Piper McNulty: Intercultural Communication Training

Margaret Piper McNulty (IMA-IR) has worked in the field of intercultural relations for over twenty-five years. She has lived in Japan, Hong Kong, Mexico and the US, working as an ESL teacher, corporate trainer, refugee program curriculum developer, teacher trainer and college professor. A short client list includes: Procter and Gamble, Intel, Baxter Medical, Applied Materials, Stanford University, Amdahl, General Foods, LifeScan, 3-Com and El Camino Hospital.

Piper currently teaches Intercultural Communication at De Anza College, Cupertino, California, to both resident and international students in both face-to-face and distance learning formats. She also teaches an Intercultural Communication course as part of the Business Communications Certificate for the University of California, Santa Cruz Extension. Ms. McNulty also conducts staff development workshops for the Faculty Association of Community Colleges (FACCC) and individual California colleges and education programs, as well as skills workshops on communicating across cultures for local electronics firms and other corporate and NGO clients.

She holds an Independent Master of Arts in Intercultural Relations from the McGregor School of Antioch University in Yellow Springs, Ohio (in consortium with the Intercultural Communication Institute in Portland, Oregon), an MA in Teaching English as a Second Language from the School for International Training, World Learning, Brattleboro, Vermont and a BA in Anthropology from Scripps College (through the Pomona College Anthropology Department), Claremont, California. She has attended the Summer Institute of Intercultural Communication (SIIC), the Defense Language Institute (DLI), the Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS) and workshops conducted by the National Council for Community and Justice (NCCJ) and the Counseling Learning / Community Language Learning Institute (CL/CLL).

Piper is a founding member of the Citizens of Cupertino Cross Cultural Consortium (5C's), co-author of The Culture Puzzle: Cross-Cultural Communication for ESL (Prentice-Hall, Regents), co-editor of the CATESOL Journal theme issue on Intercultural Communication, 2001, and author of "38 Critical Incidents On the Job," funded by the Refugee Women's Program, San Francisco, and the De Anza College Occupational Training Institute. She conducts skills workshops on intercultural communication topics at ESL teacher conferences and for FACCC (The Faculty Association of the Community Colleges of California) and other programs and companies around the state.

A native of California, USA, Piper has lived, worked in, and traveled to over 12 countries. She has intermediate skills in spoken Japanese and has studied French and Cantonese. She and her husband, an electronics engineer and native of Hong Kong, currently live in "Silicon Valley," California. In her free time Piper enjoys water sports, dancing, and cooking with family and friends.