Ilona Christl

Consultant

Raised in Germany in a bilingual (Czech-German) family, Ilona learnt about the impact of different cultures at an early age. From her experience teaching intercultural decision-making and responsibility at the University of Regensburg and more than 10 years of working in inter- and intra-cultural training and team development, she is deeply knowledgeable about the ways in which culture contributes to an organisation's success and sensitive to the conditions that enable that. She brings her passion and joy for individual and systemic development to her work supporting clients in their quest for healthy, high-performance cultures.

Ilona started her career as a sociologist. She led an interdisciplinary research project on the Charter 77 signatories, a group of writers and intellectuals dedicated to human rights in what was then Czechoslovakia. Collecting and analysing 30 narratives from these leaders of society gave her deep insight into the interdependence between individuals and the systems in which they work, with a focus on how to nourish both individual and organisational capacity.

Empowering individuals within a multicultural context was the focus of a European Union-funded project that Ilona co-launched for the city of Nuremberg. This project resulted in the formation of the non-profit society Xenos Nuremberg, which has now trained more than 100 intercultural trainers in the business, education and community sectors and of which Ilona is a Board member.

Ilona was also a member of the World Café Europe teams that brought innovative conversational methodologies to Dresden and Bilbao, to nurture in those cities a capacity for dialogue within and among organisations across sectors.

Ilona earned her Master of Philosophy at the Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen, Germany. She has been invited to present the results of her research at several international conferences. She is a trained mediator and HBDI (Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument) trainer. She has done additional studies in non-violent communication and social therapy.

Based in the Nuremberg area, Ilona has lived and worked in France, the Czech Republic, Scotland and Cameroon. She is fluent in Czech, German, English and has conversational French. She lives in the countryside outside Nuremberg with her husband and daughter. Ilona enjoys tending her vegetable garden and loves dancing, reading, swimming and singing. She practises Craniosacral Therapy and is also a passionate traveller.