded Canadian company specializing in education and technology. 

Donny has taught intercultural communications at the university level and currently holds adjunct posts at the University of International Business and Economics (Beijing), the RMIT Business School (Australia), and the China branch of Thunderbird’s Executive Education program.  He contributed to Managing Cultural Differences by Robert Moran and has written numerous articles on business topics.

Donny is managing director of the first locally based cross-cultural management consulting firm in Beijing, which specializes in management consulting, global leadership training, and executive coaching, all with an emphasis on turning cross-cultural diversity into business advantages.  His executive coach training was with George Renwick at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication.  Donny coaching has included managers and senior executives at Motorola, Intel, GlaxoSmithKline, Elsevier, Philips Electronics, Vistoen, ZTE, and Lenovo.

Donny enjoys ping pong, jogging, tiachi, and reading. He and his wife live in Beijing and enjoy international travel together.
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Maura has an M.A. in intercultural relations from Antioch University in addition to a B.A. from Mount Holyoke College; she also studied Mandarin in Taiwan.  She has been a faculty member at both the Singapore Institute of Management and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. 

Maura’s corporate career includes service as director of learning and development in Asia for AlliedSignal and, later, Honeywell.  In this capacity, Maura led teams that designed and implemented a regional learning infrastructure; led change-management initiatives in the mergers of AlliedSignal and Honeywell International, then Honeywell International and G.E.; consulted to and coached Western and Asian senior executives throughout Asia Pacific; and, in relation to a potential joint venture, led a strategic review process that resulted in a decision to stop action, thereby initially saving $20 million.

Maura began consultancy work in 1993, helping Hong Kong-based companies move their operations to China.  She specializes in managing change and transitions in multicultural situations in which an understanding of cultural values is crucial to building relationships and teamwork.  She offers insights into Asian and Western behaviors as well as intra-Asian differences, thereby enabling clients throughout the region to enhance staff performance.  Maura also has experience helping clients to localize operations, build multicultural teams, translate new visions into plans of action, close the skills gap, raise staff morale, design learning programs, and smooth leadership succession. Client firms have included ARCO, Nokia, AlliedSignal, Honeywell, Citibank, Sun Life Financial, J.P. Morgan, Standard Chartered Bank, FedEx, Golin/Harris, Luen Thai, Watson Wyatt, Manulife, Coca Cola, Dana, Marriott, 3 Com, Philips, and the United States Consulate in Hong Kong.

One of Maura’s specialties is developing the leadership potential of both Asian and Western executives.  For example, for Nokia at a time when it was expanding from Hong Kong into mainland China, she coached Chinese, British, American, and Finnish executives and their teams to work together effectively within their intensely multicultural environment. 

Maura is married to Mark Gau, a native of Taiwan and now an executive of a global corporation.  Early in their marriage, she had the experience of living in Taipei with Mark’s extended family of 20 people spanning four generations.  Maura enjoys travel, international cuisine, collecting textiles and carpets, and hiking the Grand Canyon.
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Geoffrey pursued his professional direction into international coaching through a research doctorate in business at the Australian National University, which built on his academic foundations in organizational psychology and education.  For his dissertation, Geoffrey explored how executive coaching assists expatriate managers to deal with the challenges of overseas sojourns.  He lived for three years in El Salvador, completing his fieldwork, working as an executive coach, and improving his Spanish. 

Geoffrey’s awareness of the possibilities and potentials offered by cultural diversity developed during his time as an executive policy adviser with the Special Broadcasting Service, Australia’s multicultural and multilingual broadcaster.  In this role, he was responsible for strategic planning, lobbying the government on funding and other issues, and managing major research projects. His early career was in teaching.  He also has experience in Canberra as a senior policy adviser with the Australian Government. 

Geoffrey’s executive coaching work is usually with multinational companies.  He has coached at the regional and national manager levels in Central America, the U.S., and Australia.  Client organizations include International Paper, Microsoft, SAB Miller, PPG, the U.S. State Department, Dell, Aid to Artisans, Cox Communications, ANZ, NAB, ING, and the University of Sydney.  Geoffrey takes a holistic view of coaching, working with multiple approaches grounded in his broad training and experience in management, psychology, interculturalism, and education.  Through 2007, Geoffrey delivered advanced behavioural coach training programs in Sydney, New York, London, and Singapore.  He has trained and mentored coaches from more than thirty countries.  He also runs specialized public and in-house programs in international business coaching.

Geoffrey has written many articles and book chapters about international coaching and related issues, including a co-authored chapter on coaching across cultures in the Evidence Based Coaching Handbook (Stober & Grant, 2006).  He is currently co-editing the Routledge Companion to International Business Coaching. 

Geoffrey lives in Sydney with his partner and their cat.  He loves sport and can often be found cycling around the shores of the spectacular Sydney Harbour.  He also enjoys reading and travelling as far and as wide as possible.
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A native of New Zealand, Anna completed a bachelors in fine arts at the University of Canterbury, followed by post-graduate studies at other universities in both design management and communication management.  In 2003, she received an M.A. in organizational development at the University of Western Sydney.  She also has studied extensively at the Summer Institute of Intercultural Communication (Oregon), learning to incorporate intercultural concepts and techniques in her leadership coaching and cultural change work.

After receiving her bachelors degree, Anna joined the international division of Elizabeth Arden, for which she worked for 12 years in expatriate positions across Europe and Asia-Pacific; eventually she attained the position of marketing manager for Asia.  In the course of her corporate and subsequent career, Anna lived and worked in Japan (where she devoted three years to establishing a joint venture), Hong Kong (where she managed a cultural-change project), and Singapore; these first-hand experiences enabled her to grasp the complexities of identifying and navigating different needs and perspectives. 

Founding her own consultancy in 1991, Anna now has experience coaching executives at the C-level and below for companies in China, Japan, Thailand, Hong Kong, Australia, and the United States.  Clients have included Ford Motors, Caterpillar, Barclays Global, Cisco, E&J Gallo, Raytheon, Merck Sharp & Dohme, Scherring, Kelloggs, Deutsche Bank, Frucor, Thompsons-Reuters, Cathay Pacific, and Optus Communications. She also facilitates leadership programs for the United Nations regional office in Bangkok.

Anna’s self-development as a coach is grounded in her NLP training in systemic thinking and advanced behavioral modeling.  In addition, Anna is a certified in Spiral Dynamics Integral, MBTI-EIR, BarOn-EQi, FIRO-B, SIE (Survey of Influence Effectiveness), MOT (Managing Organizational Transition), and Situational Leadership.  Anna’s integral approach to executive coaching encompasses psychology, intercultural insights, leadership training, and systemic thinking.

Anna is the treasurer for Lotus Outreach Australia, an independent, secular, non-profit organization dedicated to improving the living conditions of vulnerable children and their communities through education and healthcare.  Otherwise, she enjoys teaching and practicing yoga, reading, traveling, music, art, walking, dancing, and being with her family in New Zealand whenever possible.
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Karen has been involved since the early 1970s in the field of intercultural communication.  To date, she has prepared thousands of people for worklife 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.  She also has been commissioned to design and deliver expatriate orientation programs for clients such as Met Life and Affiliated Companies of New York City and Optus Communications of Sydney, Australia's second largest telecommunications firm.

Born in the United States and a migrant to Australia in 1988, Karen became aware of a lack of services to support incoming corporate personnel in the cultural transition to life in Australia.  With the assistance of over 200 country/cultural specialists, she has been involved in the delivery of post-arrival coaching programs for people from Chile, China, India, Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, the U.K., and the U.S.  Pre-departure coaching has occurred for business people on their way to 40 destination countries.
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Karen recently delivered a cross-cultural management program in Seoul for a French-Korean joint venture,  and multicultural team-building programs in Shanghai and Bangkok for a U.K.-based client firm.  Executive coaching assignments have included business leaders based in Australia, Korea, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Singapore, and the Philippines.

Karen 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 nearly 400 hours in professional development programs.

Karen lives with her husband, an Australian with Belgian and Australian parents, plus two Birman cats.  She enjoys yoga, swimming, and international folk-dancing.
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See Luan holds a B.A. in economics from the University of Malaya and a diploma from the Communications, Advertising, and Marketing Foundation in the U.K.  He was trained as an executive coach at Coach U, Corporate Coach U, and the Advantara Global Executive Coach Institute.  The International Coach Federation recognizes him as a professional certified coach.  His global career has enabled him to speak Cantonese, Mandarin, Malay, and English.

See Luan has held a variety of roles with major corporations in Asia, Europe, and the United States.  For Nestle, he served as head of market research.  For Esso, he was a public affairs manager.  For Esso/Exxon, he was both a marketing manager and (in Houston, Texas) a human resources manager.  And for BOC Gases, he served as human resources director for the North Pacific region with responsibility for some 7,000 employees in ten nations.

As an executive coach, See Luan’s focus is on leadership development, management of change, performance and personal effectiveness enhancement, career and life/financial planning skills, cross-cultural communications, all leavened with work-life balance.  See Luan credits his ability to successfully coach a wide variety of executives to his ability to customize, his cross-cultural experience, his use of Socratic questioning and empathic listening, his high familiarity with Asia-based joint-ventures, and finally his yin-yang blend of seriousness and light-heartedness.  He is certified to use several assessment instruments including Hay McBer Competency Applications.

See Luan's clients include ExxonMobil, Saloman Smith & Barney, American Eagle Tankers, KE Swan, F&N, American Express, Borland, NTUC Income, Sino-Land, Sino Hotels, Fullerton Hotel, Equatorial Hill Resort, Givaudan, GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Lufthansa Cargo, Microsoft, Munich Re, Ogilvy & Mather, Petronas, Pioneer Investments, Puratos, Tetra-Pak, S.W.I.F.T., Star TV, and Tenaga National.  He is a fellow of the Hong Kong Institute of Human Resources Management, president of the Asia-Pacific Alliance of Coaches, and immediate past president of the Singapore Chapter of the International Coach Federation.  The International Journal of Coaching in Organizations has published his articles.

See Luan's interests are reading, music, table-tennis, numismatics, and traveling (especially in China, where he collects Chinese snuff bottles).  See Luan and his wife, a retired manager in the retail business, love to spend time with their grown son in Sydney.
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BH was born and raised in Singapore; as a result, he speaks English, Mandarin, and Cantonese.  His B.E. degree is from the National University of Singapore.  He also holds a master of philosophy from the Thierry Graduate School of Leadership (Brussels), where he has been awarded a scholarship to pursue a Ph.D. in leadership development. In recognition of his accomplishments in his specialty area, executive coaching in leadership development, Thierry has appointed him as a faculty member.

BH has 26 years of experience as a manager and executive, serving in China, Taiwan, India, Korea, Japan as well as in Western Europe and the United States.  He held posts such as vice president, managing director, and director for well-known MNCs including AT&T Consumer Products, SyQuest Technologies, and ICI Acrylics.  His experience comprises not only general management with P&L responsibility (revenues over US$150 million) but also strategic planning, manufacturing, quality systems, and sales & marketing.

As an executive coach, BH specializes in leadership development in a culturally-diverse environment.  He works with CEOs, GMs, and VPs and their teams to enhance their effectiveness and bring greater value to their organizations.  BH also has consulted with executive teams who are facing the challenges of large-scale cultural transformation.  His clients have included AMD, Pfizer, Asia Pacific Breweries, Shell, National Starch and Chemical,  Equant,  Baxter, L’Oreal,  TNT, SMRT, SITA, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing, STATS ChipPac, British Oxygen, and Dell.  To date BH has delivered nearly 1,000 hours of  professional coaching for these and other clients.  He is accredited by the International Coach Federation and is a graduate of Corporate Coach University.  He writes articles on leadership for the Singapore-based business press.

BH lives with his family in Singapore.  He and his wife love traveling and often visit the United States and Europe as well as other countries in Asia.  Their older daughter works in Chicago while the younger one is completing undergraduate studies in Singapore.  BH reads widely and loves the out-of-doors.
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Michael has attended the basic and advanced human process labs of the Indian Society for Applied Behavioural Sciences (ISABS) and has qualified as a cross-cultural trainer at the international train-the-trainer workshop conducted by General Motors Relocation Services.  He is involved with the Tata Management Training Centre and the Ahmedabad Management Association, and he also trains for the Indian Jaycees.  Michael travels throughout India on assignments, and he has traveled as well in Israel, Southeast Asia, Europe, and North America in the course of his work.

Michael holds a bachelors and masters in commerce, and postgraduate qualifications in banking and marketing.  In 1980, he began his career in advertising.  Later he added assignments as a visiting faculty member at business schools such as the Symbiosis Institute of Business Management in Pune.  In 1986, he launched into corporate training.  Michael has trained over 30,000 managers and executives for DSP Merrill Lynch, AT&T, Morgan Stanley, Hutchison Max Telecom, Cadbury India, and others.  In addition, he is listed on the panel of trainers for Frost & Sullivan in the U.K.

Michael's wife, Lorraine, holds a masters in industrial psychology.  She collaborates with him on programs that call for specialized behavioral inputs.  They live in one of India's large industrial cities.  Michael enjoys mentoring and conducting personal growth labs for students and also anchors the Model United Nations Assembly (MUNA).  He enjoys listening to Western classical music and taking long drives in the country — combining both these pleasures is the ultimate relaxation for him.
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Amita holds degrees in psychology and business administration from universities in India and Canada.  She has a rich background of work experience in India, Canada, Japan, and the United States.  Most of her life has been spent in India, from which she travels widely as a coach and consultant on behalf of global organizations. 

Prior to becoming a coach, Amita held leadership roles as head of human resources for several organizations in the IT industry including Novel Software and Cadence Design Systems.  During these years she focused on change processes including the initiation and implementation of strategic HR initiatives, organizational culture change, performance management, competency mapping, and the transformation of people-management approaches.  In some of her executive roles, Amita provided coaching to colleagues in senior leadership positions.  Among her achievements were a redesign of recruitment and selection procedures that successfully shortened the overall decision-making cycle, and a “culture dig” that drove a change initiative to attain its objectives within a single year.  (A "culture dig" is a facilitated group effort to explore the how and why questions about an organizational feature, which beneficially unearths deep values and assumptions.) 

In January 2003, Amita founded her own consulting and executive coaching practice, enabling her to combine a personal passion for coaching with her corporate experience.  She has coached individuals and teams in corporations worldwide, supporting their development of leadership and cross-cultural skills and their transformation as individuals, team members, and organizational leaders.  Her training as a coach and consultant was provided by Leadership University.  She is qualified to use psychometric instruments such as MBTI, Emotional Intelligence, EQi Bar-on, Cultural Orientations Profile, Spiral Dynamics, and Reiss Profile when any of these promise to strengthen her coaching. 

During her free time, Amita likes to enjoy being at home in her tastefully done apartment in which she’s never at a loss for things to do, such as reading and listening to sufi music.  She also likes to travel to meet family and attend spiritual retreats.  She enjoys the company of her nieces and good friends, especially appreciating long catch-up sessions late into the night with those whom she rarely sees.
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A native of Austria, Astrid holds a Ph.D. degree in international business from the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration.  For her dissertation, she conducted a study of British-German differences in cross-cultural training.  Since then, as a university lecturer in the area of intercultural management and organizational behavior, she has taught at business schools in Australia, China, The Netherlands, Denmark, Croatia, France, Portugal, Korea, and Thailand.  She speaks German, English, French, and Spanish and is currently dedicating herself to improving her spoken and written Thai.

While still at Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Astrid was deputy director of international relations, in which role she coordinated and organized projects in China, Germany, Italy, Ukraine, Romania, Russia, the U.K., and others.  In 2005, she was invited to become associate dean of business at Asian University, in Thailand, where she relaunched the MBA program and introduced a successful summer program for international business students called “Asian Experience.”  Currently, at Mahidol University in Thailand, Astrid is the manager of international relations at the College of Management, where she’s in charge of executive “Asian Management” programs for international managers.

As an independent consultant, Astrid conducts executive training and coaching in the areas of international relocation, cross-cultural teams, international negotiations, and similar topics for companies around the world.  Her client list includes Benda-Lutz International, Plansee Metall GmbH Austria, Hutchison Austria, General Electric Hungary, Solectron Romania, Opel Thailand, GKN Thailand, GlaxoSmithKline Thailand, General Motors Thailand, Merck Thailand, Danone Thailand, Chevron Thailand, and Bayer Vietnam.

Astrid’s research interests include intercultural management and intercultural training as well as cultural influences on instructional styles; she has been published in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Competence & Management and several others in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.  Her current research is comparing management in Thailand and Germany.  Currently a co-editor of the book series Management Across Borders from IKO Verlag in Frankfurt, Astrid is co-founder and vice-president of the Society for Intercultural Education, Training And Research in Austria.

In her spare time, Astrid enjoys travelling and exploring new countries.  Her trips have recently taken her to Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Uganda. She engages in biking, diving, skiing and – in the South American Andes and the Asian Himalayas – mountain climbing.
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Born in Tokyo, Sonoko spent a year in France while completing her first degree at Tokyo University for Foreign Studies.  After working for Seiko Time Company and being involved in a major French-Swiss-Japanese-U.S. joint venture, she attended Stanford University and received a masters degree in intercultural communication.  Since then, Sonoko has devoted herself to the cross-cultural field.  At Japan Women's University she developed and taught courses on intercultural communication, simultaneously serving as a trainer, coach, and consultant for Japanese and foreign businesses.  In 1990, Sonoko followed her expatriate husband to New York and began working on a Ph.D. in intercultural education at New York University.

In 1988, Japan UNESCO and a major Japanese newspaper gave Sonoko an award to encourage her contributions to international knowledge.  She thereupon became a prolific writer.  Her books include Theories on International Human Relationships, declared the most recommendable book of 1989 by the Japan Library Association; Intercultural Communication for Japanese (1990); Culture Shock — Foreigners' Experiences in Japan (1990); and An Invitation to Intercultural Communication (1998).

Sonoko's husband is an executive of a joint venture created by U.S. and Japanese investment banks.  Their two children began their schooling in New York City.  When the family returned to Japan, the children found the adjustment challenging; as a result, Sonoko deeply understands children's and mother's relocation issues.  In her leisure time, Sonoko enjoys playing tennis with her husband and doing Teaquon-do with her students.
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A native of Java, Irid is a graduate of the Faculty of Letters at the University of Indonesia.  Years ago, as the young wife of a graduate student at the State University of New York at Buffalo, Irid experienced a challenging adjustment to the United States; this experience began her life-long interest in intercultural adaptation.  She later returned to that same university and completed an MA in American Studies in 1982 and, more recently, a Ph.D. in intercultural studies.

During the 1980s, Irid worked for American Field Service (AFS), the student exchange organization, as National Director for Indonesia.  She also served during those years as the orientation coordinator in Indonesia for the Canadian International Development Agency.  She gained considerable experience in the recruitment and selection of Indonesian students for international scholarship programs, and she became involved in orienting the selected students for their experiences abroad.  She also has worked with foreign students coming into Indonesia.

Irid is founder and president of her own intercultural management consulting and training company.  She and her staff train professionals from all over the world who are relocating to Indonesia.  Over the past decades, she has worked with the representatives of governments, international non-profit organizations, and global corporations in Africa, Asia-Pacific, North America, and Western Europe.  Irid regularly provides intercultural training about Indonesia for the CEOs, managers, and staff members of gas and oil companies including Total, BP, Conoco-Phillips, Exxon-Mobil, CNOOC, Petro-China, and Maxus.

Irid currently serves as director of the Indonesian International Education Foundation (IIEF); president of the International Council of Islamic Women Scholars; president of the Indonesia chapter of the Society for Intercultural Education, Training, And Research; and lecturer on intercultural relations in the graduate school of the University of Indonesia.  In her IIEF role, she oversees multiple projects on behalf of the East-West Center, the Ford Foundation, the GE Foundation, Goldman Sachs, and many others.

She and Asmir, her husband, have three grown children and will soon welcome their sixth grandchild.  She is on the advisory board of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Indonesia, and on the governing board of the Jakarta International School.
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Joel has a masters degree from New York University in community psychology with a focus on international issues.  Gale has a masters degree in education from Lynchburg College and another masters in public health from the University of California at Berkeley.  Their first professional experiences (separately) were in the public health and medical fields in Malaysia and the U.S.  Along the way they met, married, and in 1977 returned to Kuala Lumpur as co-directors of a community counseling program.  Subsequently, they served for six years as co-directors of the Community Services Association of Cairo, and simultaneously as consultants and trainers for the U.S. State Department, focusing on the mental health and cross-cultural adjustment needs of expatriate communities worldwide. 

Starting in 1988, Joel and Gale expanded their cross-cultural training to embrace global corporations as well as community service centers, and to assist host country nationals as well as Western expatriates.  For example, they developed programs for large numbers of Asian and African managers on how to increase their effectiveness in working in a global company with European and American colleagues.  Over the years, Gale and Joel created innovative programs and led a variety of organizations in Asia and Africa, including serving as country co-directors for the U.S. Peace Corps in The Philippines and then in Tanzania.

More than 100 global corporations have taken advantage of training programs developed and/or delivered by Joel and Gale, including DuPont, Texas Instruments, McDonalds, Eli Lilly, Payless ShoeSource, Exxon/Mobil, Amoco, Citibank, Halliburton, and General Dynamics.  Drawing on their decades of first-hand experience with the challenges faced by local employees of American corporations, they wrote a wonderfully insightful book entitled Working with Americans: A Practical Guide for Asians on How to Succeed with U.S. Managers (McGraw-Hill, 1995), which was also translated into Korean and Chinese.

Gale and Joel write that, “We have successfully managed national staffs in Asia and Africa, experiences that enrich our training.  These days we are resident in Malaysia, where we’re conducting research, writing a new book, and consulting on issues of cross-cultural management.  Our passion remains the training and supporting of both local and Western staffs of a global firm in order to increase their competencies for working productively with each other.  We’ve observed time and again that giving people the awareness and skills to increase their effectiveness when working with counterparts from abroad – even when contact is merely through e-mails, conference calls, and the occasional visit – has the effects of energizing work performance, facilitating communication, and enhancing team collaboration for all involved.”

Joel and Gale have a son, Josh, who grew up as a “third culture kid” and is currently enrolled in a masters program at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Boston.  When not working, running a business, or helping others to do so, they actively volunteer at the community level on behalf of HIV/AIDS prevention and environmental awareness.  Reading and international travel take up the rest of their free time.
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