Richard D. Lewis has been active in the fields of applied and anthropological linguistics for over 50 years. His work in several fields of communicative studies has involved him in the organization of courses and seminars for many of the world’s leading industrial and financial companies.
In the late 1950s, he worked for two years for the Deutsche Welle and the Nordwest-deutsche Rundfunk and was also a scriptwriter for Dr. Konrad Adenauer.
In 1961 he pioneered the world’s first English by Television series, produced by Suomen Televisio and subsequently was scriptwriter for the first BBC series “Walter and Connie,” in 1962.
He has lived and worked in several European countries, where his clients included ABB, Allianz, Banco de España, Banque de France, BearingPoint, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Telekom, Fiat, France Telecom, Gillette, IBM, Kraft, Mercedes Benz, Microsoft, Nestlé, Nokia, Nordea, Rolls Royce, Saab, SAP, Sony Ericsson, Unilever and Volvo.
He also spent five years in Japan where he was tutor to Empress Michiko and other members of the Japanese Imperial Family. During this period, his services were requested by firms such as Nomura, Mitsubishi, Hitachi, Sanyo, Mitsui and Nippon Steel.
More recently he has been heavily involved in the intercultural field, founding companies in France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Brazil, teaching communication skills in these countries as well as Finland, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the U.S., where he is currently cross-cultural consultant to the World Bank.
Mr. Lewis, who speaks ten European and two Asiatic languages, is Chairman of Richard Lewis Communications plc, an international institute of language and crosscultural training with offices in over a dozen countries. He founded the quarterly magazine Cross Culture in 1989. When Cultures Collide is regarded as the classic work on intercultural issues and was the Spring main selection of the U.S. Book of the Month Club in 1997. It has sold around 1 million copies in 15 different languages.
Richard Lewis was chosen as the Personality of the Year 1999 by PATA (the Pacific Asia Travel Association) and was given the award on the basis of “the dedicated and extraordinary work carried out in the area of cross-cultural communication, having clear understanding and sensitivity for the cultures in the Asia/Pacific.”
Mr. Lewis was knighted by President Ahtisaari of Finland in March 1997 in recognition of his services in the cross-cultural field relating to the training of Finnish Ministries for EU entry (1995) and the EU Presidency (1999). In 2009 he was elevated to the rank of Knight Commander.