Our Team

Sara Turman, born in Austin Texas, is bilingual in English and French. She graduated with a B.A. in Modern Languages and Linguistics from the University of Maryland, where she minored in French. Today, she lives in Paris where she is an actress, voice actress and acting coach for clients like Ubisoft, CAPA, Pixmania, Colas, Elf, LucasArts…

At the same time, she pursues her passion for the written word through her work as a writer, translator and script adaptor, specialized in film, television, advertising and multimedia. She regularly works for French networks and production companies who distribute their works to the international market.

Her skills as a linguist are an excellent complement to her skills as an acting coach, specifically for French artists who are playing a role in English. In the same vein, her skills as an acting coach help her to accompany people in all professional situations who want to speak English in a manner that is both efficient, and a true reflection of their own, unique personality.

British/Australian, Gerard-James Smurthwaite has been based in Paris for the last 12 years as consultant, coach and trainer in the fields of Communication, Management and Negotiation.

Bilingual English/French, he works in both languages, ensuring training coherence and cohesion with companies based in France but increasingly present on the global market.

Countries of intervention: Australasia, (including HK, Central and Eastern China, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore & Australia) Western, Central and Eastern Europe, U.S.A and Canada.

Areas of competence include: Leadership, Change Management, Motivational management and tools, Winning Presenting Skills, Cross-Cultural Management, Sales Techniques, Mutual Gains Strategy for Negotiation, International Negotiations.

In sectors as diverse as: Pharmaceuticals, Mining, Luxury Retail, Heavy Industry, Telecommunications, Healthcare, Transport, Import/Export, Law.

Robert W. Curley, Jr., a graduate from the State University of New York, obtained two Bachelor of Arts Degrees in Speech-Communications (TV-Radio Productions) and Speech-Theatre (Shakespearean Studies). After graduating university he taught high school English for one year in upstate New York and then moved to New York City where he became manager of 23 employees at the Timber Wolf Construction Company.

Robert started his career in Wall Street finance in the late 1980s, working as an account executive and later for investment bank Veronis-Suhler. He managed mergers and acquisitions, and later became Operations Manager for two law firms in Manhattan. Moving to Paris in 1990, Robert continued as a communications consultant in Employment Law and International Arbitration, writing for French law journals and coaching executives in English.

Additionally, he spent eight years traveling as a model, actor, and musician. Robert has composed over 200 songs, recorded seven albums, and continues to perform concerts with his band in Paris and New York.

A former member of the Boston Ballet Company and Pacific Northwest Ballet, Anne received her BA summa cum laude from Harvard University, and her MA and PhD in English Literature from Brown University. She taught at Brown while working on her doctorate. In 1994 she moved to Paris, where she gave the Shakespeare seminar at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris and taught in the Department of Comparative Literature at the American University of Paris. Anne also continued her interest in dance by co-founding the Paris-based ACM Ballet Théâtre.

In 2000, she moved to London as the Head of Post-Graduate Studies and Research at London Contemporary Dance School (Conservatoire for Dance and Drama), and subsequently was Head of Performing Arts, Theatre Studies and Film Studies at London Metropolitan University. At LMU, Anne oversaw a range of development projects, including a Research Centre for the Performing and Creative Arts and the construction of the first fully accessible theatre in the UK (in collaboration with Graeae Theatre Company and funded by the Arts Council).

Anne has recently returned to Paris and to the American University of Paris, where she is Director of Alumni Relations and Annual Fund Giving. She is an editor of AUP magazine and is responsible for promoting the advancement of scholarship and development initiatives at AUP both in France and internationally.