Brenda Machado

Brenda Machado, President of Intercultural Business Services, provides cross-cultural training services to international businesses, government and health organizations.  She draws from her broad base of multi-cultural living and working experience to prepare top managers and their families to successfully master the cultural challenges of the global marketplace. Brenda’s clients are sometimes surprised to learn that in her spare time she can be found fulfilling her “need for speed” on her Ducati motorcycle.

Brenda understands both the professional and personal demands of working and living in a variety of cultural settings.  She has been married for more than 20 years to a native-German strategic communications executive and lived in the diverse university community of Münster, Germany, for 2 ½ years.  She provided over 3,000 hours of language instruction in Spanish and English and intercultural training to top business professionals in Germany for Berlitz Language Schools. In addition, she lived for over 3 years in Europe's "capital" of Brussels, Belgium providing intercultural training to top businesses across Europe.

Flourishing in a cross-cultural family environment, Brenda was born and raised in Puerto Rico by an American mother and a Puerto Rican father.  She moved to Michigan to attend college and subsequently worked in the travel industry managing numerous destinations in the Caribbean, Mexico and in Europe.

Before launching her own business, Brenda held positions at Electronic Data Systems (EDS) and General Motors Corporation (GM). Among her many responsibilities, she provided cross-cultural team building and workforce diversity workshops.

Brenda has delivered cross-cultural programs to leading organizations in business, health care and education, including Kraft Foods; Procter & Gamble, Hewlett-Packard; Siemens; GM; Becton, Dickinson and Company; Deutsche Telekom; Johnson & Johnson; Avery Dennison; Occidental Petroleum; The Children’s Hospital of Detroit and Wayne State University.

Brenda holds a BA in Spanish, Travel & Tourism from Western Michigan University and an MA in Intercultural Relations from the University of the Pacific. She is fluent in Spanish and English, and is proficient in German. In addition, she is intimately familiar with the cultures of Latin America, the United States and Germany.

Brenda is a member of SIETAR (Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research) and has completed a number of cross-cultural certification programs at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication in Portland, Oregon.