brigitte

Brigitte Opel

Brigitte Opel has lived and worked in Germany, Netherlands, Japan, USA, Australia and Russia and visited many more. She consults multinational teams and college classes on intercultural communication to improve their communication and their business results.

about

Brigitte has been consultant for cross-cultural management since 2013. Born and raised in Germany, she quickly started exploring the world by learning foreign languages and immersing in other cultures. She has lived, studied and worked in Germany, Netherlands, Japan, USA, Australia and Russia and visited many more. After her studies at Thunderbird School of International Management (USA and Japan) and a career as international project and people manager at IBM, she decided to combine her professional and personal global experiences with the Hofstede model on National Cultures.

Besides consulting on cultural awareness in general, she has helped clients prepare for negotiations with international partners, improve the communication in a virtual team, develop sales presentations to foreign customers and gain sensitivity on different communication styles. In individual coaching sessions, she also helped expats to learn about the culture of the country of their next assignment. She has lectured at many Dutch universities on various aspects of National Culture (Communication, advertising, teamwork, sports, Brexit etc).

 

Honours and Awards 

  • Member of DNHK (Dutch-German Chamber of Commerce)
  • Chapter Leader of Thunderbird Alumni Group Netherlands
 

Other Qualifications

  • Certified College Lecturer
  • Certified XR practitioner

Expert in

Leadership Development, Intercultural competence, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Industry

IT and Telecommunications, Management

Certifications

Intercultural Management, Organisational Culture, Trust,

Worked and lived in

The Netherlands, Germany

Languages

German, Dutch, English

Travels from

The Netherlands

I attended the course you ran for PWN (Professional Women's Network) and have used the insights I gleaned about the Dutch culture in my sessions with RBS Netherlands. Really helpful, thanks, Brigitte! Recommend this course to anyone seeking to gain a deeper understanding of working cross-culturally.

Joanna Polak-Goodman

@CitiesChallenge (IBM) thank you Brigitte for insights in cultural differences.

Warner Dijkhuizen

Truly excellent workshop, very well presented and informative. It's an interesting topic and she had some interesting insights and theory. I really enjoyed the historic examples of how prejudice developed, that helps to overcome them.

Students at TU Delft