Looking back...

Culture Guides, Inc.

1996 — 2009

Our Mission

Culture Guides, Inc. was a for-profit company with a humanitarian mission. Our task was to facilitate genuine communication and foster mutual understanding on a small and diverse planet. As interpreters, translators, consultants and educators, we acted as bridges across languages and cultures. Our holistic perspective and team approach brought cultural meaning and context to light, which in turn allowed one person to discover the intended meaning of another. We sought to remove linguistic and cultural barriers wherever they existed and whenever people were ready for those barriers to come down. Each time we helped someone understand another, we all came a step closer to world peace.

Our History

Culture Guides began in February 1996 as a sole proprietorship called Missouri Interpreters and by May 1996 became incorporated as Culture Guides, Inc. Jacqueline T. Ambrow, M.A., C.M.H., founded the company while she finished graduate studies in anthropology at the University of Missouri-Columbia. At that time, the Mid-Missouri area saw a growing influx of immigrants but did not have organized services for linguistic interpreting or document translation. Ms. Ambrow established a unique company based upon principles from linguistic and cultural anthropology.

Applied anthropologists such as Ms. Ambrow use a holistic perspective and integrate skills and knowledge from a wide variety of disciplines to solve problems in the real world. A team approach and case management are typical methods of applied anthropologists and featured prominently in Culture Guides’ services. Culture Guides utilized this unique holistic approach to solve problems related to barriers of language and culture.

Culture Guides at its peak grew from a home-based business serving a few clients in Columbia, Missouri to a corporation serving clients all over Missouri and eastern Kansas in more than 40 languages. Culture Guides was one of the first vendors on the State of Missouri state agency-wide contract for foreign language interpreter and translation services and held those contracts for more than ten years. Our online technologies for requesting and scheduling interpreters, project management, and electronic billing were state-of-the-art for a service providing interpreters primarily on-site. We actively recruited qualified interpreters and translators wherever our clients needed them. Culture Guides, Inc. was a Missouri-based and woman-owned corporation, certified by the State of Missouri’s OA/OEO as a Woman-owned Business Enterprise (WBE), certification #W01055.

After almost 14 years of service, Culture Guides ceased operations on October 1, 2009.

Thank You

Culture Guides again wishes to thank both all our loyal customers and all our wonderful interpreters who helped to keep our services available to the community. We could not have done it without you!