Meet the Board

Adrian has worked for over 30 years in the area of international communication, as a trainer, consultant, writer of training materials and trainer trainer. He has lived and worked in France, Portugal, Belgium and Spain, and runs his own training and consulting company LTS training and Consulting, based in Bath. Adrian sees his primary role at SIETAR UK as an ambassador to convince trainers and would-be trainers of the benefits of being part of the SIETAR network both in terms of what they can learn and what they can share with others.

Guy Bondonneau is an intercultural consultant and trainer focusing on building bridges between people of different cultures. He draws on his personal multicultural life experience and a diverse professional life. After finishing his civil engineering studies in Zurich, he came to London; after a stint at the French Chamber of Commerce he went into banking, then worked as a purchasing agent for a Saudi company for their projects in Saudi Arabia, as an interior designer, and a web designer before turning to his multicultural roots helping people to become interculturally competent. Guy is always interested in learning about people, thoughts and things.

Johanna is a global business consultant with focus on inclusion & diversity, communication & culture, and learning & development. After spending 6 years at Willis Towers Watson delivering global projects to FTSE 100 clients, she now advises corporates and public organisations on responsible business, working for Business In The Community. Johanna holds an MSc with distinction in Intercultural Business Communication from Edinburgh Napier University and speaks five languages – guess which ones.

Katharina is an Assistant Professor at the University of Warwick in Applied Linguistics with experience in intercultural training and development. Her research interests focus on the acculturation of host community nationals towards multicultural societies, Universities and workplaces. She has an MSc and PhD in Cross-Cultural Psychology and has worked in the USA, Belgium, Germany and the UK.

After training in London and Nanjing, China as an acupuncturist, Charmian has devoted much of her professional life to adapting a medical system from a radically different culture to work and thrive in a Western setting. She was Cofounder and Director of The Birmingham Centre for Chinese Medicine for over a decade. Charmian then turned to developing the acupuncture profession within the sphere of higher education, designing and delivering one of the UK’s few BSc Acupuncture degrees at The University of East London, where she was Course Leader and Senior Lecturer from 2004 to 2014. Prior to this, she taught Film Studies in the School of Continuing Studies at The University of Birmingham. Bringing these two interests together, Charmian gained an MA (Distinction) in Intercultural Communication in which she explored the challenges in blending medical systems from divergent cultures and examined cinema as a powerful tool in overcoming harmful cultural divides and misunderstandings.

Felicia has pursued an international career in branding working for global communication agencies such as Ogilvy and Dentsu. Her work took her from her native Austria to France, the U.S. and eventually to China, where she spent 13 years and specialized in strategic planning and consumer insights. Currently based in London, Felicia helps brands and companies understand the Chinese consumer through cultural insight research and achieve effective business objectives through cross-cultural communication training. She has worked extensively with HR teams, delivered business skills courses as well as global mobility workshops including to youth. She has experience across a number of sectors such as automobile, luxury, cosmetics, retail and fast moving consumer goods.

Born and raised in Saudi Arabia, Faeza Afzal is a Bangladeshi-Canadian who studied Economics and Management at the University of Oxford and now works at The London School Group. Her career has spanned multiple cities and sectors including school administration in Jeddah, higher education recruitment and online media marketing in Toronto, as well as banking, events and intercultural training in London. Her diverse background allows her to bring an international perspective to her professional roles and she enjoys learning about new cultures and sharing about her international experiences.

Seiji is a digital learning designer/developer and intercultural trainer with a focus on seeking a better way to connect people, cultures and technologies. After living outside of Japan for 10 years and obtaining an MA in Intercultural Communication, he decided to experiment, becoming a Japanese salaryman himself in order to observe and analyse the deeply rooted distinctive culture. He has worked as an IT consultant, HR Manager and has a great interest in Language and Personality.