The 2026 FIFA World Cup™ is the largest event ever to come to North America, Liz Tanner, executive director of Ocean State 2026, told the audience gathered for the Cultural Literacy and Navigating Global Business Strategy panel— and Rode Island needs to be ready to support the 892,000 international visitors projected to stay, and celebrate, here during the tournament.
With Bryant University in Smithfield, RI, the only location in New England selected for inclusion in the expanded FIFA World Cup 26™ Base Camp brochure of potential Team Base Camp sites, the eyes of the world will be on the Ocean State. Strengthening our cultural competence, Tanner noted, will be essential to preparing not only for the World Cup but to the state’s continued success.
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The December 9th panel, held at Bryant and organized by Ocean State 2026 — a nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring Rhode Island maximizes the opportunities the international soccer tournament will bring — and the John H. Chafee Center for International Business brought together academic and state leaders to explore how cultural literacy will shape the future.
Providing for the World Cup’s historic influx of visitors will require coordination across a range of areas, from hospitality to banking security to transportation to healthcare to education, said Tanner. A successful World Cup run also hinges on understanding those visitors’ needs.
“This is about making the connections we need to because we want to make sure our visitors have the best experience possible,” she stated.
Here are five key takeaways from the discussion:
1. No one is perfect, but we should strive for compassion
Cultural literacy is always a work in progress, stated Professor-in-Residence Markus Paukku, Ph.D., the new director of Bryant’s International Business program. “It's not about being perfectly informed because there's no such thing as being perfectly informed.”
While we can and should do our best to learn as much as we can, the true test lies in the moments when we are in doubt, said Paukku. “It's about curiosity, it's about humility, and it's about adaptive communication. Cultural literacy is about the ability to understand, interpret, and respectfully engage with people with backgrounds who are different than ours.”
“I see cultural literacy as essentially a superpower that allows you to be a lot more creative and to be a lot more engaging in your teamwork.”
The Ocean State’s World Cup visitors, Paukku reminded the audience, may have different customs or speak a different language, but they are not so different in the ways that matter. “They're coming to Rhode Island to support their teams, hang out with other fans, and to watch the beautiful game. At the same time, they want to have good time. They want to have a memory that they're going to take with them. And they want to say that Rhode Island is fantastic.”
2. Cultures aren’t just defined by borders
Cultural literacy extends beyond international interchange, Paukku suggested. “We live in a world where most likely your next collaborator, client, or classmate is going to be someone who's going to come from a different culture,” he said, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re from another country.
“It could be somebody that comes from engineering work. It might be somebody who's an accountant. It might be somebody who's from a marketing background. Or even people who have different assumptions and different perspectives on what culture is and what's important to them,” stated Paukku, who noted that diverse teams tend to outperform teams where everyone has a similar background.
“I see cultural literacy as essentially a superpower that allows you to be a lot more creative and to be a lot more engaging in your teamwork,” said Paukku, who founded the Amsterdam Living Case Lab to integrate live industry challenges into teaching while at the University of Amsterdam Business School. “It also helps you to build trust with teammates irrespective of your partner's role.”
3. Cultural literacy means sharing what we know
The ideas, and sentiment, behind cultural literacy are not new concepts, noted Farouk Rajab, president and CEO of the RI Hospitality Association and RI Hospitality Education Foundation. “We are a nation of immigrants, a nation that was built on cultural literacy, and a nation that was built on knowing each other and being able to communicate with each other,” he points out.
Hospitality, suggested Rajab, has always been based on those principles as well; to serve your guest, you must know your guest. And knowing each other means learning about each other.
“The first step in cultural literacy is to recognize the lenses through which you yourself see everything and value everything.”
To prepare for the World Cup’s international visitors, a host of stakeholders including businesses large and small, government, non-profit organizations, and other institutions will need to consider international habits on everything from commerce to dining. Bryant, Rajab noted, will also be a key partner in educating the state and its constituent organizations on cultural literacy.
“We will all rise together,” he said.
4. The path to success runs through cultural awareness
Rajab also advised that cultural literacy and emotional intelligence will be a key to the future as well. By 2030 deaths will surpass births in America, he noted, which will lead to economic and workforce stress and necessitate “an influx of more cultures and more people coming to enrich our great nation,” he stated
That means cultural literacy and emotional IQ will then be more important than ever. “You have to lean on your cultural literacy when you're working with that workforce and you have to lean on your emotional intelligence when you are motivating and driving that workforce,” said Rajab.
Cultural literacy, Bryant University Professor of Management Crystal Jiang, Ph.D., advised both the students and professionals in the audience, can be a professional launchpad. If you embrace it, you can be invaluable for your company wherever they ask you to go. “You are on the elevator, and you can escalate your career path to the C-suite,” she said.
A recognized global strategy expert, Jiang’s’s recent research has focused on artificial intelligence and the myriad ways it is transforming the ways we live and work, she noted. But even the most advanced systems have their limits when compared to human beings.
“I’m here to assure you that people are still the most critical asset for our economic value in both America and the world,” she stated. Business, she noted, still revolves around connections and trust, and those connections are even more important when deals cross borders.
5. International collaboration starts within
Self-awareness comes before true global awareness, Chelsea Brehm, director of the Northern Rhode Island Small Business Development Center, shared. “The first step in cultural literacy is to recognize the lenses through which you yourself see everything and value everything.”
“It’s always important to understand the need behind the need in any relationship,”
As an international beverage entrepreneur, Brehm said that her success relied on her ability to put aside any previous assumptions and adapt to the world currently around her. “It’s about shifting from automatic default programming to awareness and shifting from certainty that you already know everything to a sense of curiosity — a learner's beginner's mindset.”
Being able to adapt to new cultures and new situations, she said, is also how you are able to break through into new markets and new acquire new clients — while building trust along the way. “When you're a better observer, you can ask better questions, you can build better relationships, you can take better actions and then, at the end of the day, get better results,” Brehm stated.
6. How to break through a communication breakdown
The event concluded with a question-and-answer session, where attendees queried the panel on subjects ranging from business opportunities related to the World Cup to how volunteers could get involved. There was also a discussion of what to do when intercultural communication seemingly stalls.
When faced with a difficult discussion, or a failure to communicate, context can become key. “It’s always important to understand the need behind the need in any relationship,” said Rajab. “I learned to always ask from the get-go, ‘why are you doing this thing this way; why do you need that particular product?’ Because sometimes you can offer alternatives to solve, to bridge that gap.”
When in doubt, Paukku suggested, return to first principles. To avoid getting lost in the weeds, always remember your goal. “Recall why are you communicating; there’s always a purpose,” he said.