
MICHAEL GATES
ADVISORY PARTNER
(United Kingdom, Sweden)
Michael Gates is an Associate Fellow of Saïd Business School – University of Oxford, and Vice Chairman of Richard Lewis Communications. He is an internationally recognised teacher and writer on cross-cultural management and speaks regularly at large corporate and government events.
At Saïd Business School, Michael is a regular contributor to the Oxford Programme on Negotiation and the Small Countries Financial Management Programme. He has also taught on a custom programme on leadership for Standard Chartered as well as custom programmes for OPN for UNIDO. He is a regular contributor to open enrolment programmes at the Royal Swedish Technical University and to programmes for TeliaSonera. He has provided cross-cultural training in more than 30 countries to corporations and organisations such as Nokia, the World Bank, Microsoft, Rolls-Royce, Statoil, UNIDO, the EU, Eurojust,Takeda, and the Finnish and Swedish governments as part of their preparations for the EU Presidency.
Michael has been with Richard Lewis Communications since 1990, first as Managing Director of the Finnish company and subsequently Nordic Regional Director. He was appointed Group Managing Director in 2000 and Vice Chairman in 2012. Previously he worked for Linguarama in Finland and, before that, worked as production assistant and producer at Piccadilly Radio, Manchester, with many presenters who went on to become household names in the UK, including Chris Evans, Timmy Mallett, Nick Robinson and Brian Cox.
In 1997, Michael came up with the concept for the world’s first online cross-cultural assessment and cultural data resource, CultureActive, and got it implemented. It has currently got a database of around 85,000 users. He has been published in dozens of newspapers and magazines on cross-cultural matters, including the Daily Telegraph, La Tribune, People Management and the HR Director. Michael has also contributed chapters to books published in the UK, Finland, Denmark and India. In 2002, he received the Most Innovative Technology Award for CultureActive at the US Center for International Business and Education conference, hosted by Duke Fuqua Business School and the University of North Carolina.
Michael has an MA in English Language and Literature from St Catherine’s College, Oxford. He was awarded a college scholarship for being placed in the First Class in Honour Moderations.
In 2016, TransCultural Group Pte Ltd (TCG), Singapore is proud to become a partner of Richard Lewis Communications Ltd, UK (RLC). With this partnership, TCG and RLC’s leadership team will work closely to incorporate Lewis-Model and CultureActive tool in TCG’s Cross-Cultural Competency package and Cultural Exploratory programme.