Yulia Tolstikov-Mast, Ph.D. is a global leadership scholar, educator, research advocate, author, and consultant. Originally from Russia, Yulia experienced a Soviet system, perestroika, and emerging market economy before relocating to the United States. Yulia has an extensive business development background working for a first global company in the South of Russia and entrepreneurial companies in the USA. As an international consultant, Yulia is the Global Mindset Inventory Certified Facilitator (GMI) and published Global Mindset development case studies. She did training and coaching with GMI and in global leadership, Russian business class, international professional communication, and organizational culture of multinationals. She has been contributing to the International Center (Indiana) for many years leading a range of training activities including a workshop at James T. Morris Global Leadership Series. 

As a global leadership scholar, Dr. Tolstikov-Mast’s publications appear in Advances in Global Leadership volumes, Journal of Leadership Education, Women Courageous, and The Study and Practice of Global Leadership among others. She published on international education, including strategies to improve the academic success of Indigenous Peruvian college students on Beca 18 scholarship, on advancing global leadership discipline, and on international immersions for global leadership graduate students. Dr. Tolstikov-Mast’s theoretical contributions include pioneering work articulating the concepts of global follower and global followership. She was the Country Co-Investigator in Russia for the GLOBE 2020 Project and was awarded Certificate of Excellence in Cross-Cultural Research for leading data collection efforts in the country. 

Yulia is an advocate for culturally responsible and authentic research models. Her advocacy for culture-unique research integrity led Yulia to initiate the Handbook of International and Cross-Cultural Leadership Research: Perspectives, Practice, Instruction. The co-edited handbook is an invaluable contribution to the area of leadership studies and brings together renowned authors with diverse cultural, academic and practitioner backgrounds to provide a comprehensive overview and analysis of all stages of the research process. Yulia’s current international project is a multi-stage exploratory study of Russian followership. She is also contributing to Culture 2.0: An Interdisciplinary Investigation of National and Organizational Culture book. The publication is based on the Culture 2.0. workshop supported by the U.S. Army Research Institute Grant.  

Yulia has a prolific academic career. One of the most significant contributions is her role as a Founding Faculty and later, an Associated Professor and Lead Faculty, at the Ph.D. in Global Leadership Program (Indiana Tech). There, Yulia designed global learning opportunities for a doctoral curriculum, created an innovative international leadership research course, coordinated residencies and curriculum reviews, and was awarded the Faculty of the Year for mentoring doctoral students. Yulia has B. A. in Linguistics (Rostov State Pedagogical University, Russia), M.A. in Professional Communication (Purdue University), and a Ph.D. in Communication (The University of Memphis).