Shireen Chua is the Director of Third Culture Solutions Ltd. She is a Malaysian-Chinese Kiwi who has been educated in New Zealand completing her degree at Massey University (MSc Nut.Sci). She has spent the past 29 years in New Zealand but goes to Asia regularly as her family is now based in Singapore. Her personal experience of moving between the East and the West led her explore how culture can have an impact in working and personal relationships, and how it shapes our identity. This led her to pursue further study in the area of Cultural Diversity and Intercultural Competence of individuals and organisations. Her MBA from Southern Cross University, Australia included a research project focusing on “Culture Matters: How NZ Organisations develop Intercultural Competency”.
Her previous experience in Project and Research Management has provided an excellent foundation in gaining invaluable experience of managing multicultural teams and identifying factors that shape organisations and institutions ability to develop and grow cultural diversity in their organisations. She has also been on boards of governance and a trustee for not-for-profit organisations over the past 15 years.
After managing several multicultural teams, coaching professionals relocating to Asia and seeing the growing diversity in New Zealand, she set up Third Culture Solutions in order to provide strategic consulting, professional coaching and training workshops in the area of diversity and inclusion.
Third Culture Solutions specialises in delivering transformative and practical solutions in developing inclusive practices that organisations can develop belonging. This involves speaking, running workshops in unconscious bias, developing cultural intelligence and culture specific contexts. Shireen and her team of Associates work with small and large organisations to develop diverse teams into high performing teams. Their clients range from the corporate sector, local government as well as not for profit organisations.
She is certified Professional Coach, gaining her ACC with the International Coach Federation and is also certified by the Cultural Intelligence Center as a CQ Trainer (Advanced). This allows her to facilitate “Developing Cultural Intelligence workshop” using the Cultural Intelligence (CQ) assessment tool. She also certified to train using the Global DiSC.
