About the Company

CultureConnect provides the highest quality learning experiences to the global marketplace allowing our customers to confidently maneuver through cross-cultural interaction issues, improving profitability and satisfaction in business and personal realms.

Every business activity has cultural components facilitating success or failure. Success has its foundation in the ability of people to work effectively across cultures – to navigate with confidence the communication requirements of evolving corporate cultures and multi-national environments.

CultureConnect addresses the business dynamics of change from a cross-cultural perspective. Globalization, mergers and acquisitions, downsizing and reorganizations, rapid growth, and foreign expansions ideally require new initiatives to be in place to manage and accelerate the change process.

Our goal is to address immediate challenges and to help structure the corporate and management framework needed to manage their evolution. We provide strategies and tactics that create organizational cross-cultural competence, ultimately yielding competitive advantage.

CultureConnect: Principal Biographies

Claudia Jaccarino
As a cross-cultural consultant, Claudia Jaccarino brings an overseas background which includes travel to every continent except Antarctica. Through this experience, she developed a first hand sensitivity to and appreciation for adjusting to other cultures.

She has been a speaker for the International Trade Association of Chicago, the World Trade Institute, Northwestern University School of Law, and the College of Du Page on various topics relating to cross-cultural communication.

During the past fifteen years Jaccarino has been a professional development consultant for Fortune 500 companies including Motorola, Inc., SBC(Ameritech), Brunswick Corp., and Boehringer-Ingelheim.

Jaccarino has coached and trained senior executives and their families on cross-cultural adaptation for companies including Whirlpool Corp., Daimler-Chrysler, and Baxter Corp.

Penny Kendall
Penny Kendall brings twenty years of experience in developing protocol, customized strategies, and initiatives for state, national, and international entities. She has worked with the Presidents of China, Hungary, Uruguay, the Philippines, Japan and Korea, as well as ambassadors worldwide.

Charged with creating relationships between foreign heads of state, business leaders, communities and Illinois government, Kendall skillfully negotiated the cross-cultural terrain necessary for developing diplomatic ties. As the Asian liaison for the State of Illinois, Kendall provided cross cultural opportunity and communication to State programming for the multi-national communities.

Kendall has been the recipient of several awards denoting community service, most recently one from the US Department of State, Department of Justice, entitled the “Just Works Award.”

The CultureConnect Team

Our consultants bring a rare blend of experience, personality, and intuitive people skills to every client engagement. Our backgrounds are as diverse as the industries we serve and include country-specific business, financial and general management, Six Sigma and project management, and cross cultural competence experts.