Company of the month

Styrian trains Magna bosses in business English

Each unit of the 39-year-old is tailor-made.(Bild: Paul Kalcher/Penta Media)

The Styrian Business Promotion Agency has named a new company of the month: in 2019, Michelle Gilluly-Beham founded Target Language Communication, and today she provides managers at Magna Steyr with English training for business lunches and negotiations.

Michelle Gilluly-Beham is a self-confident and communicative woman. As a self-proclaimed "one-woman show", she has been offering language training for entrepreneurs and managers for six years. "My clients often know their way around technical language, but they feel insecure at a business dinner or during a coffee break," she says. She wants to change that - and pass on some of her open-minded nature to them.

Gilluly-Beham was born in Seattle, USA, and later studied German, English and Spanish to become a teacher. In order to get to know her Austrian roots better, she spent a year abroad, which she enjoyed so much that she returned to Styria a few years after graduating from university. "I wanted to help entrepreneurs hold fluent discussions and optimize their pronunciation in English," explains the 39-year-old Styrian by choice.

Company of the month certificate: Michelle Gilluly-Beham (Target Language Communication) and Christoph Ludwig (SFG)(Bild: SFG/Oliver Wolf)

Today, her clients include employees from Magna Steyr and Graz Airport. Many of them are male and over 50 years old. Gilluly-Beham prepares them for negotiations, presentations, meetings or e-mail conversations. "Most of them actually come to boost their self-confidence, but each of my sessions is tailor-made," says the woman behind Target Language Communication. Her aim is to prepare her clients for specific situations in the best possible way so that they can use their professional expertise in English. Offers and appointments are made via her online system.

Her plans for the future? To expand her individual training courses to include workshops for team communication. The entrepreneur is convinced: "The turnover of any company can be increased with English training." Her company has now been named Company of the Month by the Styrian Business Promotion Agency in recognition of its hard work.

Every month, SFG puts forward three candidates for Company of the Month. They introduce themselves in a video. Everyone can then vote on unternehmen-des-monats.at.