By Syed Zafar

Culture shows up in surprising places. One of the most powerful differences is not in food, clothing, or language, but in how we treat time. What feels natural in one culture can feel frustrating in another, especially in family life.

The Story

Over 25 years ago, I visited my uncle in Toronto with my American wife and our two young children. Since my relatives had lived in Canada for decades, my wife assumed there would be no culture shock. She was wrong.

What frustrated her most was not language or food, but dinner. She was used to feeding the kids at six and having them in bed by eight. In Toronto, dinner often wasn’t served until ten. As a guest, she couldn’t change the schedule, and the children’s disrupted routine left her exhausted.

To her, it felt chaotic. To my relatives, it was completely normal. And here’s the lesson: just because a Pakistani family had lived in Canada for 20 years, it didn’t mean they had adopted Canadian customs. Nor did they feel a need to adjust for an American guest. Adaptation is not automatic — and it is dangerous to assume it will be.

The Bigger Picture

In the United States, many parents start moving babies onto predictable routines early. Independent sleep is encouraged, and feeding often happens on a clock. In Pakistan and many collectivist cultures, babies usually sleep beside the mother and are fed whenever they cry. The family’s rhythm sets the timing, not the clock.

Those early patterns shape what comes later. In the U.S., children grow up with structured routines: early bedtimes, mealtimes at set hours, and a sense that predictability equals good parenting. In many collectivist cultures, the household sets the pace and children adapt. Flexibility and togetherness matter more than consistency.

I saw this again in Pakistan. My niece’s young daughter woke up crying for candy at midnight. Instead of asking her to wait until morning, the father took her by the hand and walked 15 minutes to a grocery shop still open. He bought her candy and a toy, then walked her home. For Americans, shocking. For him, perfectly normal.

The Lesson

These stories show that time is cultural. What Americans see as structure, others may see as rigidity. What collectivist families see as responsiveness, Americans may see as chaos. Neither is right or wrong, they simply reflect different values. And they remind us not to assume that years in a new country erase old cultural habits. Some families adapt quickly, others slowly, some not at all.

Conclusion

The next time you feel frustrated by someone else’s “lateness” or puzzled by a routine, pause. Ask what value it reflects: family, harmony, flexibility, independence. Time is not just the ticking of a clock — it’s a mirror of what each culture treasures most. Is dinner at ten p.m. wrong, or is it just cultural?

Syed Zafar is dedicated to improving intercultural communication. Born in Pakistan, Syed later worked in Saudi Arabia before immigrating to the United States where he began to see how his experiences integrating into different cultures could benefit his new home of Houston, Texas. Syed is a passionate advocate for equality, clear communication, and education. As a trainer, presenter, published writer, and speaker, Syed has worked to improve intercultural communication for more than 25 years. He is the co-author of, "Crossing Cultures with Grace and Humor" published in 2021.

By Dr. Vahid Ghorbani

Introduction: Rethinking Intercultural Communication in a Changing World

Every day, people communicate across languages, cultures, professions, and social boundaries. These interactions take place in classrooms, workplaces, healthcare environments, international organizations, and increasingly through digital platforms. Although the world has become more connected than ever before, meaningful communication across differences remains a complex challenge. Many misunderstandings in intercultural encounters do not occur simply because individuals lack knowledge about other cultures or do not possess sufficient language skills. Rather, they often emerge because communication needs are not recognized, negotiated, or addressed within specific situations. People bring different experiences, emotions, identities, expectations, and social positions into communication. As a result, successful intercultural interaction requires more than transferring information; it requires building shared understanding. Traditional approaches to intercultural communication have provided valuable foundations by emphasizing concepts such as intercultural competence, cultural knowledge, openness, attitudes, skills, and adaptive behavior. These perspectives have significantly contributed to our understanding of how individuals develop the ability to interact effectively across cultures. However, contemporary intercultural communication increasingly occurs within complex and rapidly changing environments. Digital communication, globalization, professional specialization, migration, artificial intelligence, institutional structures, and unequal power relations have created new communication demands. In these contexts, a fixed understanding of intercultural competence may not fully explain how individuals manage real-world interactions. Working in language education and intercultural communication research has repeatedly demonstrated that effective communication depends not only on what people know about cultures, but also on whether communication environments allow individuals to express themselves, build trust, negotiate meaning, and participate meaningfully. This perspective has led to the development of the Revised Intercultural Communication Needs (RICN) Model, which proposes a shift from viewing intercultural communication as the possession of certain competencies toward understanding it as a dynamic process of identifying, prioritizing, and negotiating communication needs.

Beyond Competence: From Skills to Communication Needs

Intercultural competence models have made important contributions by explaining the knowledge, attitudes, and skills required for effective interaction across cultures. They have helped researchers, educators, and professionals recognize that successful communication involves more than linguistic ability alone. However, real-world communication often involves conditions that cannot be fully explained through a general competence profile. People may possess cultural knowledge and communication skills, yet still experience difficulties when they encounter unfamiliar emotional situations, professional expectations, digital environments, or unequal social relationships. For example, a healthcare professional communicating with an international patient, a teacher working with multilingual learners, or a manager leading a culturally diverse team may all require different forms of communication support. The most important communication needs in each situation depend on context, purpose, relationships, professional responsibilities, and emotional conditions. This observation raises an important question: Is possessing intercultural competence always enough to explain what happens during real-life intercultural communication? The RICN perspective suggests that intercultural communication should not only be examined through what individuals possess, but also through what they need in order to communicate effectively in particular situations. The original Intercultural Communication Needs (ICN) framework, grounded in Triple Needs Theory, proposed that intercultural communication is shaped by three interconnected dimensions: linguistic needs, affective/emotional needs, and cultural needs. The RICN Model builds upon this foundation while expanding it to address the changing realities of contemporary communication.

The RICN Model: Communication as a Dynamic Negotiation of Needs

The central idea behind the RICN Model is a simple but important shift in perspective: intercultural communication is not only about having certain abilities; it is also about recognizing, prioritizing, and negotiating different communication needs. In real intercultural encounters, people do not use all communication resources equally at all times. The needs that become most important depend on the situation, the individuals involved, the purpose of interaction, and the environment in which communication takes place. For instance, in healthcare communication, linguistic accuracy, emotional reassurance, ethical responsibility, and trust may become highly significant because communication can influence safety and decision-making. In education, accessibility, clarity, emotional security, and participation may determine whether learners feel included. In business settings, negotiation, professional discourse, efficiency, and organizational expectations may become more important. These examples demonstrate that communication needs are not fixed. They are activated and prioritized according to context. The RICN Model maintains three foundational dimensions: 1. Linguistic Needs: Language is not simply a system of grammar and vocabulary. Contemporary intercultural communication requires pragmatic understanding, digital literacy, multilingual mediation, professional discourse awareness, and the ability to negotiate meaning. Many misunderstandings occur not because people lack words, but because meanings, intentions, and expectations are interpreted differently across contexts. 2. Affective/Emotional Needs: Emotions play a central role in communication. Trust, empathy, emotional regulation, resilience, and emotional safety influence how people interpret messages and respond to uncertainty. This dimension becomes especially important in high-stakes environments where communication involves vulnerability, pressure, or unequal relationships. 3. Cultural Needs: Culture extends beyond awareness of differences. Intercultural communication takes place within social and institutional structures where power relations, ethical considerations, professional norms, and identities influence interaction. Understanding culture therefore requires understanding the conditions in which communication occurs and whose voices are recognized. A key contribution of RICN is that these needs continuously interact with contextual, individual, digital, and professional factors. Communication success emerges when individuals can recognize which needs require greater attention in a specific moment. The central question therefore shifts from: “Does someone have intercultural competence?” toward: “What communication needs emerge in this situation, and how can they be addressed to create meaningful, ethical, and effective interaction?”

RICN and DEIB in Disruptive Times: Toward More Inclusive Intercultural Communication

The growing importance of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) highlights a fundamental reality: communication is not only about exchanging information; it is also about creating environments where people feel recognized, respected, and able to participate. From the RICN perspective, diversity involves recognizing that individuals bring different linguistic resources, cultural experiences, identities, and expectations into communication. Equity requires attention to the different barriers that individuals may experience. Equal treatment does not always create equal participation. Some individuals may face challenges related to language, institutional structures, digital access, or unequal power relations. Inclusion occurs when people feel able to express themselves, negotiate meaning, ask questions, and participate without fear of misunderstanding or marginalization. Belonging emerges when communication creates trust, respect, and recognition. People develop a sense of belonging when they feel that their voices matter and their experiences are valued. These principles become increasingly important during disruptive times characterized by technological transformation, migration, social change, and expanding digital communication. Modern intercultural communication challenges are no longer limited to cultural misunderstandings. They also involve questions of accessibility, emotional well-being, ethical responsibility, digital participation, and social inclusion. By integrating digital literacy, ethical awareness, power sensitivity, and professional communication into a needs-based framework, RICN provides a perspective that aligns with the goals of DEIB.

Implications for Educators and Intercultural Professionals

One of the most important questions for any intercultural framework is whether it can support people in improving their everyday interactions. For educators, intercultural learning should move beyond teaching cultural facts. Learners need opportunities to develop linguistic, emotional, and reflective resources that help them engage with difference. Language education has a particularly important role because language learning is preparation for meaningful interaction with people whose identities, experiences, and communication patterns may differ. Teachers can support this process by integrating pragmatic awareness, intercultural reflection, emotional support, and authentic communication opportunities into learning environments. Beyond education, professionals in healthcare, business, organizations, and international contexts face increasingly complex intercultural demands. A needs-based perspective can help professionals identify which communication dimensions require greater attention in specific situations. For intercultural trainers and consultants, RICN provides a framework for designing more context-sensitive programs. Different professional environments require different communication priorities. Healthcare professionals may need greater attention to empathy, clarity, ethical communication, and trust-building. Business professionals may require stronger focus on negotiation, strategic communication, and organizational cultures. Furthermore, as communication increasingly occurs through artificial intelligence and digital platforms, intercultural communication requires not only cultural understanding but also digital literacy, ethical awareness, and inclusive communication practices. Ultimately, the value of RICN lies in encouraging a more human-centered understanding of communication. Communication challenges are not always caused by a lack of knowledge or skills. They often emerge because people have different needs, expectations, emotions, and conditions that shape how they understand one another.

Conclusion: Toward a More Human-Centered Understanding of Communication

In a world characterized by rapid change, increased mobility, digital transformation, and complex human interactions, intercultural communication requires new ways of thinking. Traditional competence-based models have provided essential foundations, but contemporary challenges demonstrate the need for a more dynamic and context-sensitive perspective. The RICN Model proposes that intercultural communication is an ongoing process in which individuals recognize, prioritize, and negotiate different communication needs according to specific situations.

By integrating linguistic, emotional, cultural, digital, ethical, contextual, and professional dimensions, RICN provides a broader understanding of how meaningful intercultural interactions develop. Perhaps the most important message of this perspective is that effective intercultural communication begins with understanding what people need in order to be heard, respected, included, and connected. In disruptive times, communication is not only about transferring messages across cultures. It is about creating the conditions in which people can connect, collaborate, and belong.

Dr. Vahid Ghorbani is an applied linguist, language education scholar, university lecturer, and intercultural communication researcher with a Ph.D. in TEFL. His academic work lies at the intersection of applied linguistics, English language education, teacher education, intercultural communication, and emerging educational technologies. He is the developer of the Intercultural Communication Needs (ICN) Model and the Triple Needs Theory (TNT) framework, which conceptualize intercultural communication through the interaction of linguistic, emotional, and cultural needs. He is currently developing the Revised Intercultural Communication Needs (RICN) Model, extending this perspective by incorporating contextual, individual, digital, ethical, pragmatic, and domain-specific dimensions of communication. 

By Doreen Cumberford

Most conversations about global mobility end at the border. At Nomadic Diaries we believe this is where the real work of adaptation starts.

We completed last season with SIETAR’s own beloved Daniel Yalowitz and a rangy conversation that ultimately hit on the heart of our intercultural field: ”Is there more?” 

This September/October Nomadic Diaries returns with Season 12. After taking time off to focus on health and family we will start releasing them by-weekly. 

I am calling it What Happens Next.

There are 12 conversations with authors, intercultural consultants, and long-time global nomads about the part of the mobility story that rarely gets airtime: what happens after the move, or after the return, or after the years spent abroad have quietly rearranged who you are.

I think that for SIETAR members, this territory is familiar. It's the space between all the frameworks: after Bridges' transition curve resolves, after the culture shock chart flattens out, what's happening to the person with boots on the ground.

A few of the threads this season covers are:

• The reverse shock of coming home. Guests speak to what it's like to return to a passport country that no longer fits, and what that means for how we prepare clients for repatriation, not just departure.

• The body's memory of movement. One conversation looks at repatriation through a medical lens, the physical toll of chronic relocation that our field talks about far less than the psychological one.

• Distance parenting and grandparenting. As global careers stretch across generations, we're seeing an entire cohort of families managing intimacy across time zones. This season asks what that actually requires.

• Teaching a culture from outside it. A conversation on presenting Korean culture while living in Germany raises a question many of us sit with professionally: how do you represent an identity you no longer inhabit daily?

• Self-compassion as a mobility skill. Increasingly, the research and coaching conversation is turning inward, not just to the adaptation strategies, but focusing on how well we value and treat ourselves in the process of adapting.  

This season is seeking to connect the dots between lived experience and theory. I hope you will find it a useful companion for when you are washing the dishes, walking the dog, waiting for an airplane or recovering from jetlag! You will definitely hear voices you recognize in this season.

What Happens Next with new episodes every two weeks. You can find Nomadic Diaries wherever you listen to podcasts, or at nomadicdiariespodcast.com. If you know someone whose story belongs in this conversation, someone still figuring out what comes after the move, I'd love an introduction.

Doreen Cumberford is the host of Nomadic Diaries, author of Life in the Camel Lane, and an intercultural trainer and coach based in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico – that is 4 hours away from Mexico City!!

By Ernie Gundling

Artificial intelligence (AI) is evolving at an incredibly rapid pace, bringing with it a changing set of opportunities and potential risks. The global rollout of agentic AI across business functions, including customer service, software development, finance, and corporate communications, presents critical risks related to piracy, errors, and workplace disruption.

In this series, we examine these risks and provide strategies organizations can implement to respond to and mitigate potentially costly liabilities.

How AI is disrupting the workplace

Many workers today are increasingly concerned about the accelerating spread of AI agents and their impact within companies. Among the negative impacts are job losses, unwelcome surveillance, and overreliance on AI by leaders and managers.

Job losses

A number of companies, including Salesforce, Meta, and Workday, have already announced layoffs and curtailed hiring due to AI’s advances in software development capabilities. Additional professions, such as law, finance, accounting, and customer service, are also being significantly affected. In fact, any task that can be easily replicated is potentially replaceable by AI or AI-guided machinery. Whole enterprises are in the process of rising as AI champions, falling as victims to more efficient AI-enabled competitors, or urgently altering their existing business practices to incorporate AI.

Countries specializing in outsourced back-office functions such as the Philippines or India will likely face drastic changes: “Now, A.I. threatens to do to India what its outsourcing model did to the rest of the world: replace hundreds of thousands of office workers.” Outsourcing firms have begun laying off workers or slowing their hiring pace, with as many as 500,000 jobs estimated to be at risk over the next two to three years. Although such cuts may provide cost savings to employers, they will mean large-scale dislocation for workers and their communities. To remain employed, individuals must find new ways to add value when their previous tasks are subsumed by AI agents, and many will need to aggressively upskill to leverage AI capabilities.

Employee surveillance

Chinese institutions have been criticized for large-scale deployment of surveillance and monitoring systems, both in public spaces and in workplaces. The phenomenon of AI-augmented “Bossware,” now spreading across U.S. companies, is less well known. Increased use of this form of worker monitoring, fueled by the prevalence of remote work during the Covid epidemic, includes detailed oversight methods like tracking keyboard strokes, taking desktop screenshots, and monitoring activity pauses.

There is obvious allure for employers in having job performance metrics they can track and attempt to influence. However, the overall impact of such intrusive techniques on productivity is uncertain, not to mention that there is great potential to undermine workplace trust.

Leaders should ask themselves the following questions when considering implementing workplace surveillance systems:

• Will talented employees choose to stay at an organization when their activities are monitored on such a granular level?
• Does the number of keyboard strokes correlate with genuine productivity? Will people look for ways to “game the system”?
• How will strict workplace surveillance affect the willingness of employees to go “above and beyond” their specific job requirements?

AI agents are also becoming a more integral part of team meetings through simultaneous translation, recording of team member interactions, and meeting summaries. As these functions become more widespread and sophisticated, employees may be reluctant to offer candid views or unpolished ideas that they know will become a part of an official record.

A host of vendors are introducing new AI-based support services for teams. AI usage within teams can be augmented by:

• Subject matter knowledge of the team’s area of expertise
• Input of team documents, software applications, and records of current projects and meetings
• Input of team member biographies along with data on the personality and cultural work style profiles of other team members
• Virtual “presence” during team meetings through voice recognition and speech
• Review of interactions among team members, collectively or one-on-one, to analyze performance and suggest possible improvements

Just as personalization of responses to individual users is a major thrust of AI companies (and their advertisers), related technology is being applied to customize the participation of AI agents within teams. This has obvious advantages such as instantaneous recall of proprietary information, or the ability to ask an AI agent with access to a vast database, “What are we missing here?” At the same time, possible unintended consequences of a constant AI presence include diminished psychological safety of team members who know their interactions are being recorded and analyzed. Moreover, well-intended “Human-in-the-loop” policies still do not ensure that managers will have the desire or the confidence to carefully review AI recommendations.

Overreliance on AI

In the rush to digitize complex workflows, organizations often fall into the trap of oversimplifying human roles into data points. When AI tools are deployed without accounting for the nuanced, situational intelligence of experienced employees, they frequently create more friction than they resolve.

Example: AI in the hospital

The BioButton is a small sensor worn on the chest that monitors vital signs of critically ill patients. Although it was advertised as being a “transformational” form of support for busy hospital staff, in practice it reportedly generated frequent false alarms, needlessly consuming additional nursing time.

Nurses who raised questions were seen as resistant to new technology and unable to grasp its true value. However, it turned out that the BioButton’s sensory parameters were too narrow to function reliably. Nurses using all of their senses along with experience-based intuition were able to perceive subtle sensory cues, analyze information, and react more quickly and accurately.

For this BioButton product, as for other systems using AI technology, the initial hype exceeded the practical value in real world settings, with counter-productive results.

The cognitive surrender trap

A recent study by Wharton School researchers uses the term “cognitive surrender,” a type of overreliance on AI defined as “adopting AI outputs with minimal scrutiny, overriding intuition and deliberation.” Research participants tended to adopt AI-generated information even when it was wrong, and did so with greater confidence in the correctness of their responses. “They borrowed the machine’s confidence—always quite high—without checking its accuracy.”

Going back to the BioButton example, the hospital administrators who sponsored the BioButton initiative compounded this form of overreliance by attributing greater credibility to AI-generated signals than to the real-time observations of their own nursing staff, while requiring nurses, too, to respond automatically, even to false alarms.

Such cognitive surrender to AI could affect all levels of the workplace. Individuals may feel it is safer to accept and disseminate AI output rather than to question it, think for themselves, and propose alternative views. Managers and executives may happily choose to delegate difficult strategic decisions or thorny personnel issues—feedback, performance evaluation, conflict resolution—to AI because this saves them time and allows them to assign blame elsewhere when things go wrong.

Mistaken beliefs in AI capabilities could be further reinforced by what has long been known as the “Eliza effect,” or the projection of human traits such as empathy onto computer systems. Users attributed to these systems “intrinsic qualities and abilities which the software controlling the (output) cannot possibly achieve.” Such mistaken attribution of human characteristics to AI is almost certain to increase as AI agents sound more convincingly human-like (e.g., see “Chinese Women Say AI Boyfriends are Better…”), despite their underlying limitations. Employees, managers, and executives looking for convenient shortcuts will find it more possible than ever to assign time-consuming and awkward tasks to AI that actually require real interpersonal skills.

Rather than the upskilling that companies often tout as their response to AI, creeping dependence on borrowed intelligence could result in “downskilling” in the form of underdeveloped or atrophied decision-making and human interaction skills. Such an outcome might sound far-fetched, but a high potential manager in a major multinational firm recently said of her boss just before leaving her job, “He’s much less impressive in person, without AI support.”

How organizations can manage AI disruption

From an organizational standpoint, AI disruption creates an enormous, ongoing change management project. Several decades ago, Peter Vaill coined the term “permanent whitewater” to describe the continuous pace of change in organizations. This pace has only accelerated with the growth in AI capabilities, and the workplace turbulence appears to be moving swiftly from whitewater to a series of treacherous waterfalls downstream. Vaill’s recommended response, “learning as a way of being,” nonetheless remains valid, both for organizations and for individuals. This is the very opposite of cognitive surrender.

Ongoing labor market transformation appears inevitable as AI evolves, and will include the loss of many jobs as well as the creation of new ones. Companies can choose to address this transformation in either hasty, self-destructive ways or through a more strategic approach. Each new AI agent requires learning about how to use it, what it can and can’t do, and how to make improvements. It is critical to leverage thoughtful deployment, iterative development, skepticism of AI hype and hallucination, input from frontline workers, and a focus on where the technology can be best leveraged. Employees going through unprecedented workplace changes will appreciate support, but must also take initiative and demonstrate openness themselves to learning new ways of contributing.

AI surveillance, while perhaps useful for some purposes, is not the best way to win the competition for talent. Beyond deploying the latest technologies, however disruptive they might be, companies will still need to attract, retain, and engage high quality human talent. Research on employee engagement has long demonstrated the continuing importance of having a manager who cares about each employee as a person, positions them for success, values their opinions, and provides feedback regarding progress. These management capabilities are predominantly human, and continuous learning must involve both technical and human skill-building, especially in diverse global workplace environments.

Rather than becoming overly reliant on AI output or competing with it to provide information, workers at every level need to learn how to ask the right questions, assess the quality of the responses they receive, use this information well, and understand AI’s limitations. Emotional intelligence, cultural agility, good judgment, and the ability to align and motivate a team are still vital interpersonal leadership skills: “AI can draft, summarize, analyze, recommend, and generate at speed. But it cannot replace what teams most need from leaders and colleagues when things get real: emotional steadiness, psychological safety, trust, courage, accountability, and the ability to listen and connect when tension rises.”

The changes now taking place, with many more to come, require enormous energy and fortitude to address, and because AI is evolving so rapidly, it will be easy to get things wrong. A measure of human wisdom, creativity, and bridge-building — human-to-AI and human-to-human — can help navigate the journey ahead.

Dr. Ernest Gundling is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Aperian, and has been involved with the organization since its inception in 1990. He partners with multinational clients to develop strategic global approaches to leadership development, teambuilding, and change management. He has lived, worked and traveled abroad for much of his career in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, including six years' residence in Japan. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and is the author of six books — the most recent is Inclusive Leadership: Global Impact — as well as numerous other publications.

(Adapted with permission from an article originally published on Aperian.com.)

Longtime SIETAR USA Member Joe Lurie is featured on the latest episode of SoftPower/FulStories, a podcast detailing powerful stories from fascinating and remarkable guests--ambassadors and artists; historians and health care heroes; fearless Peace Corps alumni, aid workers, authors, and global influencers--whose unique work and poignant stories highlight the often unsung connections and collaborations happening around the world. The episode's title is, "Cross-Cultural Awakenings: From Childhood to The Peace Corps, to the School for International Training, to UC Berkeley's International House and Beyond."

Joe Lurie, the Executive Director Emeritus of the University of California, Berkeley's International House, has a story, a proverb, or an eyewitness account for seemingly every occasion. Here's one from Ukraine: "You don't really see the world if you only look through your own window." From an early age, Joe has not only sought out new windows with different views, but has also made it his life's work to open these windows for as many others as possible.

UC-Berkeley's "I-House" is a dynamic multi-national residential program center serving the campus, local community, and 1,000 residents from more than 75 countries annually. Lurie served as Executive Director for more than two decades and subsequently has been a writer, teacher, intercultural trainer and consultant on cross-cultural communications. His clients have included Google, American Express, the Peace Corps, the Institute of International Education, and many others.

A former Peace Corps volunteer, he also directed programs in France, Kenya, and Ghana for the School of International Training. He also served as Vice President for AFS Intercultural Programs in the United States. His work has been featured on NPR, PBS, Harper's Magazine, U.S. News and World Report, and elsewhere. He is the author of Perception and Deception: A Mind-Opening Journey Across Cultures, and co-author of Close Encounters of a Cross-Cultural Kind.

By Kelli Fritsche

White racial accountability work is never about exposure or embarrassment. It is where we build a learning community to help examine and engage in understanding our shifting perspectives. Ten of Cups Consulting was founded in 2023 and structured in racial empathy, collaboration, accountability, and commitment. Kelli Fritsche and Grey Wiltshire use their knowledge and experiences to create pathways for white people to move beyond performative allyship toward genuine transformation, fostering the kind of deep learning that leads to lasting change and collective healing.

Ten of Cups Consulting offers training, education, and introspective learning for conferences, workshops, and accountability groups. This year, Ten of Cups focused on offering white accountability groups for different professional backgrounds, including interculturalists and mental health therapists. Looking forward, our 2027 focus will be Educational Processing Groups (EPG). The EPG will be a closed-group format, requiring a deeper commitment to anti-racist learning to develop the community we can rely on as we build our understanding and awareness of the impacts of colonization, oppression, and white supremacy. Sessions will vary between mini-lectures, video insights, writing prompts, introspective discussion, and experience-sharing. 

Learn more at https://tenofcupsconsulting.org/

Kelli Fritsche is a 2015 MAIR alumna, former Summer Institute (SIIC) coordinator, and a 2023 degree-holder of UNC-Charlotte’s Anti-racism graduate certificate program. Grey Wiltshire holds a Masters in Clinical Rehabilitation Counseling from PSU and is beginning their PhD in Social Work Fall 2026. Together, they create and co-facilitate accountability and educational processing groups, provide strategically-designed workshops for introspective racial learning, and strive to help white people move through the obstacles that block our racial awareness and growth.

By Carlos E. Cortés, 2026 Conference Keynote Speaker

Over my more than half century of involvement in diversity matters, I have developed a fifteen-word framework for decision-making and personal action:

     Look unflinchingly at the past.

     Apply it to the present.

     Then pivot to the future.

I cannot recall a time when it has been more challenging to carry out such a plan, particularly if diversity is involved.  The past is littered with contradictions.  The present is in turmoil.  And the future is murky.

This raises fundamental questions for interculturalists.  Can interculturalists look unflinchingly at their past as they identify their historical strengths and weaknesses?  Can they apply those reflections to the turbulent present, in which the public square teems with loud and strident anti-diversity voices?  Can interculturalists draw upon this reflective practice to build a compelling vision of the future based, in part, on the critical rethinking of their traditional practices?

As a professional historian, I delight in posing and addressing uncomfortable questions about the past.  That includes critically examining the development of the anti-diversity world around us and looking in at the cracks in the diversity mirror in front of us.  Why has history appeared to turn its back on the diversity cavalcade that seemed so triumphant a quarter century ago?  In what respects has the diversity movement contributed to its own problems by counter-productive actions that have squandered public support and relinquished some of its high moral position?  How can interculturalists best draw upon their historical principles while jettisoning clichéd thinking that straitjackets its potential for the future? 

For much of the past decade I have been pondering such questions, particularly in writing my monthly Renewing Diversity column for the ezine American Diversity Report (ADR).  This year I decided to refocus my analysis in a book, Battlefield Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Building Bridges through Constructive Conversations (American Diversity Report Press, 2026).  It is co-authored with ADR editor Debora Levine.  That book consists of nearly four dozen of my past columns reorganized by theme rather than by order of publication.  In addition, Deborah has enriched the book with a superb set of discussion questions and storytelling activities to help organizations and institutions modernize their diversity conversations. 

On November 5, I will expand upon my thinking in my opening keynote for the upcoming SIETAR USA Virtual Conference, “Root & Reach: Grounding Intercultural Practice While Stretching into What’s Next.”  My keynote is entitled “Championing Diversity in an Anti-Diversity World: Reflecting on Principles, Developing Strategies.”

In that talk I will address fundamental questions that interculturalists need to address.  How are we being driven by the past?  What does that mean for the present?  How can we take greater control of and make a greater impact on the future?

This talk will be different in tone from my October 19, 2017, SIETAR national conference keynote address.  That was then; this is now.  We need to confront what historians sometimes call “the harsh logic of events.”  Stuff has happened.  It is counter-productive to operate as if it didn’t.

In particular, two things have happened.  First, anti-diversity forces have risen with remarkable power and virulence. Second, diversity supporters have had difficulty mounting effective pro-diversity counter arguments and strategies, in some respects reflecting long-ignored fissures in diversity thinking.  My talk will address both dimensions of our interculturalist journey.

There was a time not too long ago when the post-1960’s diversity movement, including interculturalism, seemed gloriously triumphant.  One need only recall the euphoria surrounding the 2008 election of President Barack Obama.  We had overcome . . . we thought.  A future of greater inclusivity and equity seemed like a foregone conclusion.  When my four-volume Multicultural America encyclopedia was published in 2013, it seemed like a monument to a definitive diversity victory. 

Yet lurking in the background were forces and trends that were already beginning to disrupt the triumphalist diversity parade.  Opposition to the diversity movement had never disappeared.  Even with the diversity movement’s broad-scale advances, setbacks were still occurring and expressions of opposition, even hatred, were emanating from an increasing number of voices.  Yet we diversity advocates had momentum on our side, we thought.  Opposition seemed like the last gasp of the old order.  Then occurred a series of happenings that set the stage for today’s display of anti-diversity actions and venom.  This has included the unprecedented internet-based spread of anti-diversity ideas and the growth of scholarly challenges to basic diversity premises.     

At the same time, the diversity movement was undergoing its own internal disruptions.  One of the advantages of being ninety-two is that I was around to bear witness to these changes, although at the time I did not recognize their full import.  These disruptions did not begin to become clear to me until 2018, when I launched a new research endeavor as an inaugural fellow of the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement.

I began that sojourn by addressing a simple but perplexing question: why had so many diversity advocates become opponents of the hallowed American tradition of freedom of speech?  I constructed my research around the examination of the half-century journey of diversity and speech since the civil rights movement of the 1960’s.  This included an anatomical exploration of the diversity movement.

It became clear that the movement fell far short of being a monolithic set of ideas, a caricature imposed by both opponents and supporters.  Rather it consisted of different, sometimes conflicting, strands, each with its own values, goals, and strategies.  Over the decades, clashes among these strands revealed the movement’s fissures and sometimes undermined the movement’s moral position.

I concluded that interculturalism has played an important yet somewhat marginal part of the diversity movement.  It has its own principles and practices that sometimes overlap with other parts of the diversity movement, such as the fabled DEI, but in other respects it stands in contrast.  Yet supporters and opponents seldom call attention to these distinctions, being mesmerized by the diversity movement writ large.

Interculturalism stands for bridge-building among groups, usually referred to as cultures.  It stands for the development of voluntary individual and organizational action to foster intercultural understanding.  It stands for recognizing the basic humanity that underlies more visible cultural differences.  It places a primacy on communication, reflected in intercultural communication degree programs.

While other strands of the diversity movement have drawn at times on such principles, they tend to have different emphases.  Equity and inclusion strand advocates, more than interculturalists, tend to focus on larger societal forces rather than on culture per se.  Critical theorists call for challenging historically-created structural impediments, in the process  questioning the very essence of American life and institutions.  Managing diversity strand supporters focus more on creating and operating administrative offices dedicated to making diversity work for the benefit of organizations and institutions.  Therapeutic strand advocates place a greater primacy on personal offense, with an emphasis on such phenomena as microaggressions, trigger warnings, language equity, and personal safety from discomforting speech.

Each of those strands has made constructive contributions to the diversity movement.  At the same time, each of those strands, including interculturalism, has also wandered into counter-productive, sometimes anti-inclusionary, practices.  The result has been a weakening of the diversity movement at large and the squandering of beneficial alliances.  As anti-diversity movement forces gained steam, these internal frictions undermined the diversity movement’s ability to contest the disruptive forces of reaction.

This raises basic questions for interculturalists?  Do we have a sufficiently solid core essence on which to draw to address current anti-diversity challenges, both external and internal?  Do we have sufficient belief in our principles to provide greater thought leadership to the diversity movement writ large?  Are we willing to commit to the challenge of deeper self-examination of the past and present as the basis for visionary and sustainable future-oriented renewal?  These are the kinds of questions upon which I will reflect at my November 5 SIETAR keynote address.             

Dr. Carlos E. Cortés is the Edward A. Dickson Emeritus Professor of History at the University of California, Riverside, and currently co-director of UCR’s Health Equity, Social Justice, and Anti-Racism curriculum. A scholar, educator, consultant, and media advisor, he has lectured internationally on diversity, intercultural communication, education, government, business, and media, and has served as a faculty member at institutions including the Harvard Institutes for Higher Education and the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication. His books include Multicultural America: A Multimedia Encyclopedia and his memoir Rose Hill: An Intermarriage before Its Time.

By Minal Bopaiah, 2026 Conference Keynote Speaker

Mission-driven organizations pride themselves on serving diverse communities. Yet most are unknowingly deploying AI tools that embed Western cultural assumptions—actively undermining the very people they aim to help.

Recent research from Oxford University tested five major AI models against cultural values from 107 countries worldwide. The finding? Every single model reflected the same narrow worldview: that of English-speaking, Protestant European societies. None aligned with how people in Africa, Latin America, or the Middle East actually build trust, show respect, or resolve conflicts.

This isn’t academic theory. It’s affecting real organizations right now.

The Problem Hiding in Plain Sight

When your nonprofit uses ChatGPT to draft client communications, or your social enterprise deploys an AI chatbot for community outreach, these tools carry invisible cultural baggage. They assume everyone values individual autonomy over collective harmony, direct communication over relationship-building, and efficiency over face-saving.

Stanford researchers found that different cultures want fundamentally different relationships with AI. European Americans prefer control and hierarchy—treating AI as a tool to be commanded. Chinese participants valued connection and felt more comfortable with AI having autonomy and emotional capacity. African Americans fell between these approaches, reflecting their lived experience of navigating multiple cultural contexts.

Your diverse staff and communities aren’t all European Americans. So why are your AI tools designed as if they were?

Real-World Consequences

AI strategist Tey Bannerman shared a telling example: Global payment company Klarna’s AI customer service system initially seemed like a massive success, handling 2.5 million conversations in 35 languages and cutting response times by 82%. Fourteen months later, they reversed course and started hiring humans again. The CEO admitted it led to “lower quality,” with some reports showing 20%+ drops in customer satisfaction.

What went wrong? As Bannerman observed, “Klarna optimized for 35 languages while completely missing 35 different ways humans expect to be treated.”

Consider the scenario Bannerman outlined:

Imagine you’re a global company rolling out AI customer service. Your system learns “best practice”: when customers complain about late orders, “apologise briefly, offer a discount, and focus on quick resolution”.

In Germany, the direct, efficient approach works perfectly. Customer satisfied.

But in Japan, that brief apology violates meiwaku – the cultural need to deeply acknowledge when you’ve caused someone inconvenience. Your “efficient” response feels dismissive and damages customer relationships.

And in the UAE, the discount offer backfires completely. It feels like charity rather than respect.

The pattern repeats across mission-driven work when you deploy AI without cultural Intelligence:

Healthcare nonprofits: Your AI triage system efficiently asks direct questions about symptoms. But for patients from cultures that prioritize relationship-building, this feels cold and untrustworthy—exactly when trust matters most.

Educational organizations: Your AI tutoring platform emphasizes individual achievement and self-direction. Students from collectivist cultures feel isolated and disconnected from learning that should build community bonds.

Global HR: Your AI intake system focuses on quick problem-solving. Employees from cultures that value storytelling and context feel unheard and misunderstood.

The Cultural Blind Spot in Your AI Strategy

Most organizations evaluate AI tools based on technical metrics: accuracy, speed, cost savings. But cultural intelligence? That’s invisible on most scorecards.

The Oxford study revealed that AI models consistently favor “self-expression values”—environmental protection, tolerance, gender equality—over “survival values” like economic security and traditional authority structures. These aren’t universal human values; they’re specific cultural preferences that happen to dominate AI training data.

This bias isn’t intentional—it’s inevitable when AI systems learn from billions of English web pages created primarily in Western contexts. But for mission-driven leaders, inevitable doesn’t mean acceptable.

What Mission-Driven Leaders Must Do Now

Stop treating cultural competence as a nice-to-have feature you’ll address later. It’s a core operational requirement.

For internal operations:

• Audit your current AI tools for cultural assumptions about communication styles, decision-making processes, and relationship-building

• Test AI outputs with staff from different cultural backgrounds before rolling out organization-wide

• Train teams to use “cultural prompting”—explicitly asking AI to respond from specific cultural perspectives

For community-facing services:

• Map the cultural contexts of the communities you serve–not stereotypes, but actual communication preferences and trust-building approaches 

• Pilot AI tools with diverse focus groups that include cultural feedback, not just technical beta testing

• Build feedback loops that capture cultural mismatches, not just technical failures

For procurement decisions: Ask vendors hard questions that most organizations skip: Which cultural assumptions are embedded in your AI systems? How do you test cultural intelligence alongside technical performance? Who provides cultural expertise on your development teams?

Most vendors won’t have good answers yet. That’s precisely why these questions matter–you can help shape a market where cultural intelligence is prioritized.

The Path Forward

The research shows encouraging news: newer AI models can dramatically improve cultural alignment when prompted correctly—but only if you know to ask. Cultural prompting worked for 71-81% of countries tested, dramatically reducing cultural bias when users specified the cultural context.

But this requires something most mission-driven organizations currently lack: deep knowledge of cultural differences and the skills to bridge them.

Your organization’s success depends on understanding the communities you serve. Your AI strategy should, too. Start building cultural intelligence into your AI adoption process now, or risk undermining your mission with every automated interaction.

The goal isn’t cultural neutrality—that’s impossible. It’s conscious awareness of whose values your tools embed and intentional action to serve everyone you’re meant to help.

Ready to audit your AI tools for cultural intelligence? Building strategies that honor both efficiency and cultural competence requires navigating complex organizational change—exactly the kind of challenge we help mission-driven leaders tackle every day.

Sources:

• Tao, Y., Viberg, O., Baker, R. S., & Kizilcec, R. F. (2024). Cultural bias and cultural alignment of large language models. PNAS Nexus, 3(9). https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/3/9/pgae346/7756548 

• Ge, X., Xu, C., Tsai, J., & Markus, H. R. (2024). How Culture Shapes What People Want from AI. Stanford HAI. https://hai.stanford.edu/news/how-culture-shapes-what-people-want-ai

This article was written with the help of claude.ai. As a small business, we thoughtfully engage artificial intelligence to improve our efficiency, while also using human experts to review created content and mitigate bias. Graphic by World Values Survey 7 (2023)

Minal Bopaiah is an award-winning author, keynote speaker and equity strategist. She is the Founder & Principal at Brevity & Wit, a communications & media consultancy. Her first book, Equity: How to Design Organizations Where Everyone Thrives, was awarded the 2022 Terry McAdam Book Award for the book most likely to change the way nonprofit professionals work. She is happiest when sharing her infectious enthusiasm for diversity, equity, and inclusion with audiences around the world. 

Original post: https://brevityandwit.com/resources/blog/your-ai-tools-are-culturally-biased-and-its-hurting-your-mission/

By Karen Fouts and Melissa AB Graetz, 2026 Conference Co-Chairs

Greetings, SIETAR USA Friends!

We are pleased to share that plans for this year’s virtual conference event are moving full steam ahead! Throughout the planning process, we keep coming back to the idea of being both rooted in our foundations and reaching for what is new.

There is something powerful about knowing what grounds us: our values, our experiences, our communities, the lessons we have learned along the way, while still being willing to stretch beyond what we already know.

That feels particularly important right now.

The world around us is changing quickly, and the work of intercultural practitioners is changing with it. But moving forward doesn’t mean abandoning what has brought us here. In fact, we firmly believe the strongest way to navigate change is to know what we are rooted in while remaining curious about what might be possible. We’ve been asking questions like: “How did we get here? What do our communities need from us now? How has our previous work missed the mark? How can we move forward, gain momentum and do good work?” 

That is at the heart of ROOT & REACH: Grounding Intercultural Practice While Stretching Into What’s Next, the theme for the 2026 SIETAR USA Virtual Conference.

As your Co-Chairs, we are excited about creating a space where we can pause and reflect on what sustains our work—and then ask the harder, more interesting questions: “What needs to change? What have we learned? Where do we need to stretch? And what might we create together that we haven't imagined yet?”

For us, “Root & Reach” is more than a conference theme. It is an invitation to approach the future with curiosity rather than anxiety, humility rather than certainty, and possibility rather than fear. We remain steadfast in not being complacent with where we are, but confident in our community to find what's next. 

Stay rooted. Keep reaching. There IS room for both.

The 2026 SIETAR USA Virtual Conference takes place November 4-7. For details and registration, visit www.sietarusa.org today!

By Zdenka Samson, Communications Committee Team Member

On May 21, 2026, the world observes World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development, highlighting the importance of intercultural dialogue, inclusion, and collaboration across cultures. In an increasingly interconnected world, cultural diversity plays a vital role in fostering innovation, mutual understanding, and sustainable development. The observance also reminds us that achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals depends on engaging diverse perspectives and ensuring all members of society can contribute and thrive.

Learn more: United Nations – World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development