The competitive Fulbright Teaching Excellence and Achievement (FTEA) Program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and administered by IREX, selects international middle and high school English as Foreign Language (EFL) teachers to participate in a six-week intensive professional development program at a university in the United States. Montana State University (MSU) has been honored to host 16 of these international cohorts with participants from 60+ countries over the past two decades. We draw from our vast experiences and involvement in teacher preparation, designing curricula, and creating space to address diversity, equity, and inclusion. The International Programs Team (IPT) and the Academic Team (AT) at MSU have collaborated to create transformative cross-cultural opportunities for our FTEA participants. Using a Freirean dialogical model, we highlight strategies we have refined and activities we have crafted specifically to help our FTEA teachers expand their teaching and leadership skills. We model innovative instructional strategies, leverage cultural diversity, and focus on the participants’ strengths while continually adjusting our programming based on their reflective comments on a variety of themes. The following frames our discussion of the strategies we embrace: (1) post-COVID program changes, (2) leveraging diversity, (3) focusing on place-based learning, and (4) teacher leadership. For this study, we use content analysis to carefully sort through large volumes of data. We share recommendations for international administrators and academic teams hoping to host intensive international short-term teacher exchanges.