Who We Are
The Intercultural Relations Institute is a non-profit organization that facilitates collaboration across business, education, and nonprofit sectors.
We provide inclusive leadership education, host conferences, facilitate intercultural conversations, and support youth collaborative efforts. We empower local leadership with its impact extending beyond.
Our Vision
Our vision is a future transformed by social innovation, where intercultural education, conversational leadership, and youth collaboratives create communities that thrive.
Our Mission
Our mission is to empower leaders to relate, interact, and grow to drive personal, team, and collective impact. We provide training and support that create the essential foundations for success in a world that values understanding and connection.
Leadership
Tessa R. Sutton, Ph.D.
Tessa is an interculturalist, connective leader, facilitator, and organizational development strategist with a proven record of helping leaders relate, interact, and grow through intercultural, collaborative, and systems-based frameworks that drive personal, team, and collective impact. Guided by and in partnership with the Board of Directors and Advisory Council, she advances the mission of Relate. Interact. Grow.
Our History and Our Why
Since 2016, the Thought Leadership Conference has grown from a small local event into a large, diverse, glocal experience focused on breaking down intercultural silos in business, education and community organizations. Founded in 2023, the Institute provides additional tools and training to drive deep and lasting organizational change and glocal impact.
Community is the shared physical, social, and emotional place where we live, work, play, and learn. In the best case, individuals’ unique interests, talents, and worldviews thrive and enhance the whole. Life for a member of the collective offers a shared safety and a sense of productivity enhanced by similar educational and occupational opportunities to pursue individual passions and interests.
Frequently, though, communities move away from this ideal by addressing the common good individually and fail to recognize the importance of organizational collaboration to understand and create the shared experience. Only when business, education, and
community organizations partner can they make an interconnected culture and find creative ways to integrate differences, solve problems, and improve their communities.
By working together, organizations can generate more significant change with greater impact than when operating from their siloed sector. Everyone wins when business, education, and community organizations take on social challenges as a shared responsibility.
Working together in the community for the common good.
Everyone wins when business, education, and community organizations take on social challenges as a shared responsibility.