Cultural Skills are essential skills.
When you lack them, interacting with people from other cultures can feel like an exercise in frustration and futility. Miscommunications lead to misunderstandings, missed deadlines and missed opportunities, while misinterpretations of what went wrong and how to fix it can perpetuate the cycle of miscalculations and mistakes.
The good news is that you don’t have to stay stuck in cultural challenges. Instead, by partnering with an expert, you can develop the capacities and competencies necessary to navigate situations much more effectively.
We Are here to help
We can help you learn how to:
Establish rapport, build trust, and develop collaborative relationships across cultures
Adapt your behaviors in new cultural situations, without sacrificing your authenticity
Communicate so that people from different cultures really understand you - and vice versa
Provide feedback and resolve conflict constructively with people from different cultures
Go beyond simplistic stereotypes of another culture to work with its nuances and contradictions
Respond to change without losing sight of the human element
Why Work With Us?
We are your partners in developing global readiness! Here are four reasons you will benefit from working with us:
Our perspective is truly international, informed by our diverse cultural backgrounds, which include the U.S. and South Korea as well as our experiences moving abroad, returning home, and living in multiple U.S. regions (including the Southwest, Upper Midwest, South, and Southern California). This means our advice is partly rooted in U.S. culture, but isn’t U.S.-centric and isn’t limited to a one-dimensional understanding of American culture, either.
Our approach is multidisciplinary, based on our unique hybrid of expertise in intercultural relations and global business. Our rich professional backgrounds also span divergent sectors. This means we are well-versed in thinking outside the box and translating our expertise to the realities of different organizations and industries.
We are qualified to do the work that we do - and we have done it. We hold relevant bachelor and master’s degrees, as well as certifications in cultural adaptation and change management. This means you can trust that our advice is based on research. We also have served clients at organizations ranging from regional nonprofits to multinational companies. This means you can feel peace of mind that we are ready and able to serve you, too.
We don’t just talk the talk, but actually live across cultures every day. As partners from very different backgrounds, we are constantly navigating, negotiating, learning, and growing together. We know that perfection is unattainable and that some degree of disagreement is unavoidable, but also that meaningful relationships, productive collaboration, and genuine connectedness are possible. This means we approach clients with empathy rather than judgement, and prioritize skills and strategies you can use.
To learn more about what our clients and colleagues say about us, see our testimonials page.
Who We Are
Melissa Hahn
Melissa is our intercultural expert
She has been fascinated by the world from a young age, when she studied her globe each night before falling asleep. Since designing her first cultural program as a high school student, she has dedicated herself to helping people build global knowledge and intercultural competence.
Melissa’s background spans international relations, global mobility, education, and nonprofits. She coaches senior executives and international students, delivers cultural trainings, facilitates diversity dialogues, guest speaks on panels, presents at conferences, and collaborates with global colleagues on intercultural publications and projects. She also teaches intercultural communication at American University and is on the leadership team for the Global Dexterity Certification. She writes about crossing cultures at Harvard Business Review and is the author of Forging Bonds in a Global Workforce (McGraw Hill, 2024).
She holds a M.A. in Intercultural Relations from the University of the Pacific, a B.A. in Russian Area Studies from St. Olaf College, studied Central and Eastern Europe at Jagiellonian University in Poland, and is certified in the Global Dexterity Method. Melissa is a trusted sounding board for anyone with a cultural question or problem.
Michael is our global business and change management expert
He is on a lifelong quest to discover what makes people, organizations, and society tick. During his 20+ years as a bridge between business and IT, he has observed leaders struggle to understand forces, make decisions, communicate effectively, build partnerships, and anticipate and respond to change.
Michael has worked across sectors including retail, start-ups, cities, utilities, and higher education, and has a background in network administration, regulatory compliance, SharePoint, and change management. He specializes in leadership, innovation, and aligning organizational culture and strategy.
Michael holds a MBA with emphases in International Business and Leadership from Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business, a B.A.S. in Information Technology Infrastructure from the University of Minnesota, and is a Prosci Certified Change Practitioner. He is sought after for his insights into organizational bottlenecks and ability to articulate practical solutions.
Michael Hahn