2008 Roundtable: Cross-Cultural Communication in a Globalized World

Panelist Biographical Sketches

Cross-Cultural Communication Roundtable

Welcome & Roundtable Overview/Objectives   
   

Dr. Gary Weaver

Gary Weaver (Ph.D., American University) is a member of the faculty of the School of International Service at American University.  He is also the chair of the University Faculty Senate and a member of the Board of Trustees.  His research topics range from working in a multicultural workforce, law enforcement in a culturally diverse community, culture shock, and cross-cultural negotiation to conflict resolution. In 1999, he founded and continues to serve as Executive Director of American University’s Intercultural Management Institute (IMI), a program for training executives for international relocation and multicultural management and is the publisher of the Intercultural Management Quarterly.

Dr. Deborah Cai

Deborah Cai (Ph.D., Michigan State University) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland.  Her scholarly expertise is in intercultural communication, persuasion, and negotiation and conflict management, with particular interest in international negotiation as a specific context of persuasive activity within organizations.   Her current research focuses on the way people from different cultures emphasize different cognitive processes and the effect such differences may have on decision-making.  Her research has been presented at national and international conferences and is published in the field's premier journals and serials, including Communication Monographs, Communication Yearbook, Human Communication Research, Journal of Applied Communication, and Progress in Communication Research.

Dr. David Matsumoto

David Matsumoto (Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley) is a Professor of Psychology and Director of the Culture and Emotion Research Laboratory at San Francisco State University, where he has been since 1989.  He has studied culture, emotion, social interaction and communication for 20 years, and has approximately 400 works in these areas.  He is the series editor for Oxford University Press’ series on Culture, Cognition and Behavior.  He is also an associate editor for the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, and is on the editorial boards of the Asian Journal of Social Psychology, Asian Psychologist, Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, Motivation and Emotion, Cognition and Emotion, and Human Communication.

 Panel 2

Dr. Michele Gelfand

Michele Gelfand (Ph.D., University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) is a Professor of Organizational psychology at the University of Maryland.  Her research interests include cross-cultural social/organizational psychology; cultural influences on conflict, negotiation, justice, revenge, and leadership; discrimination and sexual harassment; and theory and method in assessing aspects of culture (individualism-collectivism; cultural tightness-looseness).  She is the Principal Investigator on an ARO-MURI entitled “Dynamic Models of the Effect of Culture on Collaboration and Negotiation.”  She has been published in many top journals including Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.

Dr. Stefan Eisen, Jr.

Stefan Eisen, Jr. (Ph.D., University of Alabama) is the Director of the U.S. Air Force Negotiations Center of Excellence, whose mission is to design and deliver culturally adaptable education, training, and research in negotiation methodologies and techniques that fosters collaborative relationships, builds partnerships, and finds interagency solutions.  His areas of expertise include leadership, negotiations, conflict management, cross-cultural-communications, military-media relations, training and education program development, organization dynamics, retention studies, and statistical analysis.  Prior to his retirement as a Colonel in the Air Force, he served three years as the Air War College's Dean of Academic Affairs. 

Major General Robert Allardice 

Robert Allardice (Major General, U.S. Air Force) is the Director of Strategy, Plans, and Policy at the Headquarters at U.S. Central Command, MacDill Air Force Base in Florida.  He is responsible for command development of all strategy, plans, and policy, including and maintaining bilateral and multilateral operations, as well as contingency plans.  He is the command focal point for integration of theater strategic activities designed to promote stability, enhance security, and strengthen military interoperability and readiness throughout the Central Command region.  General Allardice is a command pilot with more than 4,700 hours in the C-141, C-5, and C-17.  He deployed three times during the Global War on Terrorism.  In 2001, he commanded the strategic humanitarian airdrop, which began on the first night of combat operations in Afghanistan.  In the opening days of Operation Iraqi Freedom, he commanded and led the airdrop of the 173^rd Airborne Brigade, seizing vital territory in northern Iraq.  Most recently, he deployed to Iraq as Commander, Coalition Air Force Transition Team.  There, he was responsible for standing up the Iraqi air force, under the supervision of the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq.

Mr. Matt Lussenhop
Matt Lussenhop currently serves as the Director of the Public Diplomacy Training Division at the Foreign Service Institute. He has worked in public affairs and public diplomacy in the Foreign Service for over 18 years. His most recent assignments were Information Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Manila, Philippines (2005 - 07), and Public Affairs Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria (2003 - 05). Other assignments include Information Officer at the U.S. Embassy Rabat, Morocco (1997 - 2000); Public Affairs Officer at the U.S. Embassy Muscat, Oman (1993 - 95); Assistant Public Affairs Officer at the U.S. Embassy Kuwait (1991 - 93); and the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh and the U.S. Consulate in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia (1990 - 91). He has also served in domestic assignments in Washington D.C. as Arabic Media Officer in the Press and Public Diplomacy Office of the State Department Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (2000 - 03), and as Arabian Peninsula Affairs Officer in the Near East / North Africa Office of the USIA (1995 - 97). He speaks Arabic, French, and Bulgarian.

                                               Panel 3


Dr. Jody Olsen
Jody Olsen (Ph.D., University of Maryland) is the deputy director of the Peace Corps.  Her distinguished career at the Peace Corps began in the agency’s earliest years, when she served as a volunteer in Tunisia from 1966-68.  In 1979, she was the country director for the Peace Corps’ mission in Togo and later served as regional director for the Peace Corps, managing operations in 17 countries throughout North Africa, Near East, and the Pacific.  While serving as the Chief of Staff for the Peace Corps, the agency expanded into 25 new countries.  Prior to her becoming Deputy Director, Dr. Olsen was the senior vice president at the Academy for Educational Development, a large international development organization.  From 1992-1997, she served as the executive director for the Council for International Exchange of Scholars, the organization responsible for managing the Fulbright Senior Scholar Program.

Dr. Robert Mislevy
Robert Mislevy (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is a Professor of Measurement, Statistics, and Evaluation at the University of Maryland.  He is also an Affiliate Professor of Second Language Acquisition and the Joint Program in Survey Methods.  His research interests apply developments in statistics, technology, and cognitive research to practical problems in educational assessment.  His work has included a multiple-imputation approach for integrating sampling and test-theoretic models in the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a Bayesian inference network for updating the student model in an intelligent tutoring system, and an evidence-centered design framework for assessment.  In 1994, he was elected president of the Psychometric Society, and in 2007 was elected to the National Academy of Education.

Dr. Anne Wright 

Anne Wright (Ph.D., University of Southern Mississippi) serves in the National Security Agency (NSA) as the National Cryptologic School’s Senior Advisor for the new NSA/CSS Cryptologic Area Studies Program.  Prior to this assignment, she served in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness/DoD Senior Language Authority as the Senior Technical Advisor for language, regional and cultural capabilities research and assessment in support of DoD’s Language Transformation initiative.  Earlier, she held positions at NSA as the Director of Professional Development, Director of Training Evaluation, and Technical Director for the National Cryptologic School, NSA’s corporate university.  In addition, she was an NSA Visiting Professor at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC) overseeing the design, development, and implementation of the first-ever, Defense computer-based language proficiency test, the Defense Language Proficiency Test 5.