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Cultural Fluency
for Global Lives
By Sharon L. Crenson
Wharton and Lauder alumni trade countries of residence, using
adaptation skills in both work and life.
Christine Bourron Tchelikidi pauses, taking
a moment to consider the question: What
are some of the small daily details of living
abroad that make the fabric of her life
different than if she had simply settled
in her native France? After a few seconds,
Bourron, WG'95, G'95, begins to laugh.
She's an entrepreneur who has lived and
worked in four countries, but the first thing
that pops into her head has nothing to do
with business.
Her first child, Chloe, was born in the United States
while Christine and her Russian-born husband, Ilia
Tchelikidi, WG'94, were living in New York City. One of
her strongest memories of Chloe's first days is the warning a
nurse delivered as the new mom and daughter left the hospital.
"No matter what," the woman said, "if you don't remember
anything else, remember to keep the site of the umbilical
cord dry. It must stay dry to heal."
Less than two years later, that warning echoed in
Bourron's head as she left a hospital in France with daughter
number two swaddled in her arms. The attending nurse
commented mildly that Bourron wouldn't need much advice
since this was her second child. "Oh yes," Bourron told her.
"And what we remember most is to keep the belly-button
dry! We remember that very well." The French nurse was
aghast. "You don't know anything," she exclaimed. "You
must wash it every day to guard against infection!"
Bourron smiles as she recounts the story. The most important
lesson she has learned living in France, Ukraine,
the United States and now Moscow is to listen to everyone's
opinions, make her own decisions and be smart enough to
sometimes keep them to herself.
"I think I know now that it is very important to adapt
to a new place," Bourron says. "Just to adapt and not try to
compare." She says that because of her extensive travel, she
isn't held back by the certainty of her own customs.
Indeed, talk to a dozen expatriates and a few patterns
emerge. People who are able to make their lives work in foreign
countries simply tick differently. They are braver. They
are inherently more adaptable. Often they don't question
why people in different countries behave differently—they
simply embrace the differences.
Flexibility and open-mindedness are traits shared by
hundreds of Wharton graduates who live and/or work across
cultures, says Sherrill Davis, managing director of the Lauder
Institute at Wharton, the School's pioneering program in
management, international studies and language.
One graduate says the program teaches "a cultural toolkit
of tolerance, patience, listening and interpretation skills."
Davis says Lauder tends to attract students who grew up
with a parent or other family member who lived and worked
abroad. Other applicants studied in foreign countries during
their high school or undergraduate years. She calls them
Wharton's "global nomads."
Like a passel of other Lauder alums, Bourron was first
introduced to the program by its graduates. She met Nancy
Nicholl-Hasson, WG'91, G'91, while the two worked for
Procter & Gamble in France. Bourron had just finished her
finance degree at Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Paris
and wasn't ready to return to the classroom. But Hasson's
praise of Wharton stuck with Bourron. Later, when Bourron
met Steven Minsky, WG '91, G'91, on a project in Ukraine,
she realized she needed an MBA.
Minsky was directing CDV Apple Computer's launch
in the former Soviet satellite. "Whatever problem we were
facing—and there were so many of them—nothing was
impossible to him," Bourron recalls. "It was really an attitude
that 'I can do it and if I can't do it, I will find someone who
can help me do it.'"
It was a vastly different mindset than she remembered
from her business classes in France, and it was infectious.
Today Bourron is the founder and CEO of
PaintingsDIRECT.com, a New York-area company offering
for sale over the Internet more than 10,000 paintings, photographs
and limited editions prints from about 500 artists.
Its website allows visitors to search for artwork by style, medium,
price, size or subject.
Although the prospect of buying art without being
able to put your nose next to the canvas and, as Bourron
likes to say, "smell the oil," may not be for every buyer,
PaintingsDIRECT compensates by offering information not
available at most galleries. The site includes artists' biographies,
their motivations, information about other works they
have produced, even a nifty feature that allows shoppers to
see their purchases in different frames before they buy.
Bourron launched the business while living in Boston in
1997, then moved to New York—where the money and
artists are—the following year. She and her husband visited
Moscow often, but felt it was too dangerous a place to live.
Then on September 11, 2001, they lost both Bourron's
office and their apartment. Bourron was nine months pregnant,
unable to run from the chaos of Lower Manhattan.
Instead she lumbered. Afterward, when they were allowed
to return home and the business was relocated to new
headquarters across the Hudson River, the couple was left
with the sense that no place was really safe. The family
relocated to Moscow where Tchelikidi works as an investment
banker and Bourron settles herself in a section of their
sprawling home each day to work on her art business. Her
business partner, Pamela Ponce Johnson,WG'91, G'91, also
a Wharton and Lauder alum, holds down the fort in the
company's New York-area office.
Every morning Bourron rises with CNN, then tunes in
the Russian news, shifts to the Internet to see what's happening
in France, then moves on to The New York Times online.
"I am in Russia, but I could be anywhere as long as you
give me an Internet connection," she says, adding that she
relishes the extra jolt that comes with living in a city where
so much is happening in business. "There are so many needs
to be fulfilled," Bourron says. "It's a dream place for entrepreneurs."
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