Making Diversity Work: Leveraging Difference is the Right Thing to Do

December 27th, 2011

With the recent release of my new book The End of Diversity as We Know It: Why Diversity Efforts Fail and How Leveraging Difference Can Succeed  I thought it would be valuable to reiterate some of the key leadership points by posting this piece that the Darden School did in their “On Thought” series last year.

October 13th, 2010
“Unfortunately, ‘diversity’ has become a dirty word. When all is said and done, it just doesn’t work in our company and I don’t care what all the zealots say, facts are facts.”
Fortune 100 corporate executive

I interviewed a large firm’s leadership team recently that had abruptly ended virtually all of their traditional “Managing Diversity” work. This company’s leaders genuinely want to create a more inclusive and diverse environment, but the CEO was fed up with years of dead end initiatives that had done little to create meaningful change. That firm is far from achieving the change the leaders say they want, and ending all of their existing activities was probably not the right approach. But their discontent was legitimate. If leaders really do want some kind of shift toward greater inclusion in their companies and if they don’t really see compelling value from Managing Diversity efforts, then what should they do?
My work on Leveraging Difference—which I explore in much more depth in my upcoming book, The End of Diversity as We Know It: Why Diversity Efforts Fail and How Leveraging Difference Can Succeed—lays out some critical principles for moving forward the right way:

 
Strategy first (and I don’t mean diversity strategy). The greatest challenge that diversity professionals grapple with (and HR professionals, too, incidentally) is having command of the business’ strategy. This is important because doing diversity right requires an enterprise view—not just a talent or HR management view—of the company. The starting point for doing diversity well is having the same understanding of the business strategy that a senior line executive has. That way, exploration of how difference can make a difference is well aligned with the purpose of the company. This step has two powerful implications. First, any activity that is well aligned with the business strategy is much more likely to last! If you are looking for sustainable change in diversity, this is where to start. Second, and more challenging, is that this means that the common diversity agendas, like closing racial or gender disparities, may not be the most important work for an organization to do. Instead, their focus may be on greater diversity of educational background, or age, or level of divergent thinking. The best diversity work comes from following the business strategy.

 
Let all differences matter. The corollary to the “strategy drives diversity” principle is that the menu of differences that can be pursued is big. In the U.S., the “rule of 7 to 11” has traditionally applied to diversity initiatives. Diversity activity is restricted to incorporating roughly 7 to 11 traditional types of differences into the mix: race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, able-bodiedness, age, religion, etc. But in leveraging difference, leaders get to step back and explore what differences really matter to achieving the organization’s goals and what differences don’t? If learning style diversity is more important for a consulting firm’s success than gender diversity, it’s legitimate to pursue the goal of integrating people with diverse learning styles as the primary diversity agenda. Here’s the caveat. Across the world, I continue to see one powerful reality for doing difference work: there is a tremendous amount to be learned from dealing directly with societal “hotspots.” Those differences that are most charged and contentious in a society are the most fertile ground for learning how to leverage difference. It’s hard to build a personal competency and an organizational capability for engaging difference if you aren’t willing to deal with tough differences directly.

 
Be a leader who sees the larger goal. To be the driver for leveraging difference, you have to clear your head and heart. What undermines sustainable difference work is the difficulty people have in subsuming their personal and emotional agendas to what is best for the whole organization. Diversity resistors are convinced that diversity is bad and they adamantly refuse to attend to the irrefutable evidence of the benefits that diversity—skillfully engaged—provides for their organization. Diversity proponents often avoid dealing with the legitimate discontent expressed by the executive I quoted at the beginning of this post, and advocate for—and bully people into acquiescing to—a diversity agenda. Both of these stances destroy the opportunity for the value of difference to be realized in organizations. Leveraging difference leaders take a realistic view of where and how difference helps and then drive that message through the organization with meticulous analysis, social adeptness, and the boundless energy that derives from doing work that really helps the organization do better and be better.

Jim Collins identified the “Level 5” leader who “builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.” That same blend is critical for anyone who wants to leverage difference.

Five Myths That Doom Diversity Efforts

November 27th, 2011

Greater diversity does not easily translate to greater performance. It takes work to make that happen. Yet many leaders are content in the illusion that symbolic activities and underfunded training classes will turn their increasingly diverse organizations into world-class performers. Understanding why diversity is so often mismanaged requires debunking five strongly held myths about diversity:

Myth 1: Having diversity will increase performance and profits

Why it’s a myth: Having greater diversity in your team and in your organization only helps if you understand what to do with it.  Bringing together people of different ethnicities, genders, or sexual orientations and saying “go to work” is a blueprint for failure and several studies bear this out.  The key is being strategic about what kind of diversity you need to get the job done and going after it.

Myth 2: If you increase the number of women and people of color, you have increased your diversity

Why it’s a myth: Of course gender and ethnicity play a role in the way people see things. But the value of diversity doesn’t come from the appearance of a person.  Rather, it comes in taking advantage of diverse perspectives to create business results. You can have a group that very much looks like the rainbow, but thinks pretty much the same.  In that case, you haven’t increased your diversity at all.

Myth 3: Diversity efforts always benefit women and people of color

Why it’s a myth: White males are the generally the dominant group in the U.S. workplace and often believe they have the most to lose—jobs, promotions, status—when it comes to diversity.  But women, people of color, and other people who are different also resist when diversity rhetoric and norms of behavior single them out and put them under a microscope.  If diversity is only about counting heads, neither the organization nor “diverse” employees benefit in the long run.

Myth 4: A diverse workplace is ideally a harmonious and integrated workplace

Why it’s a myth: When diversity is working at its best, people are constantly bumping up against new ideas and perspectives that challenge long-held beliefs about how they see the world.  I don’t know about you, but that activity usually unsettles me.  A workplace in which differences are being leveraged is dynamic, energized, emotional and rarely boring.  If you think that the ultimate vision for true diversity is constant harmony, think again.

Myth #5: Corporate leaders who want to increase race and gender diversity will make it happen 

Why it’s a myth: Leaders constantly juggle the need to meet business goals with the need to meet diversity goals. That causes them frequently to make choices between a focus on either increasing race and gender diversity, or focusing on corporate performance.  Because diversity is not well-linked to perfromance, they have to choose which will take precedent and diversity efforts almost always fall by the wayside.  And an added cost: these leaders—who really want to do the right thing—end up worried that they will be seen as biased because they aren’t making progress with diversity.  The only solution to this is to make diversity efforts and corporate performance one in the same.  Leveraging difference, not managing diversity, can do just that.

How I Learned to Be Black (Part II)

October 18th, 2011

(This is the second of a five part series of unconventional reflections on race)
Lesson Two: On not being black

One day, in a land far, far away, I realized that I was not black.

The pivotal experience for me was a trip I took to Shanghai several years ago. I led an MBA class abroad and that was the occasion of my very first trip to Asia. On my first day there, I was walking down a busy street and seeing the many Chinese people of all walks of life along the way. Some were curious to see me, others polite, but most were indifferent. As I walked, I noticed myself becoming mildly uncomfortable for no apparent reason. I just felt uneasy and the feeling intensified with every step. At one point, I came to a crosswalk and on the other side of the street I saw a tall white man standing there. He looked to be about 35 years old, around 6 feet tall with straight brown hair and pale chalky complexion. As soon as I saw him, my heart leapt. I thought to myself, “Look, someone just like me!”

In that moment I laughed in delight. At no other time in my life had I instinctively identified with a white man like that. Just like me? That experience shifted the way I thought about myself as a black person. So strong and unyielding was my sense of myself as black that I could not have conceived of viewing myself like a white person. Don’t get me wrong. I can understand intellectually the commonality I have with white people. Truth be told, some of my best friends really are white and I love them deeply and profoundly. And in my younger days, I may have tried to fit into white environments by acting like a white person. But I have never been under the illusion that I was ever one of them. In China, though, I experienced this instant of being the same as that white stranger and it captivated me. It spurred me to ask the question of what if my existential certainty that I was black was not as steadfast as I had thought. Hell, I was in China for one day and I thought and felt (if only for an instant) like a white guy. And by the way, I have no idea if that guy was an American. He was just a Caucasian from somewhere. Who knows, maybe I was identifying with a German white guy.

Prior to this trip, I had lived a life in blackness. Like being a fish in water, it never occurred to me that there was life outside of my color. Intellectually, I guess I could imagine it, but why bother, when it ain’t ever gonna happen. I had traveled to Africa, Europe, and to different parts of the Americas and everywhere I was in the middle of a race/color story of some kind. As the backdrop, all of those places had black slavery in their cultural stories. In addition, my experience in each region had a color-coded flavor. In Europe, I was the exotic black American, beloved for my creativity and my insights on oppression. In Africa, I was cautiously engaged by black Africans. They saw me as similar in skin tone and in experience related to it, but very different by virtue of my national origin (which was usually far more problematic for most of those I talked with).

In the South America, remnants of color bias were apparent, too.
But in China, I felt racially irrelevant. I was unable to tell if anyone cared that I was black and they really didn’t seem to. And in that moment when I lost my mind on the street corner when I was so very surprised I had to laugh? That was true liberation.

How I Learned To Be Black (Part I)

October 3rd, 2011

(This is the first of a five part series of unconventional reflections on race)

Lesson One: How I Discovered I am More than Just Black

I gave an informal talk last month to a group of leaders on what I have learned about myself and my leadership over the past seven years. I reflected on how I have used the tools and techniques I learned from attending leadership seminars facilitated by Learning as Leadership (LaL), a San Rafael, California-based leadership development organization. There, I participated with managers and executives from all over the world to learn how to grapple with my unproductive habits and behaviors and how to institute new ones.

On this day, I was inspired to talk about being black. I was one of only a handful of black people in this largely white gathering, but this was important, I thought. I had always taken comfort in the fact that I’m a black man. Even though being black in the U.S. is challenging, seeing myself that way has provided a source of clarity. When I needed that boost of self-confidence, I could remind myself that I was an intelligent and strong black person. When I needed social support, I knew I could rely on other black folks—even those I didn’t know—to offer it. When unjust events happened to me, I could explain them as a consequence of the intentional and unintentional racial bias that permeates this country.

But the comfort of my blackness has also held me back. When I undertook this leadership training, I entered with the goal of deepening my understanding of myself and of diversity. I expected the exercises and reflections to help me with this. To my surprise, though, over the course of the 12 months in which I participated, race came up infrequently. I found myself much more preoccupied with new concepts like “desired image” which captures behaviors I’ve taken up—both consciously and unconsciously—to try to get others to see me in a particular light. Or the “driving idea” or prevailing anxiety I hold that deep down, I’m really a fraud and not as capable or competent as I think, and worried that others will figure it out and I will be exposed. This was very weird stuff that may have been affecting me in my work and my relationships. With these kinds of things on the table, race fell into the background for me, important, but not central. Had being focused on myself racially kept me from attending to these other really important issues?

The real “aha” emerged when I learned about my “mattress.” That is the term for the psychological habit of preparing ourselves for failure in the activities we undertake. In short, we all have ways of thinking that protect us from the painful thoughts and feelings that emerge when we fail at something we really want to succeed at. A mattress, like a soft landing surface, does just that. One of my stronger mattresses is that that the odds were so stacked against me because of my race that I just couldn’t succeed this time. In fact sometimes this is true and sometimes it isn’t. At times, I am the victim of systemic biases that favor others and disadvantage me. And sometimes I just didn’t prepare well enough. And sometimes (heaven forbid) I’m just not good enough. The beauty of the mattress is that these more ego-based, painful options disappear in the outrage of the blanket assertion that I could have been successful if factors outside my control weren’t conspiring against me. In other words, “it’s not me, it’s you. Or him. Or them. Or the system.

My insight that I have these habits does not negate the fact that real discrimination happens and that I and other black people suffer when it does. For me, that is a fact of life and if you don’t believe it, I have a long list of resources to help you with that one. What I realized was that I was not always skilled at knowing when the real discrimination was happening (and needs to be fought) and when I was protecting myself from feeling pain that had little, if anything, to do with my race. This was not about “playing race cards” or any other such nonsense. It was about learning to be skillful in separating my authentic but incorrect belief that I was suffering because of discrimination from really suffering from discrimination.

I felt like I was beginning to have an experience of myself as larger that only being a member of my racial group. I realized that with expanding and deeper understand of history and culture, my blackness was becoming a huge and nourishing vessel in which to live. And as I said, it helped me in many ways. What I was beginning to explore was that there may have been an even larger, more nourishing vessel in which I was embedded. I was beginning to understand in a much more profound way that I was more than my race. That was lesson one in learning to be black.

The Drive Towards Oneness

August 24th, 2011

Timed to the unveiling of the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial, this week’s Washington Post‘s On Leadership roundtable explored King’s leadership legacy and where we stand today in fulfilling his vision for the nation. They asked me to write an opinion piece.

In reflecting on celebrations of the new monument commemorating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I get queasy.  I get the same uneasy feeling whenever the King holiday rolls around.  The reason is that these become occasions when speakers and pundits routinely tarnish King’s dream.

Nearly 50  years ago, Dr. King spoke of his dream that racial inequality—as well as other forms of inequality—would dissipate with time and people would be judged only by “the content of their character.” “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” he wrote in his famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

Many people think they are leading toward Dr. King’s dream in politics, education, business and other social domains when they argue against separating people into categories by race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation. They worry that highlighting these different social identities is the antithesis of King’s vision. They say we can’t treat people based on the content of their character (or their qualification for a job or political office) if we remain focused on the color of their skin or the sound of their accent.

But few things pose a greater threat to King’s dream than this drive toward “oneness.” Pretending that differences don’t matter is not the same as having differences no longer matter. The push to make us all just human has two benefits for people who espouse it. First, it’s comfortable because it avoids the hard work of negotiating differences. People retreat to the familiar place of just assuming that “deep down other people are just like me.” But a lot happens on the way down to deep. Peoples’ background and experiences, many of which are shaped by their social identities, make them not at all “like me.” And that means that if we really want to get to the place in which our differences are unimportant, we must roll up our sleeves to do some work, starting with an honest exploration of how we are different.

Our society is made up of people with vastly divergent experiences, perspectives, backgrounds and talents. Often those differences are defined by the structural inequality that exists today, just as it was in King’s day. A Gallup Poll of more than 1,300 people nationwide found that 90 percent  of whites and 85 percent of blacks  think civil rights for African Americans have improved in their lifetimes. Yet wide gaps between blacks and whites remain in average income levels, and access to housing, education and employment.  Similar statistics can be found to make the case for gender and class inequities.  And a few sound bites from contemporary debates on gay marriage reveal how far we are from treating people of different sexual orientations equitably. On the positive side, differences that are well embraced can generate the breakthrough innovation, community cohesiveness, and the commitment to making society extraordinary rather than merely ordinary.

The drive toward oneness—toward “we’re all just human beings”—tends to discount both facets of difference. It rewrites the story of structural inequality as one in which the Promised Land has been reached. We hear things like, “We are post-racial.” “Discrimination is not as bad as it used to be, and it’s getting better.” “Young people don’t worry about this stuff the way the older generation does.”

This denial infuriates people who live a life in which their experience of being disenfranchised is glibly attributed to them being oversensitive. And it creates privileged but vulnerable people who think they live in a world where everything is really getting better, leaving them unequipped to deal with the discontent of the disenfranchised. The drive toward oneness also deprives us of the opportunity to come up with new ideas and perspectives because it makes it undesirable, or even dangerous, to express a novel and unusual way of seeing the world. It becomes bad to be unique.

Of course, it is possible to foster divisiveness by overemphasizing differences. Poorly executed diversity initiatives like hiring or admitting candidates based too heavily on skin color or gender is not good for a company or school, nor is it usually good for the person of color or the woman who enters the institution. Overemphasizing social identities can relegate people who are different to being seen (and feeling like) one-dimensional aspects of the people they truly are. King’s dream comes to fruition only when we neither ignore nor overinflate the importance of social identities in how we engage differences, whether in neighborhoods or schools, businesses or government agencies.

Getting to King’s “content of their character” place requires more than just leveling some metaphorical playing field. This place of clarity, in which people truly see one another for who they are, comes from being willing to engage—not avoid—our differences. It comes from letting go of the mindless habit of looking for similarity and commonality, and cultivating the ability to open oneself up to looking for and learning from difference. This is the leadership charge we should hold before us as we memorialize Dr. King’s legacy.

 

Why We Still Need Racial Tension

August 1st, 2011

Reading Amy Ta’s “Race, Rage and Reality in America” article on NPR.com was intriguing as authors Ellis Cose and Eugene Robinson discussed their books outlining 2011 perspectives on race and racism in the U.S. But as is so often the case, the really interesting stuff was in the back and forth of the comments that followed the article. There were a variety of arguments being wagered—most passionate, many hard to follow and others even harder to take seriously. Most ironic in all of it was the incongruence between the rhetoric of those who declared that race was no longer important, and the vitriol with which they proclaimed it. The commenters “doth protest too much, methinks.” This disconnect between message and delivery reinforces the fact that in the midst of the traditional race debate, we’ve begun to forget why racial dialogue is really important.

The tensions surfaced by race talk actually represent our struggle with inequality, discrimination, and privilege in our modern society. Race talk in the U.S. is, in part, dialogue about dealing with the plight of an historically significant minority population and the ongoing impact of many decades of discrimination. We could have similar conversations about indigenous people in the U.S. (as one commenter noted) or about gender, or immigration. Each of these conversations is unique as the issues that arise have unique origins and present-day dynamics. The black-white race discussion has had particular heat about it for many reasons and has served as a focal laboratory for this most critical societal conversation.

But the critical conversation is not really just about black and white people. Whether the race problem is solved or not is not the only thing at stake in race dialogue. It is also a conversation about how we come to terms as a society in dealing with injustice, discrimination, privilege, and forgiveness. The issue of black-white race differences may someday fade into the background of society. Racial difference may someday no longer dictate how we live with one another. That was certainly Martin Luther King’s dream. But that does not mean that we will not still be challenged in how we deal with inequality and inequity. I think it unlikely that all bias and unfairness will somehow be eradicated. History suggests that the odds of that are not in our favor. So for today, we would do well to remain engaged in racial dialogue as a way of continuing to learn about ourselves and our society.

Why Being Moderate Equals Being Immoral

July 25th, 2011

Sometimes, to be moderate is to be homophobic or racist.

CNN is reporting that The Justice Department together with the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights are looking into “allegations of harassment and discrimination in Minnesota’s Anoka-Hennepin School District based on sex, including peer-on-peer harassment based on not conforming to gender stereotypes.”  The investigation comes after a string of seven student suicides in less than two years, which stirred public debate over the district’s sexual orientation curriculum policy. Adopted in 2009, the policy states that school staff must “remain neutral on matters regarding sexual orientation.” And that “such matters are best addressed within individual family homes, churches or community organizations.”

This so-called “neutrality policy” is as dangerous, flawed, and immoral as “don’t ask, don’t tell” was, or as “separate but equal” was regarding race.

Proponents of this policy probably fall into two camps.  One camp consists of those who forcefully deny rights to people who are not heterosexual.  These people may oppose gay marriage and may see anyone who is not heterosexual as morally deficient.  A second, probably larger, camp of people interests me more.   They are not anti-gay necessarily, but they are likely conflicted and want to be able to reflect on and sort out their beliefs and opinions about sexual orientation.  They are more “moderate” in their positions.

In Minnesota, these people are doing as much harm as the bullies who harass kids who may not be heterosexual. These moderate leaders and decision-makers must understand that policies like those in Anoka-Hennepin are built to reinforce the feeling that they are being reasonable people by slowing down change.  These policies are appealing because they seem to allow us to be more deliberate and thoughtful.  They let us off the hook to have to do anything immediately and promote the delusion that things are OK, if not perfect, just as they are.

But in Minnesota, things are not OK as they are.  Children there (and in many other places in this country) are dying due in part to the aggressive actions by their peers.  When young people are being bullied, harassed, terrorized, and driven to suicide, it is immoral to hide behind words like “deliberate” and “thoughtful.”  Being “moderate” and “cautious” are simply ways of avoiding taking responsibility to change what you know to be wrong.

Personally, I deeply value the characteristic of moderation and I am frequently moderate in my opinions and perspectives. Caution, deliberation, and measured movement are reasonable and have their place.  But you are not being reasonable when you support a status quo that fosters harm, and in this case, kills children.  Upholding the status quo means approving of the violence that terrorizes people because of their sexual orientation.  When discrimination and intimidation are the norm, calling for neutrality just means people get to keep on discriminating and intimidating.  You can’t only go half-way if half-way fails to protect a person’s dignity and human rights.  This is not negotiable.

Your Greatest Advantage

May 13th, 2011

I was recently asked by the Washington Post’s On Leadership series for which I occasionally write that if I was asked to give a commencement speech to this year’s college graduates on their role as future leaders, what would I say?

The greatest enemy you will face in your role as future leaders is you.  I work with profoundly talented people, some of whom are successful leaders, and some of whom are not.  The difference is not in intelligence, education, or even willingness to work hard.  Rather it is in how able a person is to accept him or herself.  And that means accepting both flaws and virtues.

Accepting flaws means knowing where we are imperfect and being willing to work to improve in those areas.  It means not beating yourself up because you aren’t getting it right.  It means being able to forgive yourself for not achieving your ideal goals and aspirations. And it means rolling up your sleeves and starting over once again.  The very best leaders I know are used to failure.  They measure themselves not by how much they fail, but how often they can persist and improve on those setbacks.

Accepting one’s virtues is a little different.  That requires you to skillfully strike a balance between the tendency to indulge in your strengths and success and the tendency to discount them.  Some people have big heads and can’t wait to tell the world how great they are; their hubris undermines their leadership.  But others conceal their strengths in modesty or silence.  Sometimes they think they are being team players or are avoiding being egotists.  But more often than not, they are, ironically, just being selfish.  Having a gift—a strength or a success—and hiding it is not a virtue.  You do a disservice to all the people who can be helped by learning about and learning from your strength.  You have to be able to share your strengths and successes openly and without ego.  It’s not easy to navigate between arrogance and excessive shyness.  But great leaders learn to do it.

Accepting yourself—whether the flaws or the virtues—means not being afraid to be whoever you are.  Let that self-acceptance begin with striving to express yourself authentically. Be willing to share your mistakes and your achievements alike.   One of the greatest barriers to being ourselves is the fear that we won’t be accepted by our peers.  We fear that if we really reveal some parts of ourselves, we’ll be ostracized because we aren’t like most people.  But the truth is that none of us are like most people.  We all bring uniqueness to every encounter and to every relationship.  Make that uniqueness visible.  It is your greatest advantage.

Are Women Really Better Off?

April 4th, 2011

In response to a question posed by the Washington Post in their online On Leadership series, the recent female workers’ suit against Wal-Mart going to the Supreme Court March 29, perhaps becoming the largest job discrimination case in history, I pose the question, “Are women really better off?”

The greatest challenge that women face at work today is, paradoxically, the success they’ve had in overcoming discrimination and bias.

Women are thriving in companies today. More women are advancing to higher levels in their companies and wielding increasing amounts of influence and power. High profile examples like Irene Rosenfeld, CEO of Kraft and Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo illustrate the tremendous strides women have made in corporations. These visible successes in achieving equity for women are held up as symbols of how we are overcoming the stigma of centuries of gender discrimination. From a cultural perspective, the successes sharpen the contrast in the conditions for women in the U.S. and women in underdeveloped countries or predominantly Islamic societies. We are drawn to these stories because they are inspiring and make us feel great about our businesses and our society.

But these celebrations also nurture the illusion that conditions for working women are better than they really are. This is partially caused by presence of human psychological biases we all share. Highly visible examples (like stories of successful women) are easy to notice and easy to remember. As a result, we assume that this must be the trend for working women in general. Moreover, we begin to think that these successes, are probably just the tip of the iceberg and all kinds of great opportunities are emerging for women everywhere.

In fact, women at work face many of the same challenges they have always faced. Pay differentials that favor men still abound. Women continue to advance less swiftly than male counterparts. Experiences of discrimination and bias plague women at work on a daily basis. After twenty years of work with professional women, I still hear the classic corporate gender bias tale. In a meeting, a woman contributes an idea and is ignored. Minutes later, a male colleague shares the same idea and the room erupts in wild enthusiasm over his insight. I hear this story from junior associates and senior executives alike.

I frequently caution corporate leaders that while many pressing concerns about cultural and racial differences exist in their companies, they should never assume that all is well for women. Continue to learn from women colleagues about their experience in the company. Measure and assess the conditions for women inside the company and in the larger society. And be vigilant about avoiding the comfortable fiction that we can stop worrying about gender inequity in companies. Examples of successful women, no matter how high profile, do not negate the fact that discrimination and injustice for women persists. If you need a reminder, check out Wal-Mart.

Come to a Great Conference on Education and Business

February 16th, 2011

I’ve been working with public school educators a lot in recent weeks.  Teachers, principals, superintendents and education scholars are all challenged to improve our education system.  That makes the Darden School of Business’ upcoming conference, Education in the New Economy—all the more exciting for me.  It takes place Friday, February 25, 2011 beginning at 9:00 AM and is presented by the Black Business Student Forum at Darden.

The 20th century economy was built on manufacturing power and scale, but the economic powers of the 21st century will be defined by an innovation economy anchored by an educated citizenry.  The future of the American economy depends on our education system; a system that has prepared far too few to be the next generation of leaders. The gap in the education system that we have and the education system we need affects all facets of our society. Re-thinking this system is a collective responsibility.

The conference brings together a diverse group of experts from the education and business community, to thoroughly examine how schools prepare students to be successful in the workforce, and why the business community should be partners in this challenge.  Highlights include:

  • Lunch Keynote by Dr. Steve Perry, renowned educator, author, and contributor for CNN
  • Keynote by Dr. Christopher B. Howard, the dynamic President of Hampden-Sydney College
  • Amazing line up of panelists ranging from policy analysts, business leaders, consultants and entrepreneurs. Highlights: Dr. Pam Moran, superintendent of Albemarle County Public Schools, Secretary of Education for the State of Virginia Gerard Robinson.
  • Great Darden alums, including Victor de la Paz, Nicole Lindsay, and James Temple. Tierney Fairchild will serve as a moderator.
  • Darden School/Curry Education School Partnership for Leaders in Education will also support the conference as Senior Director William Robinson moderates a panel entitled “MBAs in the Schoolhouse.”

Come to this conference if you are a:

  • Business-minded professional—you’ll gain insight into how public education systems are preparing the next generation of talent: YOUR next hires.
  • Current student with an interest in education—come hear how others have successfully established careers in the intersection of business and education.

Come to Darden and check out this terrific event!