Women Working Together: Learning & Practicing Tools for Success in a New Society

Margaret Hosmer Martens and Jessica Bethany join the Saturday Bridges Program on May 5 and May 12 for a strengths-oriented women's symposium about building skills to navigate the  complex demands of parenting as a newcomer to America.

Margaret Hosmer Martens is a seasoned senior leadership coach with over 30 years of international experience in consulting and training in human development and organizational change. Her professional life has always been global and she brings the breadth of this experience to her coaching. She has lived and worked in Africa, Asia, Europe and, more recently, the United States, and her experience has long been across sectors, industries and cultures.

Margaret regularly serves as a leadership coach to the public and non-profit sector working with such groups as the UN Secretariat, UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, the UN High Commission for Refugees, and the International Rescue Committee.

For over 20 years, Margaret was an Adjunct of the Center for Creative Leadership, coaching for both their Brussels and Greensboro, NC campuses.   She recently left to focus her coaching on humanitarian agencies and to return to school for an MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. This is to help her new focus, helping refugees to recover from trauma and adjust to life in the United States.  She is also engaged in building leadership skills in grassroots organizations, particularly refugee associations.

Margaret has a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Goddard College (USA), a master’s degree in French from the University of Dakar (Senegal) and a master’s degree in public sector management from the University of Maryland (USA). Margaret is originally from the United States and recently returned after 35 years abroad. She has been certified as an intercultural trainer by the Interchange Institute in Brookline, MA.  She is a dual citizen of both the USA and Belgium, and is bi-lingual in French and English.

Jessica Bethany, a professor at Bunker Hill Community College, has two master’s degrees--one in Intellectual History from Brandeis University and the other from Tufts University in Cross-cultural Counseling. During her tenure at Bunker Hill, she designed and developed the English as a Second Language Program, served as assistant to the president in International Education, and taught both English as a Second Language and American Culture.

Currently, Bethany is teaching the honor’s seminar entitled “Wired for Culture” and a seminar in American Culture for visiting university students from Poland. She has also done a workshop in East/West culture for the honor’s program.

She has been certified as an intercultural trainer by the Interchange Institute in Brookline and has done a number of cross-cultural workshops at M.I.T, Wellesley College and Parenting in America at several Chinese language schools, as well as the communities of Brookline and Lexington.