BALDRIGE & LEWRIS

Baldrige & Lewris
Letitia Baldrige and Alinda Lewris

Executive advisors

for companies and entrepreneurs

in
advanced leadership skills,
international business protocol,
personal diplomacy,  professional presence,
smart manners, and civility.

Program Headquarters:  Washington DC - the nation's capital! 

If you conduct a Web search on available courses of instruction in protocol, manners, executive coaching in the social graces, etc., the field looks to be saturated to the point of major flooding.  Alinda Lewris and I have one such firm, "Baldrige & Lewris", www.BaldrigeLewris.com but at the risk of being branded as conceited, self-serving, and overly afflicted with braggadocio, I'm going to boldly state that our firm "knows whereof it speaks."

I took over the Amy Vanderbilt editorship of her books on manners in 1976, but within two years I was writing and publishing under my own name.  I had actually been "out there", working the field of protocol and manners much longer than anyone.  I did not inherit the title that Time Magazine gave me in 1978 ("Arbiter of America's Manners").   I earned it through experience.
 
First of all, I had parents who were known for their beautiful manners and kind deeds, something they taught their children at an early age go hand-in-hand.  My parents were very much loved - and we children knew why.
 
Second, thanks to parental financial sacrifice and my own sense of adventure, I was in the first group of American students granted visas to Western Europe at the end of World War II.  I was only twenty-one, but I had the whole world to learn.  Later, when my student visa had expired, my passionate desire to remain in Europe and to continue opening my eyes onto the world was a question of finding a job that would support me.  The only job I, as a woman, could obtain in those days, was in a secretarial capacity working for the government, and I truly lucked out by becoming the social secretary to the American embassy in Paris, and personal assistant to our ambassadress, Mrs. David Bruce.  I was chosen from the field of eager applicants because of my Vassar degree and my facility with foreign languages.

Mrs. Bruce had been born into the diplomatic corps, and by virtue of marrying one of America's top diplomats, David Bruce, at the end of World War II, she transformed the embassy in Paris into the center of official entertaining in Europe.  There had been no entertaining during the war, or immediately after.  The Bruces galvanized the state department, military and Office of Strategic Services Society intelligence officers in Europe into the new elite to fill the vacuum.  Evangeline Bruce taught the entire flock of incoming, fledgling diplomats the measures of protocol that must be observed.  She taught them how to entertain with style, calling upon her knowledge of diplomatic rules and regulations, learned as a child when her father was a diplomat.  In the 1930's, she passed this knowledge on to me and to the other young American embassy officers in postwar Paris.  "It was the greatest protocol and official entertaining training camp in existence."  But she also had an incredible grace, intelligence, and natural sense of chic that governed her every move.  What she taught me, I subsequently passed on to the staff of Clare and Henry Luce at the American embassy in Rome, and eventually, a great deal of the knowledge of protocol and official entertaining came along with me into the Kennedy White House.  It was as though I had my own personal file cabinet of fabulous information.  The Kennedy White House took the lead in changing what had been the traditional format of the state department Office of Protocol for entertaining, state visits, and the exchange of state gifts.
 
When I became the first woman executive of Tiffany & Co., the New York jeweler, my embassy background was put to use when we launched the world's first table setting exhibitions, with America's top hostesses and interior designers vying with one another to organize the tabletop design and menus for the most beautiful and unusual parties.  From the 1960s on, there was a veritable renaissance in American entertaining, something this country had never seen before.  I watched it from my special cat bird seat.   
 
After my White House years and Tiffany experience were over, in 1964 I opened my own public relations and marketing company, thus qualifying me as one of the early women business owners in the United States.  By now I felt I had seen everything and survived every possible sort of social and business disaster.  I had proven to myself that the fundamental basics of manners and teamsmanship can get one through anything. 
 
I have written numerous books on the subject of the importance of manners and entertaining skills in our lives.  Yes, I am qualified to instruct entrepreneurs, corporation officers, or start-up executive hopefuls in human relations.  I have lectured for several decades on this subject in corporate meeting rooms all over the United States, and also from the palatial Chamber of Commerce building in Madrid to Alvar Aalto's ground-breaking hall in Helsinki, from the major Japanese television studio in Tokyo to the Governor's Palace in Puerto Rico, from The Peninsula Manila Hotel in the Philippines to the Hôtel de Crillon in Paris, and many United States Information Service offices abroad to the gym at my old boarding school, Miss Porter's in Farmington, Connecticut.
 
Today, I lecture and make presentations in Washington DC only.  My partner, Alinda Lewris, is available for presentations in the United States and abroad.  We have combined our talents and experiences to create modern programs that also qualifies Alinda Lewris to be "my voice on the road."  Having worked closely together for more than a decade, she is well prepared to deliver lectures incorporating many of my own materials - the product of my experiences in life coupled with her own unique talents.  In support of Ms. Lewris' presentations, I am available via electronic means at the end of each program to answer audience questions and make additional comments.