IN PROFILE: Lynn Imai

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By Stefanie Masotti
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Cross-cultural traveler lands at Ivey
 
 
Lynn Imai's passion for new cultural experiences eventually brought her to London where she is an assistant professor of organizational behaviour at the Richard Ivey School of Business at The University of Western Ontario.
 
From the ancient city of Kamakura to the Hollywood lights of Los Angeles, and from the ‘Hockey Town’ of Toronto down south to Washington, D.C., Lynn Imai calls each one home.
 
Her passion for new cultural experiences eventually brought her to London where she is an associate professor of organizational behaviour at the Richard Ivey School of Business at The University of Western Ontario.
 
Imai teaches cross-cultural management, illustrating how everyone comes from different cultural backgrounds. In one country, the ‘right’ way of doing something may be the ‘wrong’ way in a different country. Imai shows her students how to bridge the gap of cultural differences when doing business with other countries.
 
Her interest in cultures stems from personal experience. She describes herself as a “third-culture kid” growing up. These are children who spend much of their developmental years jumping from country to country.
 
“It was hard,” she says. “I had to define for myself what it meant to be Japanese and what it meant to be American.”
 
Imai and her family moved to the United States when she was 4-years-old. The corporation her father worked for in Kamakura, Japan, where she was born in 1980, transferred her family to Los Angeles. Throughout her time in the United States, she was told adapting to Western customs was temporary, so her Japanese family continued to speak, read and write Japanese at home.

From Grade 1 through 5, she spent 10 hours a day in school – ‘American’ school during the day and ‘Japanese’ school at night – so when she would return to Japan, she would be up to speed in her academics.

Imai and her family were supposed to return to Japan after two years. But because of her father’s success, Imai’s family continued to live abroad for an additional 26 years.
 
While growing up in L.A., Imai’s father gave her advice to help cope with the challenge of keeping her culture while assimilating into her new environment. “Explore as many things as possible when you’re young, when your mind is flexible. Be open-minded. Be true to yourself,” he told her.
 
Imai continued to follow her father’s advice when she and her family were transferred to Toronto when she was in Grade 5.
 
In 1999, she continued her education at the University of Toronto. There, her fascination with other cultures grew. She traded in her pre-med courses and began studying behavioural psychology.
 
Before her graduating year at U of T, in 2003, Imai researched professors who studied cross-cultural management. She was ready to pursue her PhD.
 
She contacted Michele Gelfand, a social and organizational psychology professor at the University of Maryland, to discuss the possibility continuing her education in Washington, D.C.
 
Gelfand remembers calling Imai and telling her she was accepted into the PhD program. She was so impressed with Imai’s enthusiasm for research on cross-cultural negotiations. “I knew right away we were going to hit it off brilliantly,” Gelfand says.
 
Imai and Gelfand worked together at Maryland for six years. She admires her intellect, passion and dedication. “It was hard to let her go,” she says.
 
Imai brought those same qualities to Western this year. Jane Howell, Ivey organizational behaviour professor, immediately recognized Imai’s passion for research. But she saw much more in the 30-year-old.
 
“It was clear from our very first dinner together that Lynn readily embraces new experiences such as travelling to far flung destinations, exploring new neighborhoods and sampling new cuisine,” she says.
 
Those dinners continue to this day, with Imai easily adapting to her new home in the Forest City.
 
“The students at Ivey are great,” she says, looking out through her office window. “I absolutely love my job.”
Did you know?
Hobby: Jewelry-making.
Travels: Spent her summers in Belgium during her undergrad at the University of Toronto.
Fear: Japanese horror films.
Significant other: Boyfriend, a philosophy PhD student at the University of Maryland.
Dislikes: That most Shoppers Drug Marts in London aren’t open 24 hours a day.

 

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