Stanton DeFreitas: The International Consultant Who Turned Culture Into Strategy
Cross-border business fails for reasons that rarely appear in a financial model, and Stanton DeFreitas built a consulting career around that insight. Long before he became an author, he established a reputation as an international business consultant whose real specialty was helping organizations understand the people on the other side of the table. His Scarborough upbringing and Caribbean heritage had handed him a skill set most advisors have to learn secondhand. Reading the Room Across Borders Growing up amid many languages, customs, and traditions taught him to notice nuance. In practice, that meant recognizing when a negotiation stalled over etiquette rather than economics, or when a market entry strategy needed rethinking because it assumed customers everywhere behave the same way. Cultural sensitivity became a strategic asset rather than a soft skill. Beyond the Balance Sheet Clients came to him for guidance on global markets, cross-cultural communication, and internat...