Maria Schmitz studied the German, French and Spanish languages and selected literary works in these languages with a major in French at the University of the West Indies (UWI) in Kingston, Jamaica, and is the holder of a Bachelor of Arts Degree.
She has been married to a German since 1974.
Her professional background in Germany since 1975 includes two and a half years at the Pakistan Embassy where she worked as the translator for the Press Department. This was followed by 7 years in an international firm of German company lawyers in Bonn as a foreign language secretary.
In Hessen from 1984 she worked as a project, media and research assistant for an executive search company specialised in IT and Banking projects. She left the company as Manager Research & Advertising (responsible for approaching top managers and for ad placements), in order to set up her own advertising company for job advertisements. In 1991 she purchased the German licence for the book Chasseurs de Tętes (Headhunters) from the French journalist Didier Pourquery into German, which she translated into German and sold in her own publishing-house.
Since 1999 she has been an active in-company Business English Trainer and free-lance English Lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences in Mainz. Her teaching portfolio includes the elective “Intercultural Competence – German and American Business Styles” within the framework of the Bachelor exams. Expatriate-Training rounds up the services. See also www.cabv-communication.de (www.erfolgsprichtenglisch.de).
She holds workshops and seminars on the topic of intercultural sensitization and intercultural competence.
In addition, she is a member of SIETAR Germany, Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research and a Cultural Detective® Facilitator.
|
