Editorial Staff
Suchitra Shenoy Packer
Founder & Editor-in-Chief
Indian by birth, Canadian by marriage, and US-American by choice, Suchitra considers herself a cultural nomad. 
Having lived in Japan for a year as a teenager At 17, she lived in Japan as an international exchange student for a year. Later, at 20, Suchitra moved to the US and after acquiring her graduate degrees in Communication Studies, worked as a professor of Organizational and Multicultural Communication in Chicago before relocating to California and later to the East Coast. Chicago is also the city where she met her husband and where the two got married in a Hin(du)-Jew(wish) wedding ceremony formalized by a secular, non-religiously-affiliated priestess.
Their multiracial kids, a boy and a girl, are the inspiration behind the Parent Voice,.
Suchitra has previously worked as a journalist at a leading newspaper in India and as a Public Information Officer at a community college in the US. She is a full-time work-from-home mother, committed to developing the best team and content for the Parent Voice,. In addition to writing a personal diary-blog at ThePhdMama, Suchitra is also a self-taught mandala dot artist and runs a creative entrepreneurial business, Essaberry.
She is the author, a co-author, and a co-editor of the following books:
Séverine Perronnet Venkit
Senior Editor,
Séverine was born and raised in Lyon, France (that she called, without any bias, “the most beautiful city in the World”). She studied English and Mandarin in University, and she is now a translator for Xinhua, the Chinese news agency.
She met her Indian husband in Beijing, China, during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Today they live with their three-year-old daughter in Brussels, Belgium.
As a parent, Séverine believes in gentle parenting and is a breastfeeding supporter.
She is an avid explorer of the world, enthusiastic dancer, avid reader, and cheese lover. When she is not running after her daughter, you can find her reading a book or tending to her little balcony-garden.
Read Séverine’s story of how she met her husband here – Croissants au Masala: A French-Indian Love Story
Director
Jessica Colman Cheng
Director of Social Media
Jessica has always enjoyed creative writing. A personal essay, from high school called “A Most Precious Gift” was published in ‘Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul on Tough Stuff’ in 2002. Ever since then, she has dreamed of writing more about her own experiences.
With a background in Social Relations and Asian Studies from Michigan State University, she worked in Sales for a Japanese manufacturing company for over 8 years. During that time, she worked on new product development and Marketing promotions.
She met her husband, Eric Cheng, in 2008. He was born in Shanghai, raised in Beijing and speaks fluent Mandarin. Jessica and Eric welcomed their daughter, Talia, in 2015. Jessica is enrolled in Chinese class with Talia and hopes her daughter can be bilingual one day.
Consultants
Brenda J. Allen
Brenda J. Allen (Ph.D., Howard University) is the Vice Chancellor for Diversity and Inclusion and Professor of Communication at the University of Colorado Denver and the Anschutz Medical Campus. She was recruited to CU Boulder in 1989 and joined the CU Denver faculty in 2001. During her 25+ years at CU, Dr. Allen has served in numerous leadership roles and has developed a track record for scholarship, teaching, and service in the area of diversity and inclusion.
Among her publications is the groundbreaking book — Difference Matters: Communicating Social Identity
Shiv Ganesh
Shiv Ganesh is Professor of Communication and Head of School of Communication, Journalism, and Marketing at Massey University in New Zealand. His research engages with substantive issues that arise from the intersection of communication processes with globalisation, digital technologies, and civil society organising. Specific studies he has published have examined the intersection of two or more of these phenomena, including such topics as technological transformations in collective action, global aspects of the digital divide, dialogue and social change, volunteering and non-profit organising, global neoliberalism and entrepreneurship, and global rhetoric about technology.
He has previously served as the Editor-in-Chief of the National Communication Association’s Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, among other top tier journals. To read more, click here.
Alberto González
Consultant
Alberto González , Ph.D., is Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Communication at Bowling Green State University. His areas of research include the study of Mexican American public advocacy and examinations of communication interactions among intercultural participants.
He is the co-editor of ‘Our Voices: Essays in Culture, Ethnicity, and Communication
He is an active in the National Communication Association, the Central States Communication Association, and La Conexión de Wood County (a local nonprofit organization).
An Ohio, United States, native, he lives in Northwest Ohio with his German American wife (a theatre director who cooks schnitzel and tamales), their two daughters, his 95-year-old father, Salsa the golden retriever, Pocket the inside cat, Garage Cat (who lives in the garage), and Ping Pong the goldfish that swims sideways.
Cheryl Crippen
Consultant/Columnist
Cheryl is an educator and consultant who specializes in cross-cultural relations. Her professional experiences in both international relations and counseling psychology have informed her current research on the processes of cultural adaptation among intercultural couples, and the patterns of social-emotional adjustment in multiple-heritage young children. Over the past decade, she has interviewed over 100 individuals in intercultural relationships across six continents about their experiences raising children and navigating cultural diversity within families.
She is a co-author of ‘Competencies for Counseling the Multiracial Population: Couples, Families, and Individuals’ adopted in 2015 by the American Counseling Association Governing Council. Cheryl teaches counseling and clinical psychology at California State University, Fullerton.
