Rebecca Parrilla
Principal Consultant
Company: Language & Culture Worldwide (LCW)Role: Session Presenter
As a principal consultant at Language & Culture Worldwide (LCW), Rebecca Parrilla brings a lifetime of intercultural experience as well as a wealth of expertise with consulting services and learning programs for multi-cultural audiences. A native English- and Spanish-speaker, she has lived for extended periods in Asian (China), Latin American (Puerto Rico), and North American (U.S.) cultures. Rebecca joined LCW after spending 12 years consulting within the global banking industry and, more recently, leading education programming at the university level in Shanghai for two years. She leads the design and implementation of intercultural development programs at LCW, supporting organizations in their goals to incorporate cross-cultural competencies into their worldviews and inclusive behaviors into their workflows.
Her specialty is preparing client organizations to succeed in cross-cultural settings by building cultures of inclusion—starting at the executive level. She helps top leaders assess, understand, and build out plans for addressing their biases and blind spots with regard to culture and difference. She also helps them set clear priorities and direction for their business around leveraging diversity and inclusion to drive innovation and growth at a global level.
Rebecca is certified to administer and interpret the Intercultural Development Inventory® (IDI®) and continues to explore best practices in global organizations through avenues such as the Intercultural Communication Institute and the Workplace Learning and Performance Institute of the ASTD. She is a member of the Society for Intercultural Education Training and Research (SIETAR) and regularly presents at its annual conferences, both in the U.S. and at its global Congresses.
She is also an expert on the nexus point between global diversity and the culture of the LGBT community—both inside the U.S. and globally. She has spoken at Out & Equal and she is co-author of “Cultural Detective®: LGBT,” one of a library of training tools used by many organizations for intercultural competency training, team-building and coaching.
Rebecca’s expertise in intercultural competence, global diversity, and cultural values benefitted from over a decade consulting in the global banking industry with ABN AMRO in Chicago, where she worked with clients in the U.S., Latin America, Europe, Asia and Australia. In 2004, she exited banking to pursue a full-time teaching position at Shanghai Dian Ji University in China, where she remained for two years, developing and delivering creative English language programming to first- and second-year students to help them succeed in one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.
Having grown up in Puerto Rico, Rebecca first moved to the mainland of the U.S.A. to attend Washington University in St. Louis and obtain a bachelor’s degree in business. She later earned an MBA in international business from DePaul University in Chicago. She also studied Italian business best practices in companies such as the Four Seasons Hotel (Milan) and Whirlpool Europe (Comerio) through a DePaul University-sponsored International Business Seminar. Her education is further supplemented with on-the-ground experiences in the UK, France, Spain, Italy, Canada, Bulgaria, Hungary, Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, India, Australia, and much of Southeast Asia. Today, Rebecca and her family reside in Chicago.