Steven P. Cohen, President
Anthony (Tony) C. Adamopoulos, Esquire -- Senior Trainer
Ambassador Gershon Gan, Senior Trainer
Peter E. Isaac, Senior Trainer
Curtis Johnson, Senior Trainer
Andréa F. MacLeod, Senior Trainer
John Murphy, Senior Trainer
Victoria Perez, Senior Trainer
J. Ron Scruggs, Senior Trainer
Paul McDevitt, Senior Trainer
Richard M. Highsmith, Senior Trainer
Michael Gallagher, Senior Trainer
Raymond Walters, Senior Trainer
Lynne Robson, Senior Trainer
Joseph B. Carringer, Webmaster & Director of Online Marketing
Andréa F. MacLeod
Curriculum Developer and Senior Trainer
When news that a Los Angeles jury had found O. J. Simpson not guilty of two counts of murder filtered through the offices of the Boston Chapter of the American Red Cross where Andréa was working, chaos broke out as the conflicting reactions among employees began to be voiced: straight white women and openly gay staff members express disbelief and outrage as their colleagues and direct reports from minority communities jubilantly celebrated the acquittal. In the face of this deeply divisive issue, Andréa was asked to defuse a potentially explosive situation by immediately facilitating a meeting of all concerned. As a result, most participants were able to identify a) an area of shared interest, b) a sphere of disagreement but mutual respect, and c) a third area, found in many ethnically, racially or economically diverse work environments where no mutual understanding was reached, but the commonly accepted agency mission was used as the glue to keep things together.
Andréa has first-hand experience of navigating multi-cultural work environments, starting with the multi-national civil service of the European Union (The European Commission) where she worked in the Directorate General for Information before moving into journalism as a national news writer for The Bulletin, Belgium's English language news magazine. Her subsequent work as a writer and editor, founding publisher of a regional women's magazine, and as a business owner gave her plenty of experience in negotiating, for time with reluctant and/or high-profile interview subjects, in hiring and managing staff, or overseeing relationships with sources of financing, advertisers, printers, paper manufacturers, distributors and other press vendors.
Andréa's professional experience also includes work in the travel industry as well as providing consulting to major national and international companies - and their employees - in dealing with stress and conflict and communication. Because of her extremely broad exposure to many work settings and cultures, she is particularly adept at helping workshop participants quickly adapt negotiation skills theory to practical tools that relate directly to their everyday tasks and objectives.
Andréa holds a MS in Adult and Organizational Learning from Suffolk University, Boston, where she focused her research on Systems Thinking, Performance, and Self-Directed Learning. Her undergraduate degree in Journalism and Social Communications is from Brussels University, Belgium.
Born in St. Andrews, Scotland, and raised in the suburbs of London, Andréa retains a rusty command of British English and a faint Imperial accent. She is a fluent French speaker and has a dim recall of colorful Dutch and Italian vocabulary from her days as a reporter in the capital of the European union. On her own time Andréa travels, eats chocolate, and wrestles with crossword and sudoku puzzles.
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