Kristine Kershul

Kershul attributes her lifelong passion for languages to her family.[2][4] She grew up in a trilingual home[3][5] where in addition to English, her father spoke Croatian and her mother spoke Danish.[1][2]

Kershul studied in the U.S.,[5] then took her academic endeavors to Heidelberg, Germany where she earned her undergraduate and graduate degrees. She received a second graduate degree from the University of California at Santa Barbara and then went on to do her doctoral studies in German Languages and Literature.[2]

Kershul saw the need for a language instruction method that would not intimidate or frustrate beginning students.[6] She wanted to fill the gap between text books and traditional phrase books. She developed a fresh approach to learning a foreign language, which remained academically solid while geared to the traveler.[1][2][4][7] In 1981 she designed and wrote her first book, German in 10 Minutes a Day, which was the beginning of a series of language-learning books that launched Bilingual Books, Inc.[6] By the end of the first ten months, Kershul had authored a total of five books, adding French, Spanish, Italian and Chinese to create the 10 Minutes a Day Series.[3] In the next three years, she would add Inglés, Norwegian, Japanese, Russian and Hebrew languages to the Series.[6]

In 1988 Kershul sold her company to Sunset Books and Magazine. She moved to Cape Town, South Africa and spent the next six years traveling around the world.[1]

In 1995, Kershul reacquired Bilingual Books and moved back to the Pacific Northwest to base the company out of Seattle, Washington.[1] In the following years, she expanded the breadth of languages to 20 and added new product lines with the creation of the Language Map Series, the 10 Minutes a Day Audio CD Series, and the 10 Minutes a Day software.[8]