Allyson Stewart-Allen

Why organisations work with Allyson Stewart-Allen

• She has worked with more than 260 businesses across 27 countries, including named clients such as BAE Systems, HSBC, Lufthansa, NBCUniversal, Shell, Burberry and Chanel, which means her advice is calibrated against live transatlantic deal flow rather than secondary research.
• Working with Americans, now in its second edition with Routledge, is the most specific practitioner handbook on US business culture from a non-American authority, and it gives organisations a shared reference point before she walks into the room.
• She is the first two-time winner of the European Foundation for Management Development Excellence in Practice Award, for programmes delivered with Lufthansa at London Business School and BAE Systems at Oxford Saïd, which is rare independent recognition of how her work lands in executive development.
• Her teaching affiliations at Saïd Business School (Oxford) and the Møller Institute (Cambridge) place her inside the senior-executive programmes her audiences attend; she speaks to issues she also teaches on.
• Her media track record, including BBC, CNN, Sky News, Financial Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal, makes her a credible voice for high-profile internal events and externally facing client conferences.

Biography highlights

• CEO and founder of International Marketing Partners
• Co-author of Working with Americans: How to Build Profitable Business Relationships (Routledge, second edition)
• First two-time winner of the European Foundation for Management Development Excellence in Practice Award, for programmes with Lufthansa (London Business School, 2009) and BAE Systems (Saïd Business School, Oxford, 2012)
• MBA from the Drucker School, Claremont Graduate University, where she studied under Peter Drucker; BSc International Business, University of Southern California
• Teaching affiliations with Saïd Business School (Oxford) and the Møller Institute (Cambridge)
• Regular commentator for BBC, CNN, Sky News, Financial Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal

Biography

US market entry is one of the most consistently over-promised and under-delivered strategic moves a European or Asian company can make. Allyson Stewart-Allen has spent her career working on the other side of that problem. As CEO and founder of International Marketing Partners, she has advised more than 260 organisations in 27 countries on how to internationalise their brand, their sales approach and their leadership style without losing what made them work at home.

Her grounding is unusual. An MBA from the Drucker School under Peter Drucker himself, a BSc in International Business from USC, and a London-based practice that has worked with Accenture, BAE Systems, Burberry, Chanel, HSBC, Lufthansa, NBCUniversal, SABMiller and Shell. The resulting point of view is specific rather than diplomatic: most companies fail internationally for reasons that were visible at the approval stage and deferred by the people in the room.

Her book Working with Americans, co-authored with Lanie Denslow and published by Routledge in a second edition, is the practitioner text in its category. It remains the reference most widely used by European and Asian professionals trying to build durable commercial relationships with US counterparts. The programme work is comparable in scale: she is the first two-time winner of the EFMD Excellence in Practice Award, for leadership programmes with Lufthansa at London Business School and BAE Systems at Oxford Saïd.

The teaching continues at Saïd Business School and the Møller Institute at Cambridge, alongside non-executive and advisory roles at the Chartered Institute of Marketing, the British Business Excellence Awards and the Chief of Staff Association. For organisations planning significant international moves, that combination is unusual: an operator with an academic footprint, a published author in the room, and a commentator whose voice their leadership team has already seen on the BBC or FT.

Key speaking topics

• International growth strategy and market entry
• US market entry and transatlantic commercial culture
• Global brand building and brand internationalisation
• Corporate diplomacy and cross-cultural leadership
• Reputation strategy for globally facing organisations
• Building and running international teams

Ideal for

• CEOs, CCOs and CMOs committing to US or multi-market expansion
• Boards and executive committees pressure-testing an international growth plan before approval
• Heads of international, regional presidents and business unit leaders operating across US, UK, EU and Asia
• Leadership development and talent functions designing programmes for globally mobile executives

Audience outcomes

• A practical diagnostic of where a planned international expansion is most likely to fail, based on patterns from 260-plus client engagements
• Specific frameworks for US market entry and working across US-international commercial relationships, drawn from Working with Americans
• A sharper view of how global brand decisions translate into local commercial outcomes
• Reference points from named client programmes recognised by the EFMD, applicable to the audience’s own sector