Meet the Expert
Jason Patent PhD
Director, Center for Intercultural Leadership, International House - University of California, Berkeley
- Expert cultural interpreter with more than two decades of experience with China, including more than 10 years living and working in China. Work has spanned the worlds of education, for-profit business, and non-profit organizations.
- Currently, director of the Center for Intercultural Leadership and chief of operations at International House, UC Berkeley. Formerly, American co-director of the Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies in Nanjing, China, and inaugural director of Stanford’s Overseas Studies Program, based at Peking University.
- Deep connection to China from childhood, growing up hearing stories from his grandparents about “the Shanghai years” – the nearly two decades they called Shanghai home. Stateless Jews from the USSR (grandfather) and Iraq (grandmother), in the 1930s they settled in Shanghai, one of the few havens for Jews at the time. Jason’s father bore witness to both the Japanese occupation and the Communist revolution, before emigrating to San Francisco in 1950.
- Grounded in Chinese culture through education, language mastery, in-country experience, and scholarly research. Fluent in Mandarin, known for uncannily native-like pronunciation.
- At Gap International, a consulting firm based near Philadelphia, led a team of linguists charged with investigating and innovating methods of using language to improve business performance.
Meeting Packages from $400
Your Meeting Package Includes:
- All 7 Best Practices
- Pre-Meeting Discovery Process
- One-on-One Call with Expert
- Meeting Summary Report
- Post-Meeting Engagement
Interpreting China - Helping East and West Make Sense of Each Other
Director, Center for Intercultural Leadership, International House - University of California, Berkeley
Defined Terms
- Culture-general knowledge
- The broad understanding of the many things that can vary from culture to culture, such as notions of hierarchy, gender assumptions, communication patterns, etc.
- Culture-specific knowledge
- Specific knowledge with respect to a particular culture regarding practices and the notions that underpin them. In China, examples of culture-specific knowledge would include knowing that Chinese prefer a more hierarchical decision-making process, more indirect communication, etc.
In addition there are culture-specific "dos and don'ts" such as how to exchange business cards, expectations at banquets and meetings and appropriate gift-giving. - Global Competencies Inventory (GCI)
- One of the main industry standards for global readiness, the GCI is a tool that measures people in sixteen different areas that are relevant to living and working successfully in a foreign country.
- Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI)
- Like the GCI, a tool used to assess intercultural competence. It is the gold standard, the go-to tool, for measuring intercultural competence, especially increases in intercultural competence over time as a result of intercultural training and coaching.
- Intervention
- An intercultural initiative undertaken by a company. Ideally an intervention includes pre- and post-assessments, multiple and ongoing training and coaching sessions. The overall goal is increasing the intercultural competence of leaders and staff.
Interpreting China - Helping East and West Make Sense of Each Other:
Defined Terms
Expert Topic