Melissa Hahn is a highly qualified intercultural expert who brings a unique combination of academic credentials, professional expertise, and personal experience to her work with expat clients. As a child in the border state of Arizona, she grew up surrounded by rich diversity on the one hand and complex politics on the other. Her formative years made her comfortable with cultural differences, curious about other people and places, and committed to helping her fellow Americans shift their perspectives and engage more effectively with the rest of the world. This passion continued in high school, where she delivered her first cultural education workshop as part of an independent capstone project. Yet she didn’t imagine that she would become an intercultural consultant (indeed, she had no idea such a role existed). Instead, she prepared for an imagined future with the State Department by first majoring in Russian Area Studies at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, and then embarking on a Master’s degree in Central and Eastern European Studies at Jagiellonian University in Poland. Along the way, she also married into a Korean American family, and spent time living with her Korean mother-in-law. The combined back to back experiences of living in a very different US region, Korean culture inside the US, and navigating life as a foreigner in Krakow, turned her assumptions about crossing culture upside down. She discovered that learning about a culture, having an open mind, and working hard weren’t always enough. Actually doing culture – living it, breathing it, finding equilibrium, satisfaction and meaning, and conveying respect while preserving agency and autonomy – were another thing entirely. She also realized that what she truly wanted to do was not sit in stuffy high level diplomatic talks or draft policy briefs, but rather, to help people cross cultures at the ground level, in their everyday lives, relationships, communities, and businesses.

 

Over the next several years, she transferred to a Master’s in Intercultural Relations program at University of the Pacific in California, volunteered with the expat organization Families in Global Transition, learned the relocation ropes at several global mobility firms, and took on a leadership role with Young SIETAR – the Society for Intercultural Education, Training, and Research. She also began speaking and writing about culture wherever an opportunity presented itself. The independent consulting journey began humbly, with drop-in classes at a library, guest blogging for other professionals, and lending her insights to teachers and international students who struggled with culture gaps. Gradually, then suddenly, her portfolio expanded, largely through word of mouth as people she helped connected her with others in need of cultural assistance. By the late 2010s, she was writing about culture in Harvard Business Review, coaching expat executives and training global teams at major multinational firms. In the 2020s, she taught intercultural communication at American University, coauthored Forging Bonds in a Global Workforce (a book about building professional relationships across cultures), delivered webinars to professional associations, supported major health care institutions with cultural facilitation and workshops, and co-delivered a leading intercultural certificate program. Today, she is pleased to return to her expat roots by partnering with Geostrata as their Intercultural Expert.