Welcome

Hi, my name is Ann Marie Lei, owner of Ann Marie Lei Consulting. Welcome to my Web site. I am a consultant, facilitator, and educator. Born and raised in the United States, I have traveled extensively throughout Western Europe and parts of Asia, developing strong relationships with colleagues and friends from around the world. These relationships directly inform my work and help keep me grounded in the realities and challenges of effective intercultural communication.

Ann Marie – Consultant

I have been working as an independent consultant since 1999, designing and facilitating personalized programs for a variety of clients, with a consistently sharp focus on achieving better organizational results through improved interpersonal understanding and communication.

Programs I currently offer include work team effectiveness, cultural competency, and cultural orientation programs. My clients range from large multinational corporations to small local non-profit organizations to individual executives.

Ann Marie – Facilitator

As a facilitator, I bring more than 25 years of international experience to my work. I worked for Nike, Inc. for more than 17 years and gained significant experience in international marketing, management, and leadership development. In addition to many years at Nike World Headquarters in Oregon, I worked at Nike’s European Headquarters and lived in The Netherlands for three and a half years while starting up and leading Nike’s European retail marketing and merchandising departments. I directly supervised Dutch, British, and French employees and led a team of managers from several European countries.

Ann Marie – Educator

I teach graduate-level intercultural communication courses at Portland State University (in the Masters of International Management Program) and have taught at the Oregon Health Sciences University (in the Physicians Assistant Masters Program). For five years I taught an annual five-day course called “Working with U.S. Americans” at the Catholic University in Lille, France since 2001. I have also facilitated online courses in the Certificate of Intercultural Studies program offered by the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada since 2004.

My educational background includes a Bachelors degree in Business Administration from the University of Notre Dame and a Master of Arts degree in Intercultural Relations through Antioch University and the Intercultural Communication Institute. My master’s thesis focused on factors that influence the business effectiveness of transferees from various countries working in the United States on temporary assignments.

I am continuously pursuing new learning that directly benefits my clients and keeps me in touch with the latest research, thinking, and cutting-edge training tools. I have attended several programs at The Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication (SIIC) in Forest Grove, Oregon. SIIC brings together leading faculty members, educators, and practitioners for three weeks each year to live and learn together. I was selected to serve as an intern during the summer of 2000.

Some of the programs I have attended and the faculty members who facilitated them include:

• 1998 Facilitating Intercultural Discovery with John Condon and Nagesh Rao
  
• 1998 Global Corporations: Personal, Corporate, and National Dimensions with Martin Bennett and Patricia Digh
  
• 1999 Reinventing Management at the Crossroads of Culture with Andre Laurent
  
• 2000 Theory-Based Tools for Improving Intercultural Training with Dharm Bhawuk
  
• 2000 Building Multicultural Teams in Corporations with Dennis Clackworthy and Alois Moosmüller
  
• 2001 Global Assignments, Global Leaders with Mark Mendenhall and Allan Bird
  
• 2002 Asian Diversity in the Workplace with Prany Sananikone and Stephen Thom
  
• 2003 Delivering Health Care Across Cultures with Nagesh Rao and Anita Rowe
  
• 2003 Using Intercultural Film in Innovative Ways with Ellen Summerfield
  
• 2004 Appreciative Inquiry in Intercultural Training with Todd Conklin and Richard Harris
  

In addition to the one- to five-day workshops, SIIC offers Evening Programs throughout each week on a range of relevant topics. In 2004 and 2006, I was invited to present an Evening Program about the Insights Discovery® System and its relevance as a potential tool for facilitating effective communication in multicultural teams.

Ann Marie – Professional Accreditations and Qualifications

1998 The Intercultural Development Inventory (I.D.I.)
2003 The Insights Discovery System
2004 Appreciative Inquiry
2007 Action Plan Marketing Coaching Certification

Ann Marie – Professional Affiliations

SIETAR USA, the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research
I have been a SIETAR USA member since 1999 and served on the Board of Directors from 2001 through 2003. I currently am serving as an adviser to the board and a member of the Marketing Committee. Since 2000, I also have managed the marketing efforts for the annual SIETAR USA conferences.