Ursula Brinkmann, PhD
Co-Founder and Research Consultant
Ursula is responsible for IRC certification, programme design and research on intercultural readiness.
Psychologist Ursula Brinkmann has over 15 years of experience in the intercultural management field. She conducted her doctoral research on First Language Acquisition at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. She gained her doctorate in Social Sciences at the University of Nijmegen before founding IBI with Oscar van Weerdenburg in 1996.
Dr Brinkmann worked as intercultural management consultant with the internationally renowned Professor Fons Trompenaars at the Center for International Business Studies.
Dr Brinkmann is trilingual in German, English and Dutch. She has worked with multinational corporate clients including Bosch, the Dutch-German Chamber of Commerce, Chalmers Advanced Management Programs, Daimler, Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft, ESCP Europe, Ericsson, Hay Group, ING, Prénatal, RWE, Siemens, and Strategy Academy.
Dr Brinkmann also coaches expatriates for their responsibilities abroad, using the unique IRC as a focus for expatriate assessment and coaching.
In recognition of her contributions to the field and the global network of intercultural professionals Dr. Ursula Brinkmann was awarded the Margaret D Pusch Founder Award by SIETAR USA in 2016.
Her publications include Intercultural Readiness: Four competences for working across cultures, London: Palgrave Macmillan (2014), with Oscar van Weerdenburg; ‘Asia on the rise – Is it the culture that carries the growth?’ with Fons Trompenaars (2005) Think On, Vol 6; ‘Comparison of two instruments of Multicultural Effectiveness: The Multicultural Personality Inventory and the Intercultural Readiness Check’ with Karen van der Zee (2003) International Journal of Assessment and Selection, Vol 3.
Intercultural Readiness Check
Ursula developed the Intercultural Readiness Check together with Oscar; together they published Intercultural Readiness: Four competences for working across cultures (Palgrave). Ursula has certified over 600 professionals and over 20 institutes of higher education in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Australia, to work with the Intercultural Readiness Check. She currently focuses on how culturally diverse teams can use the Readiness competences to solve problems, take better decisions and be more innovative.
Effective Learning Interventions
Ursula develops intercultural learning interventions that are demonstrably effective. She has worked with public and private organizations, among them Asurion, Bosch, Chalmers, Daimler, DEG Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungshilfegesellschaft mbH, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ericsson, Essent, FellowMind, Global Affairs Canada, Peterson & Control Union, RWE, and Siemens Nederland N.V.
Professional Development
In 2016, Ursula received the Margaret D Pusch Founders Award by SIETAR USA, in recognition of her commitment and service to the intercultural relations field. She was a board member of SIETAR Netherlands for six years, and president of the association from April 2015 to April 2017. Ursula is responsible for IBI’s role in the Erasmus+ project CIT4VET – Open Online Catalogue of Intercultural Tools for Vocational Education and Training. She is one of the initiators of ECILP – European Certificate for Intercultural Learning Professionals, a European consortium aiming to introduce shared standards for the intercultural profession.