Alma Soongi Beck is an attorney and diversity consultant based in San Francisco, California. Alma has worked in the diversity field since 1990, and leads diversity training and consulting processes for law firms, companies, agencies, and non-profit organizations on human and cultural diversity awareness, cross-cultural communication, and cross-cultural conflict resolution. Formerly as an employment and labor lawyer at a large San Francisco law firm, Ms. Beck also has extensive experience developing and facilitating harassment prevention and anti-discrimination training, and well as an intimate understanding of the dynamics and challenges faced by lawyers and law firms on issues relating to diversity. Ms. Beck received her J.D. from Georgetown Law School and her B.A. in Ethnic and Asian American Studies from Yale University. Ms. Beck’s current legal work is as a solo practitioner in the area of estate planning and administration, and, for unmarried and same sex couples, domestic partnership and property co-ownership issues.

Alma’s areas of expertise in both consulting and presenting are:

• Multicultural awareness,
• Cross-cultural communication and relationships,
• Cultural workstyle diversity,
• Conflict resolution,
• Team building,
• Outreach strategies for recruitment, retention and inclusion.

Current Projects:

LAW FIRM WORK: Innovations International, an international consulting firm founded in 1983 to assist companies and organizations in improving productivity and profitability through organizational transformation, focusing on the areas of Diversity, High-Performance, Leadership, Creativity and Innovation, Work-Life Quality & Balance, and Spirituality in the Workplace.

LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL and TRANSGENDER ORGANIZATIONS: Alma’s work with LGBT organizations is a collaborative project offered by Alma Soongi Beck and Terry Berman (www.terryberman.com), under the name Berman, Beck and Associates.  The goal is to inspire lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) organizations and LGBT employee resource groups to create environments that are inclusive of cultural and racial differences.