Documents that make your case
International reports and proposals
German universities and research institutions are centers of world-class research, discovery, and innovation. Yet when the time comes to account for that work—to develop reports and proposals for evaluation by international reviewers—institutions face a formidable and often underestimated challenge.
Making excellence visible
These documents are neither simple nor routine. Institutions must synthesize years of complex, multidisciplinary work and dozens of ancillary documents into a coherent, compelling narrative—in English, for readers who may have little familiarity with the German higher education context. Such reports span a wide range, including:
- Evaluation reports for re-accreditation and continuing funding (e.g., Leibniz Gesellschaft)
- Applications for Excellence Cluster, University, or Consortium status
- Certification for the European Commission’s HR Excellence in Research designation
The prose must be simultaneously precise and accessible, technically rigorous and rhetorically persuasive. It must speak fluently to an international audience while doing justice to an institution’s full depth and complexity.
And it must be produced, on deadline, by teams who are already carrying the full weight of their regular responsibilities.
The gap between what an institution has achieved and what it is able to demonstrate on the page is often significant. Closing that gap requires a rare combination of skills—and someone who can bring them all to bear.
Prof. Dr. h.c. Jutta Allmendinger
President, WZB Berlin Social Science Center (2007–2024)
“Working with Laurie Silverberg was a wonderful, extremely valuable collaboration at the highest level. Our institutional grant application was significantly improved as a result. She also responded flexibly and promptly to our very tight schedule: a kind of service I have rarely experienced.”
Prof. Dr. Ralph Bruder
President, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg
How Intellerate can help
Laurie Silverberg works with German universities and research institutes to develop the high-stakes documents that define their international standing. She manages the full process, from initial strategic alignment, to drafting and stakeholder review, through final submission.
What she brings is difficult to find in a single person: native English fluency, professional German proficiency, deep familiarity with both German and American higher education systems, disciplinary range across the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and medicine, and the editorial and project management expertise to shepherd complex documents from concept to completion.
Laurie does not merely translate or edit. She helps institutions think clearly about what they have accomplished and what they plan to achieve in the future, articulate their ideas persuasively for an external audience, and present them in prose that is direct, polished, and compelling—the kind of writing that international committees notice.
Services
Choose any or all of the following options. Click on each to learn more.
Strategy development and facilitation
Trained in facilitation and strategic planning, Laurie meets with your team and key stakeholders to establish shared clarity on goals, priorities, and narrative strategy—before a word is written. This foundational work ensures that the document your institution submits reflects a coherent institutional vision—not a collection of competing voices.
Full report drafting
You provide the expertise, the data, and the institutional knowledge, and Laurie does the rest. From raw content to finished document, she produces prose that is clear, authoritative, and calibrated to your audience.
Strategic and developmental editing
For institutions with existing drafts, Laurie works at the level of argument and structure as well as line-by-line prose, ensuring that the document is both logically coherent and compellingly written.
Transcreation (German draft to finalized English)
Laurie takes German-language drafts and simultaneously translates and transforms them. She does not merely render the text into English; she reframes it for an international readership. The result is not a translation. It is the document your institution intended to write.
Presentation support & production coordination
Does your institution need to prepare for a site visit? Laurie drafts content for posters and presentation slides, coaches your team for oral presentations, and helps your team communicate their work as effectively in person as on the page.
Project management & Production coordination
Laurie coordinates all moving parts of the submission process— timelines, contributors, review cycles, and deadlines—so that the final document arrives complete, on time, and without last-minute crises. She also serves as the bridge between your content the production team, ensuring that nothing is lost, distorted, or delayed in the handoff from text to finished document.
Ready to get started?
No matter where you are in the proposal or reporting process, reach out today for a free 30-minute consultation in English or German.
Laurie is based in Madison, Wisconsin and Berlin, Germany. She is a native English speaker with full professional proficiency in German.
