A memoir of the author's expatriate life in Italy. Take a journey through the eyes of American, Denise Pirrotti Hummel, as she rediscovers the culture that shaped her up-bringing and ultimately, her career. This attorney, turned cross-cultural business strategist, is now navigating through life and business with a new set of lenses.
About the Author: Until her escapades in Italy, Denise Pirrotti Hummel, had been a nationally recognized international and employment law attorney. She litigated the first class action under the Americans With Disabilities Act and was named one of the Top Twenty Young Attorneys in the United States by the American Bar Association in 1992. During her three-year sabbatical from American life, Denise cultivated a long-time passion that had lain dormant through much of her adult life. She started to write voraciously - first about her family's life in Italy and the contrast to American society, then about travel in general. Her prolific writing led to opportunities in the writing and travel world. She is now utilizing her undergraduate degree from Barnard College, Columbia University, her studies at the University of Florence, and her law degree from the Washington College of Law, as well as her experience in the travel and corporate arena, as the CEO and Founder of Universal Consensus, a company that helps her multinational clients leverage the power of culture to drive profitability, enhance communication, and drive efficiency into the business process. While in Italy, Hummel developed a model of cross cultural analysis called the Business Model of Intercultural Analysis (BMIA) where pain-points of business enterprise are evaluated through a series of six comprehension lenses and used to enhance communication and improve operating efficiency among international stakeholders. She presented her model at the Pentagon, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, during the Obama Administration and has since been accepted to The U.S. State Department Worldwide Speaker and Specialist Program. Through this program, as well as privately, she now performs BMIA assessments and training for companies all over the world. Hummel's clients now span the business enterprise, government and university sectors world-wide, including FedEx, WD40 and Qualcomm. She is also the developer of an executive certification program in Cross-Cultural Core Competence & Global Emergence Strategy for the University of San Diego (USD). In addition to her responsibilities as Director of Universal Consensus, Hummel is the Executive Director of a non-profit organization called Global Peace Solutions where she supports and initiates projects which create cross-cultural bridges for youth world-wide. She can be reached at www.universalconsensus.com.