Stanton DeFreitas and the Power of Cultural Intelligence
Cultural intelligence isn’t a soft skill; it’s the ultimate superpower of the 21st century. Stanton DeFreitas didn’t read that in a Harvard case study—he lived it on Scarborough’s bustling streets, where survival meant decoding a dozen cultures before high-school graduation. Caribbean patois flowed into Mandarin greetings, Hindu festivals overlapped with Eid celebrations, and everyone learned to navigate it all with laughter and respect. That chaotic harmony became Stanton’s first MBA. He weaponized that education in international consulting, guiding Fortune giants through minefields others never saw coming. A missed Ramadan fasting cue derailed one merger; a perfectly timed Diwali gift sealed another worth hundreds of millions. Today, his writing distills those hard-won insights into accessible gold. Stanton DeFreitas teaches readers how to read a room in Riyadh the way Scarborough kids read playground dynamics. His columns unpack why silence means agreement ...