All about Culture Clear
Making culture...clear
Delphine Ménard founded Culture Clear to talk to people who want to know more about their colleagues, partners and customers on the cultural level.
She believes that taking culture into account is one of the cornerstones of productive and efficient communication. In today's world, where the economy is ever changing, Culture Clear provides services that allow you and your organisation to better tap into your existing human resources, optimize your communication and overcome and respect differences to turn them into a strength on every market and in every situation.
Culture Clear aims at making cultural issues crystal clear, and this on a national, international, corporate or even personal level, by providing working tools and insight into working cultural models.
Culture Clear often works with Isocel, a French consultancy firm specialised in change management and strategic consulting, and their German partner Trilogie.
Delphine Ménard's path through cultures
Delphine Ménard's cultural roots lie in Carcassonne, France. She started her intercultural training as she left home at age 15 to study in the US, in New Mexico in an international school. The UWC of the American West, where she studied with 199 other students from 80 different countries taught her curiosity about and respect for cultures different from her own. She came back to France to study Political Sciences in Bordeaux, which she finished spending a year in Austria as an Erasmus exchange student. She finished her studies in Lille, France, where she obtained a post-graduate degree in international communication.
From Political Sciences and International Communication, much to her delight, she sprang into the wine business, first working as an interpreter for an Australian flying Wine maker and later in a million-bottle selling domaine. The wine industry taught her that intercultural means not only being from different national backgrounds, but also from different social or traditional backgrounds within a same country or region.
After a few years, she decided to leave the South of France and the wine business and worked as an event manager for about 8 years, cruising Europe to organize BtoB or BtoC events, putting her skills to use in ensuring people meet productively.
She discovered Wikipedia a few years ago and became an active volunteer on the organisational level. As a volunteer and as a contractor, she put her skills to use organising three Wikimanias (the Wikimedia International Conference) in 2005, 2006 and 2008 on three continents (Frankfurt, Germany, Harvard Law School Cambridge, USA and the Library of Alexandria in Egypt. She also occupied the consulting position of Chapters Coordinator for the Wikimedia Foundation, coordinating and helping foster the 20 (now 40) national Wikimedia chapters. Through her Wikimedia experience, Delphine gained insight into the culture of online communities, with a specific focus on Open Source, Free Knowledge and Collaborative work.
She still volunteers for Wikimedia, as member of the Fund Dissemination Committee
Delphine lives in Germany with her companion Arne and their two children. In her free time, she loves to read, hike and go nordic walking. She's not a fish but loves to swim. She's a bit of a geek and also designs websites, builds computers, she blogs and twitters as well as participates in many open source projects. She speaks French, English and German fluently, and gets by pretty well in Spanish and Italian.