Fridays at Findlay Going Global with Julia Sloan

Julia Sloan, Ph.D.

Encountering differences from an international perspective can be challenging for anyone, but intrepid and curious individuals welcome such opportunities. No matter what your occupation or goals, find out at the Jan. 25 University of Findlay Fridays at Findlay how an open mindset, coupled with specific communication tools, can enrich your experiences, strengthen connections, and help others succeed too. Business leaders in particular will learn how increased cross-cultural competency will benefit marketability and their bottom line.

Speaking will be Julia Sloan, Ph.D., an internationally-known authority on cross-cultural communication and global strategy. Questions for Sloan will be guided by Jamie De La Cruz, human resources manager at Marathon Petroleum Company.

The 7:30 a.m. event will be held at Winebrenner Theological Seminary’s TLB Auditorium.

Sponsored by First Federal Bank, the Fridays at Findlay breakfast lecture series is designed to encourage educational opportunities for members of the community, campus and alumni regarding best leadership practices. Admission, which includes a hot breakfast, is $10 per person and $5 for students. To register and for more information, contact Cindy Lahey at lahey@findlay.edu, call 419-434-5334, or visit the Fridays at Findlay webpage.

Julia Sloan is the owner and principal of Sloan International Consulting. She has nearly three decades of work throughout the world with businesses, corporations, governments, NGOs and universities on better understanding cultural differences to improve understanding and effectiveness. She has worked and lived abroad in 102 countries. Early in her career she spent eight years as the first female executive at a leading Japanese company in Tokyo.

Drawing on her own international corporate expatriate and professional experience, Sloan regularly travels abroad to work on-site with business executives and public policy leaders. Her work aims to expand their focus beyond a strategic planning model to include a more expansive notion of strategy that includes innovation and perpetual change. A frequent presenter at innovation, business, and policy conferences in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and North America, Sloan has worked closely with executives from seven Fortune 10 companies; and her client base consist of major corporations representing finance, technology, petroleum, bio-medical, manufacturing and consumer products.

Sloan’s work also includes government and nonprofits, including Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry, the United Nations Secretariat and UN Peacekeeping Operations in more than 30 field missions, the U.S. National Defense University and U.S. Military academies. She also served as an advisor to the Afghan women delegates in the first Constitutional Convention in Kabul, and has been instrumental in supporting the efforts of rising business leaders in war-torn counties of South Sudan, Iraq, Syria and Kosovo.

Her faculty and lecturer appointments include Columbia University, Harvard Business School, Princeton University, MIT, U.S. Military Academy – West Point, London School of Economics, the U.S. National Defense University, Tokyo University, India Institute of Management, and Japan Defense Forces, among others.

Sloan is the author of the definitive book, “Learning to Think Strategically,” which was awarded Best Business Book of the Year by the Financial Times.

Originally from Northwest Ohio, Sloan now resides in New York City. Her educational background includes a doctorate from Columbia University, master’s study from Yale University and University of Alaska, and undergraduate study from Kent State University.

For more information about Sloan, visit her website.

This Fridays at Findlay event will be the first of three to be offered during the spring 2019 semester. The next breakfast, scheduled for March 29, will feature David Ryan Polgar, founder of All Tech is Human. Polgar’s talk is titled, “Emerging Tech and Ethics: What are the Best Practices with Today’s (and Tomorrow’s) Technology?”