Ms. Glasow has been a member of the ITC for 1 year and 4 months and joined as a result of interest in an ITC event, Women in International Business, an event which is inspired by International Women’s Day. Like many in the industry, Ms. Glasow has traveled extensively, including across Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Africa. Some highlights of these travels include 8 years of studying and working in Mexico, as well as extended periods in Hong Kong over 10 years. Though choosing a favorite country is hard, after some thought Ms. Glasow settled on China. In her words, “The variety of cityscapes, from Shanghai to Chongqing to Beijing is incredible. The breathtaking scenery of the Himalayas (on the Tibet side) and multiple national parks are memories I hope to relive with my children. Even the long road trips between factory visits were enjoyable, mainly due to my delightful local colleagues and the variety of Chinese cuisine that I would anticipate at our destination.”

Currently, Ms. Glasow is the Sales and Business Development Director for Hallmark Global Solutions. In her role, she helps to build the Hallmark brand globally through a variety of business models, such as licensing, distribution, direct-to-retail, and digital e-commerce initiatives. This is a role that she has been serving in since 2018. At present Hallmark has a presence in more than 80 countries and 30 languages. Her bilingual Spanish and English capabilities have been essential to her international career. Graduating with a degree in engineering, she began traveling to the Maquiladora region in Northern Mexico to work with local companies at Tyco Electronics. A career shift took her to DEMDACO where she served as an International Business Manager working on integrating international requirements into “global” operational capabilities. This then led to an opportunity to move to Hong Kong to learn about sourcing and procurement, which in time turned into an opportunity to work with Hallmark Cards, Inc. in Kansas City. Some of the goals that she has for her career are to help Hallmark (and other companies) develop a global vision through a global strategy and operational frameworks that can be leveraged and scaled for truly global business operations and growth in key markets. Her experience has taught her that a siloed approach by country leads to delays in scalability and resource duplication, which is costly and hard to unwind. Through the framework she helps develop, companies can avoid these issues and more quickly identify growth opportunities and operational next steps.

Fun Facts & Advice:

Name three people (dead or alive) that you would invite to dinner:

What was the last book you read?
Nobel House by James Clavell. Set in 1963, the novel tells the tale of dueling international trading houses.

Who inspires you?
Christa McAuliffe. She was the first American Civilian selected to go into space. Her enthusiasm and passion to be a part of NASA’s Challenger space shuttle program (which sadly ended in tragedy as I watched the broadcast with my 3^rd-grade classroom) are inspiring to me.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to get into International Business/International Trade?
My advice would be to study how global companies, across consumer goods and B2B industries, have strengthened their international brand presence and sharpened their operational capabilities to identify areas of efficiency and desired international trade skillsets. Foresight into technology developments and general business trends would be important since these trends will likely impact international trade, as well. An entirely different point of advice would be to follow global trade trends and country positioning on the spectrum of free trade versus a more protectionist outlook.

What else do you want to tell us about yourself/what is something unique about you that is generally not known?
I can hold my own in a game of table tennis and have a Kansas City Corporate Challenge medal tucked away in a drawer somewhere!