About Us
Our Organization
Buck Language and Intercultural Services (BLIS) is a training and consulting organization serving a wide range of clients including multinational corporations, US and foreign companies doing business abroad, NGO’s, expatriates and their families, and individuals. We began as Buck Language Services in 1983, specializing in services for the German/US business community, and in 1994 we added “Intercultural” to our name to reflect the growth, scope and orientation of our services, which include:
- customized foreign language training, including English
- cross-cultural orientation, training and consulting
- preparation for working & living abroad (expatriation & relocation support services)
- proficiency assessment and performance standards design
- executive coaching
- translation and interpretation
Kathryn Buck, Ph.D., Founder and Principal
Dr. Kathryn Buck brings more than three decades of research, management, and service delivery experience to BLIS’s current projects. She began working with business and industry as first Director of Language Programs for the Carl Duisberg Society, Inc., where she designed and established corporate language and cross-cultural training programs and co-edited the publication Teaching Business and Technical German: Problems and Prospects. She has lived, studied, and worked with organizations in Germany and has taught at the University of Washington, and at Brooklyn and City Colleges of the City University of New York.
She has served on the staff of and edited publications for the Modern Language Association and the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages and is a member several professional organizations, including ACTFL, The Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research and the American Society for Training and Development. She also conducts continuing education workshops in methods and materials design for secondary and university educators.
Dr. Buck was managing editor of The ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview: Tester Training Manual (1989 ed.), co-author of “Proficiency Applications Beyond the Academic Classroom” (ACTFL Foreign Language Education Series) and “The Rationale for Defining and Measuring Foreign Language Proficiency in Programs for Business,” co-editor or author of additional monographs and articles, and the recipient of a Fulbright Scholar Award in 2002. (see Awards and Special Projects)
Our Staff
Our language trainers are not only highly-qualified bilingual, bicultural professionals with many years’ experience working with business and professional clients and expatriate families, they are also frequently biprofessional, having a second area of expertise (finance, pharmacy, etc.), enabling them to be even more effective in customizing programs to help you meet your personal and professional objectives with maximum efficiency.
We also work with a number of experienced cross-cultural resource persons and cross-cultural organization development specialists to target cross-cultural training, consulting and coaching services to clients’ specific situations and needs.