Jeff Liteman
A co-author of Retreats That Work: Everything You Need to Know About Planning and Leading Great Offsites and vice president of Liteman Rosse, Inc., Jeff Liteman facilitates retreats; leads workshops on facilitation skills, executive development, and effective meetings; and consults on organization effectiveness for corporate and business clients, government agencies, international organizations, and nonprofits in the U.S. and abroad.

Born and reared in Chicago, Jeff had little first-hand knowledge of other cultures when he stepped off the plane in Kabul, Afghanistan, to begin his first overseas assignment as a young member of the U.S. diplomatic corps.  He had learned about the country and could speak the language, but he didn’t have a clue about how the society really worked.

There, and in subsequent Foreign Service assignments where he served as public affairs advisor to ambassadors in five countries on three continents, Jeff learned how to listen and observe to discover how other cultures functioned, how people related to and interacted with each other, where power came from and how it was exercised, and what values and behaviors were practiced, honored, and rewarded. 

Today, he applies those skills to helping Liteman Rosse’s clients achieve their goals.

These clients include Genentech, the Nature Conservancy, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, WBEZ/Chicago Public Radio, Fannie Mae, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, and the U.S. Department of State. 

Overseas, he has consulted to U.S. diplomatic missions and foreign governments as well as non-governmental organizations such as the Coalition to Prevent Violence Against Women in Ghana.

During Washington assignments with the U.S. Information Agency (now part of the Department of State) he served as head of Foreign Service Training, chief of Foreign Service Personnel, and director of organization and professional development for USIA’s Bureau of Information, a team-based reinvention laboratory that received the Vice President’s Hammer Award for its innovative approach to management and leadership development.

In addition to meritorious and superior honor awards, Jeff won the Leonard Marks Foundation Award, presented annually for “Creativity in Communications,” and received the State Department’s Award for Valor for risking his life to rescue journalists under gunfire while covering an election overseas.

Jeff earned a B.S. in psychology and an M.A. in international relations from the University of Illinois and completed a professional certification program in organization development at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.  He was a Senior Foreign Service Officer when he left the diplomatic corps.

He has presented workshops at professional conferences in the U.S., has been profiled in Government Executive magazine, and has been published in several U.S. and foreign journals and newspapers, including Executive Update, Association Magazine, HR Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, the Miami Herald, the Washington Post, and Vital Speeches of the Day.

Jeff also taught communications at the USDA Graduate School, helped new immigrants learn English as a volunteer tutor for the Northern Virginia Literacy Society, and is active in community affairs. 

While in college Jeff played guitar in a bluegrass band called the Wild Onion Boys and during his Foreign Service assignment in Haiti played banjo with a similar group known as the Hardly Herd.  Today he occasionally plays a Native American flute or strums a guitar.