Shift Intercultural

Consulting

Commitments

04. Offering a no-shame approach to cultural capacity building

05. Embedding opportunities for learners to actively practice leadership skills

01. Customizing services to your needs and goals

02. Cultivating active and inclusive learning environments

03. Employing research-based training methods

Services

Shift Intercultural Consulting helps organizations and businesses increase their intercultural capacity. We help clients cultivate robust and culturally aware programs and teams.

  • Our high-impact workshops and seminars help your team communicate more effectively, acquire broader perspectives, bridge differences, and cultivate an authentic sense of belonging.

  • The IDI is the premier assessment tool for measuring and enhancing intercultural capacity at an individual and an organizational level. With over ten years of experience as a Qualified Administrator, I offer expert feedback and coaching sessions that will help you and your organization fuel measurable growth.

  • Using research-based metrics, I help organizations assess the effectiveness of their inclusion, and intercultural learning programs to ensure that time and resources are invested wisely.

  • If you’re looking to offer in-house intercultural or inclusivity courses but don’t have the bandwidth to develop them, Shift Intercultural can help. We offer fully-fledged curriculum development packages customized to the needs of your organization and learners.

  • Engaging and thought-provoking talks on a variety of intercultural themes such as authentic cultural adaptation, navigating cross-cultural friendships, and maintaining a bilingual and bicultural identity.

Biography

With a 20-year career in global and higher education, Dr. Elsa Maxwell founded Shift in 2024 to provide cutting-edge training and development services worldwide. A seasoned trainer, coach, and scholar-practitioner, Dr. Maxwell is bicultural and bilingual (Spanish-English). For 16 years she provided her intercultural training and development expertise from her base in Chile to a global organization with sites in over 25 countries worldwide. Dr. Maxwell resides in Duluth, Minnesota, and Salt Lake City, Utah.

Testimonials

“

Elsa combines current research with practical and stimulating activities in order to lay a solid foundation for your own intercultural journey.  During my work experience in Chile, Elsa’s instruction method taught me not only how to develop my own intercultural understanding, but how to share that knowledge and developmental focus with others. She is a skilled interculturalist with experience facilitating intercultural development and education for businesses and classrooms worldwide.

Daniel Solomon, MA, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey

“

Dr. Maxwell is a brilliant facilitator, teacher and coach. She trained my team of international educators to engage more deeply with each other and students, through intercultural competence. Her years of experience have given her a wealth of examples and an exceptional ability to frame cultural complexity in a way that is accessible to everyone.”

Marion Tizón, Director, Office of Latine Achievement, Minneapolis Public Schools 

“

Dr. Maxwell has a remarkable talent for making others feel heard and not judged. With Elsa facilitating a training session, participants feel secure and confident enough to really open up. How does she do it (again and again)? Equanimity, poise, timing: all the classic skills of a great facilitator undoubtedly come into play. But more importantly, I think, is that Dr. Maxwell is in fact listening with an open mind. And thus, a magic circle is drawn, a safe space for experimentation, exploration, and (self-)discovery.

Sean McIntyre, PhD, Stanford University

“

Elsa’s work stands out because of her breadth of knowledge and experience -as a successful scholar and as someone who has worked with NGOs for over a decade- and her demeanor: she is deeply empathetic, she communicates from the heart and mind, and she is incredibly skilled at bringing diverse people together through dialogue and hands-on practice. Her scholarly publications, presentations, as well as the seminars she has organized in recent years, have been crucial to my appreciation of interculturality as a concept with diverse meanings and histories.

Allison Ramay, PhD, UCLA

Associate Professor, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile & Adjunct Researcher, Center for Intercultural and Indigenous Studies

“

Dr. Elsa Maxwell is an exceptional educator, committed to continually innovating and advancing teaching practices and curriculum to meet our increasingly connected, globalized society. Drawing on both her academic expertise and varied international teaching experiences, she is a leader in intercultural learning and teaching. Dr. Maxwell simultaneously situates her teaching within the local context and engages learners with perspectives and knowledge from diverse communities throughout the world. An expert pedagogue, she expands the knowledge, skills, and perspectives of all those who are fortunate enough to learn with her.”

Dr. Mandy Menke, Director of Language Programs, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Minnesota

Qualifications

Doctorate in Hispanic American Literature and Masters in Latin American Studies, Universidad de Chile

B.A. Augsburg University, Minneapolis, USA

Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) Qualified Administrator

Career Readiness Teaching Fellow, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Certificate in Afro-Latin American Studies, Harvard University