Let me introduce myself. For as long as I can remember, I have had a fascination with other cultures. Honestly, I have been curious about everything in the world (which is why my mom called me the “orginial why kid”, which was interesting because I’m number 4 of 5 children. The first time I was the original anything).

As an academic, I consider myself a researcher who shares my understanding with students and creates environments so they can learn about those things that they are curious about. My role in learning is to teach them how to learn and research the world they live in (which may be different than the world I live in).

I’m now retired, but continue to research and learn about the world.

The most important things I’ve accomplished in my professional life:

• As an international trade consultant, project manager, and educator working on projects in Europe (Western and Eastern) and Latin America, I found new ways to manage project success, cross cultures to achieve impact on changing economic, political, and knowledge systems, and coming up with multiple solutions to problems that popped up, working with those that would be most impacted so they had an equal voice in those solutions.
• Advocating for change and speaking up for those who were not granted a place at the table, even when it meant my own career may be in jeopardy (I learned as I got older how to do this more diplomatically with better results!)
• Fighting against the barriers put up because of my gender (female in a predominantly male profession which was business and tech in the 80’s and 90’s), my learning disability (dyslexia), and age (a “junior” MBA student at age 22 in the 80’s and a “senior” Phd student in educational technology in the 2000’s/Early Career Researcher in social media and edtech in the 2010’s)
• Collaborating and publishing with a diverse group of researchers both in the US and globally, being able to help them to push through the academic ceiling due to their gender, race, or ethnic standing. My role was purely to help them navigate the academic publishing and political climate to help them break down the artificial barriers that had been put up to stop them. They would have been successful without my help, but we all need support when the system is set up against us.
• Researching, writing, and publishing on the topics I’m passionate in: Group processes and knowledge making (especially in intercultural groups), social media and social identity, intercultural communication, online instructional design based on experiential learning, and entrepreneurship and international marketing.