Lisa Marie Adorno is an independent contractor and consultant in intercultural communications, expatriate integrations and corporate trainings. In 1992, LisaMarie joined the Multicultural Alliance, a program that helped students of color gain Master Degrees in Education as well as internship opportunities with private schools, which had a fairly homogeneous administration and teaching staff. While taking her master’s courses, she facilitated workshops and classroom trainings on Diversity and Inclusion, drawing upon content from the Multicultural Alliance and the Anti-Defamation league. In 1994, while returning to United Airlines as a flight attendant from an educational leave, she was selected to co-facilitate with Executive Diversity Services in facilitating trainings to 19,000 flight attendants in the areas of Diversity and Inclusion, Cross-Cultural Communications, Conflict Resolution and Harassment in the workplace. The overriding objective of the training was aimed at improving flight attendant skills, Communication among Cross-Cultural teams, Conflict Resolution, and the avoidance of Sexual Harassment in the workplace. At the conclusion of this in-service training effort, she went on to become a corporate facilitator/trainer/change agent, assisting United Airlines in the launching of the Shuttle by United project, an endeavor that placed UAL as the number one airline of choice in both the international and local shuttle market.
After taking an early retirement from United Airlines, she received an MBA from the University of San Francisco. During this interim period of post-graduate study, she was active in professional real estate activities such as selling homes and relocating ex-patriots and key personnel across cultural and geographical boundaries. In this capacity, she continued her in-service staff development activities, organizing and facilitating small workshops for ReMax Gold on “Selling to Today’s Diverse Clientele.”
In addition to the training expertise and design development she brings to the Intercultural communications field, she also possesses personal traits and characteristics that enhance and promote behavior modification in her clients during training. Being of Puerto Rican descent, her bilingual English/Spanish communication skills provide her with unique cultural insights into the Hispanic community, which promote the resolution of conflict between two communities. Her infectious energy and wonderful sense of humor are incorporated in her training activities, making her sessions interesting and providing comic relief that minimizes the stress and tensions that frequently prevail in cross-cultural training sessions. LisaMarie’s training sessions are further enhanced by the global perspective she has developed from her extensive travel around the world as well as her time living abroad in Japan and Mexico while working with United Airlines. Moreover, she has a keen awareness of the difficulties of conflict resolution as it enfolds in the corporate and educational workplace. She also has an in-depth awareness of intercultural training challenges as with respect to building well managed heterogeneous teams, pre-departure/relocations, and cross cultural communications.
Lastly, she sits on the board for the San Francisco chapter of NSHMBA as the VP of Fundraising. She is passionate about education and hopes to serve as a role model for Hispanics who are unaware of the potentials available to them through higher education. She once saw this saying, “Who said the sky is the limit, when there are footprints on the moon” and felt it apropos to her vision of helping others succeed.
