Mélanie Larifla

■ 1217 Lakewood Dr. ■ Greensboro ■ NC ■ 27410 ■ USA ■- ■-■ www.X-Culture.org ■ 25 December 2020 Subject: Reference Letter for Mélanie Jo Simone Larifla TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: Mélanie Jo Simone Larifla participated in the X-Culture Project in the 2020-2 round (AugustDecember). X-Culture is a large-scale international experiential learning and business consulting project that involves over 5,955 MBA and business students from over 150 universities in 78 countries on six continents every semester. Over 72,000 students have participated in the project since its inception in 2010. The students were placed in global virtual teams, where each team member was in a different country. Working with peers from around the globe, dealing with cultural differences, time-zone dispersion, and global communication challenges, the teams completed a consulting business project for a real multinational company. The task was to develop a market expansion strategy, including the analysis of the competitive position of the client company, its strengths and weaknesses, threats and opportunities; identifying most promising markets and conducting an in-depth analysis of their economic, cultural, and political environments; developing market entry, pricing, promotion, marketing, and HR strategies; as well as developing recommendations concerning the logistics and product adaptations for the new markets. Before the project started, students received training on online collaboration tools, international team dynamics, cross-cultural communication and conflict resolution, and more. During the semester, the students have had multiple live webinars with the CEOs and owners of the client companies. A number of students have also had opportunities to present their work to and received feedback from professors and top managers of their client companies. We rigorously measure and compare the students performance and rate them on over a dozen performance indicators, including peer evaluations, report quality, timeliness, creativity, and more. This provides an excellent work sample as performance in X-Culture is probably a good predictor of performance in jobs requiring teamwork, cross-cultural interactions, and analytical and research skills. Our records of Mélanie Jo Simone Larifla s performance over the several months of X-Culture are provided below. _______________________________________________________________________________________ 1 . connecting cultures since 2010 _______________________________________________________________________________________ Global Virtual Team Aptitude Test: Successfully Passed. Before the project start, each student had to complete a rigorous global virtual team aptitude test. We measured knowledge of online collaboration tools, the ability to work with information, understanding of teamwork principles, challenges and best practices of international collaboration, and English language skills. Mélanie Jo Simone Larifla has successfully completed the pre-project training and passed the Global Virtual Team Aptitude Test. Notably, these test results were among the highest (Top 10%) in the cohort of 5,000+ students who took the test this semester. Diligence and Ability to Meet Deadlines: High. Peer-Evaluated Performance and Potential: (1=very bad, 2=bad, 3=acceptable, 4=good, 5=excellent) Effort: 3.8 Creativity: 4.3 Leadership skills: 3.0 Collegiality and positive attitude: 4.8 Peer-evaluated English proficiency: 4.5 Peer-evaluated technical skills: 4.3 Overall peer evaluations: 3.9 These are not only strong results and excellent peer evaluations in general, but they are also among the highest (Top 40%) in the cohort of highly skilled and very competitive X-Culture students, and probably much higher in the general population. The students also rated each team member s role on the team. The results showed that Mélanie Jo Simone Larifla was the team s reliable member, who was ma have not been interested in being a team leader, but who could be trusted to complete the work well. Expert-Evaluated Ability to Solve Complete Problems: Each international team completed a consulting project for a real international company and developed an international market entry strategy. Each consulting report was evaluated by several International Business professors and industry experts. Below are the expert evaluations of the consulting project developed by Mélanie Jo Simone Larifla s team. (1=very bad, 2=bad, 3=acceptable, 4=not bad, 5=good, 6=very good, 7=excellent) _______________________________________________________________________________________ 2 . connecting cultures since 2010 _______________________________________________________________________________________ General impression (average across all teams 5.1): 5.7 Executive Summary (average across all teams 5.1): 5.8 Block 1: Market and Competition (average across all teams 5.1): 6.1 Block 2: Marketing Strategy (average across all teams 5.0): 6.3 Block 3: Operations Management (average across all teams 5.3): 6.5 Quality and economic viability of the consulting report and ability to solve complex international business problems: 6.1. Creativity and ability to produce novel unconventional solutions: 5.3 Writing skills, ability to present clear and convincing arguments: 5.5 REPORT SCORE (average across all teams 5.0): 6.1 These are not only excellent results in general, but also among the highest (Top 10%) compared to other 1000+ global virtual teams that took part in the X-Culture competition this semester. Recommendation: Based on my thorough review and comparison of Mélanie Jo Simone Larifla s performance compared to the other teams and students who took part in X-Culture this semester, I can recommend this person for a job that requires work in teams, including cross-cultural virtual teams. Also, I can very confidently recommend this person for jobs that require strong analytical, research, and writing skills, such as business consulting projects. Provided that Mélanie Jo Simone Larifla has learned a lot during the X-Culture Project, I predict even better performance the next time on a similar task. If past performance is a predictor of future performance, I expect that Mélanie Jo Simone Larifla will do very well on team-based international business consulting projects in the future. Most sincerely, Dr. Vasyl Taras Associate Professor of International Business X-Culture Project Founder and Director Fellow of the Academy of International Business, Southeast USA Bryan School of Business and Economics The University of North Carolina at Greensboro-www.X-Culture.org _______________________________________________________________________________________ 3 . connecting cultures since 2010