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When senior tax consultant Juan Betancourt first came to the United States from Colombia, he knew his only option for success was to graduate college: “I knew it would be hard for my father to afford college, so I came to live with an aunt in Texas” and work full time as a dishwasher to get an accounting degree from the University of Texas.

However, a roadblock during Betancourt’s sophomore year almost prevented him from graduating. “All my college buddies had gotten internships at great companies. I had nothing and panicked. I was the first person in my family to go to college and didn’t understand all the things you have to do,” he says.

The Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities’ (HACU) National Internship Program (HNIP) helped him get the experience he needed with an internship at Deloitte, No. 8 in The 2012 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity. The program places high-performing college students with paid internships at corporations such as DiversityInc Top 50 companies PricewaterhouseCoopers, Sodexo, Marriott International, Eli Lilly and Company, and Target. Students also are placed at federal agencies. HNIP held its 20th-anniversary celebration gala on Oct. 22 in Washington, D.C., and has placed more than 10,000 students to date. Thirty-three percent of interns receive offers of employment, and 57 percent of the offers are accepted, HACU reports.

“If it wasn’t for HACU’s connections, I’d have a different type of job and career,” says Paola Marte, HACU alumnae and senior tax consultant for Deloitte in New York City. Marte, born in the Dominican Republic, was among the first in her family to attend college. “The Big Four don’t recruit at small schools like mine [Barton College in North Carolina],” she says. “HACU was the bridge that allowed me to go to a large firm and line up a job before graduation.”

The transition from college to career is clear-cut for many middle-class students: You take classes, obtain an internship, graduate and then apply for jobs. But a majority of first-generation college-goers, many of whom are Latinos and immigrants, aren’t aware of the opportunities available to them, according to Dr. Antonio R. Flores, president and CEO of HACU. And the majority of Latino parents don’t have the career knowledge needed to provide the necessary guidance.

“Lack of exposure to development of expertise, successful interviews, taking corporate exams for entry or for full-time opportunities—all these things need to be addressed,” says Dr. Flores.  “Latino students need to know it’s possible for them to go into these high-performing careers, that these types of positions are available.”

Dr. Flores adds, “We have to make them think of themselves as professional, then give them a game plan to get there.”

The post HACU Helps You Develop Latino Talent Pipeline appeared first on DiversityInc.

Question:

A colleague recently asked for my thoughts on a George Will column that described several incidents on college campuses where bigotry was directed at white men.

Answer:

George Will lifted a bunch of incidents from one website (thefire.org) that has a specific point of view. In my opinion, they’re using outlier events to concoct a trend. Nationwide, there are millions of college students—more than 800 universities granting doctoral-level degrees, thousands more four-year and two-year colleges—and here we have but a handful of questionable incidents, including some terrible mistakes and errors in judgment. Are there more than what’s reported here? Sure—but given that the entire mission of thefire.org is to bring these incidents to light, it’s still pretty sparse when viewed in context.

How many mistakes were made in the other direction (from white men to everyone else) during the time we’ve been alive? How many mistakes are currently being made? I can’t imagine that the overrepresented white men in academe are the most put-upon group of people—yet, here’s George Will (and Greg Lukianoff) trying to make a trend out of a bunch of unconnected dots.

He—and we—need to start looking forward. Rutgers’ graduating class at its last commencement was less than 50 percent white—and less than 50 percent men. Our future as Americans demands that we older white men understand our obligation to make sure our communications are crafted in a way that is received and absorbed, so we may successfully hand off our knowledge of being a good citizen.

This country has made its mistakes, but we have also liberated hundreds of millions of people in the last 100 years. As a combat veteran, you know this more than most. Was it worth it? Look at South Korea now. I’d say it was.

Korea’s success is a mirror of ours (as well as Germany’s and Japan’s). We have the world’s largest GDP because people can come here and achieve more of their inherent potential than anywhere else on the planet. This is entirely due to our struggle to advance human and civil rights. Our constitution is the longest-lived constitution on the planet, amended over time to abolish slavery and include women in the governmental process. Through legislative acts, our government has also ensured voting rights and civil rights, and included people with disabilities. With the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, we’re quickly moving to include our LGBT friends and neighbors in full citizenship as well. The demographics of our country have evolved; the white men of the Boomer and Traditional generations must ensure that our knowledge of the best of what it means to be an American is passed down.

We can’t do that if we’re needlessly obsessing over slights. Almost all of my nonwhite, non-male, non-heterosexual counterparts in business aren’t obsessing over the slights dealt to them—they’re looking forward.

So should we.

Luke Visconti’s Ask the White Guy column is a top draw on DiversityInc.com. Visconti, the founder and CEO of DiversityInc, is a nationally recognized leader in diversity management. In his popular column, readers who ask Visconti tough questions about race/culture, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability and age can expect smart, direct and disarmingly frank answers.

The post Ask the White Guy: Are White Men the New Victims on College Campuses? appeared first on DiversityInc.

The lawsuit before the court on Wednesday could result in the reversal of the college’s affirmative-action admissions policies—and potentially deem all instances of race-based criterion in higher-education admissions “unconstitutional.” This would overturn the landmark Grutter v. Bollinger decision in 2003, which upheld the use of race as one of multiple factors when determining acceptance.

If Fisher Wins & Affirmative Action Ends …

Educational and civic leaders are “very concerned that a [negative] decision will impact any and all incoming students from high school or transfers,” said Ben Reese, president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE). “We are looking for an admissions system that is inclusive of all the qualities that students bring, including race, not stunting the growth of community colleges and four-year schools and building an appropriate workforce.”

Collateral consequences of a Fisher win would be a narrowing of Black and Latino admissions to four-year colleges only, which would limit community-college transfers and increase pressure on smaller, two-year schools that already are strained and turning students away because of limited budgets, according to executives representing nine higher education associations.

These include: The American Association for Affirmative Action, American Council on Education, American Indian Higher Education Consortium, Association of American Medical Colleges, College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education and NADOHE.

“Too much is at stake. We need to build truly inclusive learning environments and can’t afford to go backward at this point,” they said.

The Case

Abigail Fisher, a white high-school student, filed the lawsuit in 2008 after she was denied admission to the University of Texas at Austin, which she claims was unequal treatment because of reverse discrimination and, therefore, a violation of the14th Amendment. Project on Fair Representation, a legal-defense foundation, is representing Fisher. Watch this organization’s video on the case below.

Learn more about the case and affirmative action by watching the video above, then read these articles:

Is Affirmative Action Over?

Affirmative Action Foe Ward Connerly Comments at the DiversityInc Conference

Why We Still Need Affirmative Action

Talent Development Creates Ability for INROADS Students to Succeed

Corporate Diversity: Outreach With Rutgers Future Scholars Enhances Talent Pipelines

The post Affirmative Action: What If the Supreme Court Ends It? appeared first on DiversityInc.

My colleagues and I at GLSEN have been faced with a similar question ever since we opened our doors in 1990 to create educational environments where every member of every school community is valued and respected, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. How can we identify and support talented young leaders in order to advance our common goal?

Our mandate is to improve the school experience for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students despite the many inclement conditions that can impact their ability to learn and succeed. Since our founding, GLSEN has served as a resource for schools, equipping them to be a safe space for LGBT students by preparing educators to teach the fundamentals, including respect for all. Our goal is to make sure that our nation’s youth are set up for success from the very moment a student enters kindergarten until they graduate from high school and set off to pursue their own hopes and dreams. The end result is a new generation of future leaders—LGBT-identified or otherwise—ready to address the issues of their time.

Yet sadly, LGBT students have shouldered the burden of making sure they can learn and grow despite being at heightened risk of facing incidents of victimization and hostility. A majority of LGBT students in the country have reported experiences of hearing homophobic remarks or even being physically harassed in school simply because of their sexual orientation or gender identity/expression. And through more than a decade of research, we know that when an LGBT student feels unsafe in school, they are more likely to skip class, perform poorer in school and say they are less likely to pursue post-secondary education. Instead of worrying about a down economy, GLSEN has been confronted with the disparity in educational opportunities for LGBT students and their allies.

Student leaders were among the brave trailblazers who founded GLSEN, and student leadership has always been at the core of the programs and advocacy designed to address this disparity. Ten years ago, GLSEN decided to invest in supporting student-leadership development in and of itself, and we established a series of student-leadership programs designed to support student-driven efforts that would ensure schools were safe and free from the harmful disruptions of anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment. In doing so, we believed the very students experiencing these incidents of victimization would be empowered to not only create change in their schools but also transform their own lives into something more hopeful.

One of the first students that GLSEN partnered with was Nathan from Michigan. Nathan was assaulted in school during his freshman year because he was perceived to be gay. And Nathan wanted to make sure LGBT students and straight allies—like himself—would not have to go through what he did. Nathan decided to join GLSEN as a student organizer where he and dozens of other LGBT and allied students from across the country received skills-building training, resources and individualized support throughout the year to make an impact in their school and communities. In turn, Nathan coordinated GLSEN’s Day of Silence in his community, helping to organize nearly 400 student participants from six high schools and two colleges to raise awareness about anti-LGBT behavior in school. He even went on to found his high school’s gay-straight alliance to support LGBT and allied students, and he lobbied the board of education to include protections for LGBT students within district policies.

Fast forward to the present and I can’t begin to share all of Nathan’s achievements. This remarkable young man graduated from high school and studied public policy at the University of Michigan. Soon after, he decided to put his education and community involvement to work by successfully running for a seat on East Lansing’s city council. And it’s worth noting that Nathan remained actively engaged with GLSEN’s work by serving on our national board of directors.

Nathan’s story isn’t a fluke. In fact, it has become an increasingly common and gratifying experience for me to hear of more students involved with our safe-schools work to excel in the classroom and accomplish tremendous things at such an incredibly young age. And research has shown that GLSEN’s student programs help LGBT and ally youth learn vital leadership skills and increase their engagement in community organizing and activism.

Take, for example, Jeremy, who is a current GLSEN student leader and high-school sophomore in Fargo, N.D. Jeremy recently traveled to Washington, D.C., where he secured Sen. Kent Conrad’s support for the federal Safe Schools Improvement Act. Or I can point to GLSEN student leader Tiffani from Arlington, Va., who recently met with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to share how the U.S. Department of Education could better serve LGBT students experiencing bullying and harassment in school. These are just a couple of the growing examples of student leadership that GLSEN and our 36 local chapters across the country continue to cultivate and nurture.

GLSEN understands the many benefits of cultivating young leadership while encouraging their academic potential to succeed. And our perspective on how student leadership can improve school climate mirrors a similar understanding on talent management found within the corporate workplace. In order to maximize business performance, corporations must invest in leadership- and talent-development opportunities for their workforce. For GLSEN, we empower LGBT youth and their allies with tools and support to create a safer school climate where every student is able to succeed. And we know these leadership skills and experiences follow a student well beyond school and into the workplace when they successfully apply for their first job and their career begins to unfold.

The student-leadership model that GLSEN continues to build upon demonstrates how we can successfully address systemic challenges like anti-LGBT bullying and harassment in school. But it has also shown its astonishing value in transforming the lives of young people everywhere.

I remain in touch with Nathan, but I now receive a growing amount of emails from former students filled with news about their latest achievements at college or work. When I read these heartwarming notes, I am reminded that they and other young adults will be the next dynamic leaders in business, politics, education, media and social entrepreneurship. And I can say with confidence that our world will be in capable hands when the next generation is ready to lead.

By Dr. Eliza Byard, executive director of GLSEN. DiversityInc Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Barbara Frankel is a member of the GLSEN National Board of Directors.

The post Where’s the Pipeline of LGBT Talent? Why We Need to Support Gay Youth appeared first on DiversityInc.

A petition on change.org, started by NAACP national board member Willis Edwards, is rallying the community to support Dr. Head. As of this morning, 83,534 signatures had been collected.

Joking Gone Too Far? Or Racism & Retaliation?

As part of an annual “roast” at UCLA, medical students created an image of a gorilla on all fours with Dr. Head’s face. A naked white man—with supervisor Dr. Gerald Burke’s face superimposed—was pictured sodomizing the gorilla.

This photo was displayed at a school-sponsored graduation event in 2006 to more than 200 people, which included faculty, professional peers, students and visiting guests. Other slides were also shown that implied Dr. Head was underperforming as a professional.

“I’ve never had to think about things before, the racial aspect, in terms of white and Black before, especially at work,” says Dr. Head in the video. After the image was displayed, “I pulled [the supervisor] aside and I said to him, ‘How can you let this happen?’… and he just smiled and chuckled.”

Want a Career? Keep Quiet

Other UCLA officials also were quick to dismiss Dr. Head’s requests for disciplinary action against the students. He was told by fellow faculty members: “If you want tenure and you make a big stink about this, they’re going to crush you.”

Dr. Head did receive tenure during this time period. He is the first Black professor to receive tenure in the Head and Neck Surgery department and one of only two Black teaching surgeons on staff. However, his pay subsequently was cut and he claims he was denied prime teaching opportunities that could have advanced his career.

He filed the lawsuit in late April in Los Angeles County Superior Court against The Regents of the University of California, a 26-member board that appoints and governs the university leadership. Foley Lyman Law Group is representing Dr. Head.

UCLA’s response to the lawsuit in the Los Angeles Times featured a statement from spokesman Phil Hampton: They had “investigated this matter and found that the evidence does not substantiate the claims of unlawful activity.”

Diversity in the Workplace: 3 Ways to Stop Racial Bias

It was UCLA administrators’ “lack of action” that hurt the most, explains Dr. Head in the video above.

This need for accountability and mindfulness is just as critical to corporations that are looking to build more diverse and inclusive workplaces for employees.

• CEO Commitment: Hold everyone accountable with a no-tolerance policy for bigotry. Generating buy-in for diversity-management values starts at the top of an organization, most frequently exemplified by CEO commitment. These values are essential to maintaining an inclusive environment, including by race, ethnicity, religious background, gender, orientation and disability. Watch our diversity web seminar on CEO commitment for more best practices.
• Diversity Training: Workplace diversity includes ALL employees, so providing mandatory diversity training is critical. This is especially important for showing white men how they fit into diversity. Eighty-six percent of The 2012 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity now require diversity training for managers, compared with 78 percent five years ago. Sixty-eight percent require diversity training for their entire workforces, compared with 58 percent five years ago. For more information, read about our diversity-training courses. Also read Black History Month Facts & Figures, which you can use for educational purposes.

• Resource Groups: These business resources are the most proven way of increasing diversity-management results. “Diversity in the workplace is about making a place comfortable enough to flourish” and removing fear of judgment and stereotypes, said Dr. Claude Steele, Stanford University School of Education dean and former provost of Columbia University, at a DiversityInc event. (Watch the video above.) Reducing feelings of threat and isolation allows all employees to feel included and improves employee engagement, productivity and, ultimately, innovation. For more on stereotypes, read Challenges in Diversity Management: How Do Stereotypes Affect Us? and Jeremy Lin & Racism: 3 Ways to Stop Dangerous Stereotypes.

For more on diversity management best practices, read Diversity-Management Case Studies Reveal Why Companies Rise & Fall in the DiversityInc Top 50. Also, read DiversityInc’s Black History Month Facts & Figures and The DiversityInc Top 10 Companies for Blacks.

The post Diversity-Management Fail: Racist Prank Escalates to Lawsuit at UCLA appeared first on DiversityInc.

Now 23 years old, Soetan is a product manager with a large retail pharmacy chain in the Chicago area. She credits her current position to a multi-year business-management internship she received through INROADS.

“I stumbled upon it while looking for college scholarships on Fastweb online,” she recalls. Soetan notes that it’s pretty rare for a 16-year-old girl to find a paid internship, let alone one that provides such in-depth talent development.

Soetan started the internship during her first summer after high school and continued the program throughout her four years of college. After graduation, she was offered a full-time position with the company as an assistant manager.

“INROADS taught me how to network with the people I worked with, to dress for work and be professional so I could succeed in the real world,” says Soetan. “The program fostered me a lot in career development and getting necessary tools for the program.” These include both hard and soft business skills through training, networking opportunities, mock interviews, tutoring and mentoring.

A Mission in Talent Development

INROADS, founded by Frank C. Carr in Chicago in 1970, is a nonprofit organization that aims to develop talented underserved youth for success in business, providing them the necessary skills and opportunities to gain valuable internships, and eventually positions, with companies.

There is also an INROADS alumni network that provides current and former interns with an online and national community, offering a continued support system throughout their careers.

“It’s a strong leadership and development program focused on growing the competencies of these young people with a rigorous coaching process,” explains Maria Morris, executive vice president of global employee benefits for MetLife and chairman of the board for INROADS. MetLife is No. 50 in the 2012 DiversityInc Top 50 and has been a top 10 INROADS-sponsoring company since 2004. 

Currently under the executive leadership of president and CEO Forest T. Harper, who had humble beginnings himself as the son of migrant farmers in Florida, INROADS offers high-potential Black, Latino and American Indian students the tools they need to aspire and achieve leadership roles that otherwise would be unobtainable. Read Talent Development: From Migrant Workers’ Son to CEO for his story.

Talent Development Creates Opportunity

Cerileene Menendez Mendoza, who moved from her home in Puerto Rico to attend Assumption College, a small school in Massachusetts, says she never would have gotten her accounting internship at KPMG (No. 22) without INROADS. She says internships were typically reserved for students at much larger colleges.

“Specifically, INROADS prepared me for the interview and to develop cultural awareness and understanding for a corporate culture. They helped me become sure about myself and I was able to meet other students going through the same process,” she says. “INROADS’ network and peer-to-peer reviews provided really good feedback.”

Thanks to INROADS, Mendoza’s career took off after she graduated in 2011: After graduation, she was chosen as a Fulbright Scholar. Fulbright is a grant-based work-abroad exchange program from the Council for International Exchange of Scholars on behalf of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Mendoza is now is the director of platonic venture capitalists for Toniic Mexico at New Ventures Mexico.

She also was featured in an edition of CNN’s Expansion, a business magazine targeting professionals in Mexico and Latin America, for her accomplishments when she was 22 years old, she says.

“INROADS helped me … to think about my skills,” says Mendoza. “I was able to gain exposure culturally to other parts of the world and in the United States. They showed me new experiences and career options I never considered.”

See also: Rutgers Future Scholars Enhances Talent Pipelines With Corporate-Student Outreach

Investing in Talent Development

The mission of INROADS is as relevant today as it ever was, according to INROADS alumnus Jeffrey S. Perry, whose initial internship with INROADS has come full circle.

Perry, who started as an intern for two years at an oil company and moved on to work at companies including Booz Allen Hamilton (No. 36) and another management consultancy, now serves as a board member for INROADS. In his current position as transaction integration practice leader for Ernst & Young (No. 6), Perry keeps the benefits of INROADS close at hand. There is a war for talent, and “INROADS helps us at Ernst & Young stay competitive,” he says.

The company places heavy emphasis on diverse recruiting and has multiple partnerships with colleges and organizations. It also hosts its own Discover Ernst & Young events to generate interest in the accounting profession among students. Learn more about the company’s recruiting strategies in Diversity Web Seminar on Recruitment: 5 Workforce-Diversity Strategies to Find, Engage & Retain Talent.

“It about developing very specific, targeted programs for the interns and leveraging INROADS access to alumni. It’s so we can progress talent to that next level,” says Perry.

For more information on INROADS and for a list of sponsoring companies, visit www.inroads.org.

The post Talent Development Creates Ability for INROADS Students to Succeed appeared first on DiversityInc.

An Ambitious Proposal

When the vice president for enrollment management at Rutgers University first presented his proposal for the Rutgers Future Scholars program to Rutgers Chairman Rev. Dr. M. William Howard Jr. and President Richard McCormick, he didn’t think it would ever get approved. “It was so expensive and ambitious,” recalls McAnuff. (Costs approached $2 million in 2011.) “But it only took them 15 minutes to review it and give the go-ahead.”

The Rutgers Future Scholars program, now in its fourth year, was designed to resolve an existing lack of urban-based students from lower-income families from Rutgers’ surrounding locales. Each year, 200 seventh-grade students are selected into the five-year college-prep program from the New Brunswick, Piscataway, Newark and Camden communities.

The students are supported with tutoring and mentoring and are given opportunities to attend educational events on campus to increase their exposure to the opportunities a college education can deliver. Graduating scholars who are accepted to Rutgers University are granted a full scholarship.

The program receives funding from multiple partners, which include DiversityInc and Merck & Co. (No. 16 in The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity), AT&T (No. 4), Target (No. 30) and Ernst & Young (No. 6). Additionally, DiversityInc CEO Luke Visconti is co-chair of the Rutgers Future Scholars fundraising committee.

Watch our diversity web seminar on recruitment and read Rutgers Future Scholars Enhances Talent Pipelines With Corporate-Student Outreach for more on Ernst & Young’s partnership with Rutgers Future Scholars. Also read How to Get 150 Top-Performing Black and Latino Candidates Now for more more on recruitment.

Talent Development: A Blueprint for the Future

The ultimate goal, says McAnuff, is to increase graduation rates, which in turn will foster improvements within state and local governments. He cites that about half the Black and Latino boys in urban areas who drop out of high school often end up in the correctional system; an economic study on Rutgers Future Scholars estimates that every group of scholars that completes the program will save the state $40 million over the course of the students’ lifetime. Read the study at www.DiversityInc.com/RFSvalue.

“I do hope that one day we can make the argument to state and federal governments that we can demonstrate with results,” McAnuff says. “Because of our experience, we can actually write a national blueprint that is relatively inexpensive, where we can spend $2,000 a year per kid rather than $45,000 for someone in prison.”

Even though the oldest group of students is still in the junior year of high school, the program has already had amazing results: Of the more than 800 students in the program, 80 percent have maintained a B or better grade average, and 180 students report that they plan to apply to Rutgers in September.

“One argument in higher education is if you are open to more low-income or more diverse students, you are lowering academic standards,” says McAnuff. “At Rutgers, we’ve proven that incorrect.” He adds, “I’m happy to say after four years that none of the kids in the program has dropped out of high school.”

Nurturing Intellect Through Talent Development

While an interest in higher education and helping students realize success is something McAnuff fell in love with during his early career as a teacher, his passion for providing those opportunities for low-income students stems from his childhood growing up in Queens, N.Y.

“There was no middle ground: You went to college or you went to jail,” says McAnuff. “My next-door neighbor was my best friend until the third year of high school. He became a drug addict.”

He adds, “If you have intellect, you have a chance here. I want to make sure as many kids as possible have the opportunity to try.”

Competing against tough neighborhood environments proves to be one of the programs’ and scholars’ greatest challenges, says McAnuff. “I was really surprised how the deans jumped on board so wholeheartedly,” he says. “Many students are now graduating high school, many with college credit, which was unheard of before. The kids believe they can do it now.”

For more on talent development and diversity in education, read Talent Development: From Migrant Workers’ Son to CEO and Sam’s Club Gives Latino Students $100,000 in Scholarships.

The post Talent Development: Identify & Develop Your Future Pipeline appeared first on DiversityInc.

The founder and CEO of Worldwide Orphans Foundation explains that working with children has always been her calling. Her nonprofit organization (@wworphans), which transforms the lives of orphans around the globe, provides children with local, culturally competent educational and medicinal support so they can grow to become independent, productive members of their communities and eventually of the workforce. 

Dr. Aronson discussed with DiversityInc CEO Luke Visconti her deep empathy for children, her foundation’s successes and how corporations are now getting involved. 

Ambition for Change 

Dr. Jane Aronson: I’m always excited to talk about my work because it’s so much fun. My work is not work, and I don’t know if too many people can make that claim, right? 

I grew up in a pretty tumultuous time: I was born in 1951. My years in school were dominated by some cataclysmic and horrific political moments in history, which include the assassinations of our president in 1963, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Medgar Evers. 

These were profoundly important parts of my growing up. I was very sensitive about the world. I had a lot of interest in politics in school. I was the class vice president my junior year; I was class president my senior year. I was aspirational and ambitious. 

I really believe I can make a difference in the world and I felt that early on in my childhood. I always felt a sense of mission. There’s not a moment in my life starting when I can remember back that I didn’t keep notes about things that I could do to make things better, more healthy. 

Empathy for Children 

I ended up being a teacher, but teaching was not my first goal … A lot of my external community work was at preschools for disabled kids. I started as an assistant at a school for disabled children. It was called Saginaw Children’s Hospital. It was a prototype of how you would build, create and manage a school where you have kids with autism and kids with behavioral issues, emotional disturbance and unaligned medical conditions. 

I enjoyed my work as a teacher and I taught all grade levels. I knew a lot about the fun of being a child and I think I really still am pretty childlike. I think my major in psychology exposed me to how children think and how they feel. Probably the major thing for me and my work has always been that I identify with loss and hurt and I identify with struggle. Children have a wonderful openness and vulnerability that is really what makes them so sweet and lovable. 

A Passion for Healing 

I always wanted to be a doctor—that was clear from the time I was 3 years old. I’m one of those people who had a calling. 

My great uncle Joe was a physician. He specialized in tuberculosis research and treatment and infectious diseases. He worked with American Indians in the United States during the ’30s and then he went off to Africa. He traveled widely. He was a very, very unusual and inspirational guy. He was my role model. 

I went to medical school and graduated from the UMDNJ School of Osteopathic Medicine in New Jersey. I’m very proud and privileged to have achieved that goal. I feel probably the greatest thing that I’ll ever feel that I’ve achieved in my life will be being a parent and a doctor. 

I practiced medicine for 30 years. My training was as a pediatrician. I also did a fellowship in infectious diseases and was an AIDS specialist for probably about 15 years. 

I segued into adoption medicine as a specialty, and that was really as a result of my infectious-diseases expertise. A lot of the kids who I saw initially when they arrived in the United States with their families have been exposed to tuberculosis, hepatitis. Some of the kids had parasite infections, skin infections, bacterial infections, early exposures to diseases—like chicken pox and whooping cough—and a lot of things that we don’t ordinarily see here in the United States. 

Then I worked on an Indian reservation, and in Mexico as a general physician and infectious-diseases specialist. Then I ended up in adoption medicine again, gradually more and more Russian adoptions. These wonderful experiences I had in my early career were very much a part of me growing to be an expert in the area of adoption medicine, which really is international health. 

In 2000, I created a private practice that was completely devoted to the practice of adoption medicine—International Pediatric Health Services. I really saw myself as a global practitioner, from my travels and from patients I was taking care of. 

Transforming Children’s Lives 

In the midst of learning all about children from developing countries and all of the issues they had—malnutrition, failure to thrive, developmental delays, behavioral problems, processing disorders, attachment disorder, all the infectious diseases—I realized that I could take good care of the children being adopted in my own community and provide them with every medical technology and expertise that’s possible in the world. 

There are hundreds of millions of children in the world living a marginal and tragic life. Many of them are institutionalized—in the street, in refugee camps, trafficked. It’s really an outrage and a tragedy, and I said, “You know what? I have to do something that really makes this change, and now.” 

That’s when I started Worldwide Orphans. I really felt strongly that I needed to help the kids that were left behind. These are kids who will never have permanency, never have families—an unjust existence. A child has the right to have everything—good medical care, nutrition, shelter, the ability to dream, have fun, have a great education and be a successful citizen in their own community in their own world. 

We’re in five countries—Bulgaria, Ethiopia, Haiti, Serbia and Vietnam—at this point and are deeply involved in some incredibly creative, very creative, innovative programs. We have an almost $6-million operating budget. In the next few months, we’re going to have 15 full-time employees here in the office. We have over 150 employees in these five countries. 

Respecting Communities’ Cultures 

We’re about really being in the community, hiring people from the community and growing a real stronghold of professionalism. Each country has different programs. We tailor-made each of our programs based on what the culture is, what the need is, what the language is, and the program becomes very much organic. 

For example, in China, when we collaborated with an adoption agency that wanted to do humanitarian work, we trained the staff in the orphanage to reach the children and to serve the children better so that they could be mobilized. 

That’s really how we’ve always gone about doing things. In Vietnam, for instance, we have family resource centers. We’re helping people who have been affected by AIDS and HIV. We’re collaborating with the ministries—local, national government and other nongovernmental organizations, community-based organizations, universities, social-work universities, teachers, educators. We have a camp in Vietnam to develop leadership skills. 

What we do is really address the issues of diversity in communities all over the world. What we’re interested in long-term is meeting whatever the needs are for children in each country. As those needs change, we change. We can morph. We’re nimble and we have a lot of skillsets. We are based in the science of child development. That’s all I live and breathe all day long. All I think about. 

We were the first to provide the orphans with anti-retroviral therapy in both Vietnam and Ethiopia. I personally purchased those medicines and we sent them off to those countries. Then within a couple of years, the medicines became available free. 

We hired wonderfully smart HIV experts. They weren’t HIV experts when we hired them. They were pediatricians, and we set up mentoring programs. We brought in the HIV/AIDS specialists from Columbia University, where I did my fellowship. We had training sessions and conferences. Some of those trainings were supported by Bristol-Myers Squibb. 

In Addis, we have an academy with 362 kids who are being educated from kindergarten to fourth grade. This school is a mixture of HIV-infected children from local orphanages and impoverished children from the community who are healthy. We provide them with two nutritional meals each day and an education that’s top-notch. We got a headmaster and a head teacher who are so eager to be innovative, modern and advance the teachers, so their teachers are proud of the curriculum. 

Then we have Serbia, an orphanage in Kragujevac. We thought it would be a wonderful thing to get involved in an orphanage where we can help the kids find their roots, to go back and see where their families were and use photography. 

We did this “Back to the Future” program and we have kids now in college. One of them, Maya, has graduated from college with a degree in early childhood development, and she’s teaching preschool now. Isn’t that amazing? 

These are great kids who we’re providing with a college advancement and assistance program, and we’re going to expand this program in the coming years. This is what it’s all about. These are kids who lived their whole young lives in an orphanage and had wonderful social workers and psychologists who help support them. 

They have their GEDs and then we mediate. Then they go to college and have a successful career. 

Strengthening Communities, Strengthening Families 

Luke Visconti: Are your plans for the future to grow the number of countries that you’re in or just to really grow roots? 

Dr. Aronson: For now and for the last few years, we’ve just gone deeper and deeper and deeper. We added a country two years ago after the earthquake in Haiti. Now we have a youth training program there, training youth in the principles of early childhood development. 

They’re becoming the sort of the sentinels in Kenscoff, which is a mountainous community outside of Port-au-Prince. It’s a very impoverished community, agricultural, and it’s a close-knit community. We’re training these youths; they become known in the community so that if someone is so poor that they’re thinking of abandoning their children, they’ll go to one of the kids and they’ll end up saying to him, “Can you help us? We heard that Worldwide Orphans Foundation has the ability to help people who are in desperate straits.” We’ll help them with the resources so they won’t abandon their child in an orphanage. 

We’re helping to strengthen the community and strengthen the ability of people to be independent, to secure and grow their families—family strengthening. It’s reunification and it’s orphan prevention. 

Visconti: You’ve moved up to now where you’re preventing the orphan from becoming an orphan. 

Dr. Aronson: We’re going to do more of that. We’re hell-bent on creating all kinds of wonderful tools to get involved in the community, not just … in an orphanage enriching children’s lives, which has been great. Now we’re secretly seeping into the community and providing all these wonderful opportunities for people to come in and to go out. 

Gaining Corporate Support 

Visconti: How does my audience get involved? 

Dr. Aronson: We have a full staff at our offices in Maplewood, including a volunteer coordinator. We also have a gala every year where people can volunteer to get involved with the gala. There are opportunities for people to attend events. 

We have various levels of corporate sponsors. For the gala each year, we have anywhere from $25,000 to $100,000. We have each year anywhere from 650 to 700 people at the gala event. This year we raised $1.7 million. We have a huge celebrity presence with a great red carpet, and we also have a wonderful live auction and an assignment auction with great gifts and great entertainment. 

It’s on Nov. 12. We’re going to honor the orphan. What that means is that we’re going to interview some really surprisingly interesting people. This year we will film individuals who have lost their parents early in their life and then went on to be filled with a sense of purpose, a sense of drive and success in life. 

We’re looking at this in an almost superhero sort of way because if you look at the superheroes like Spiderman, Batman and Superman, they all lost their parents early on in life and then they decided that they have inner resiliency and a sense of purpose to do good things for the world. 

We’re saluting the orphan. We’re not feeling sorry for orphans. We celebrate the character of an orphan. 

Visconti: What corporate sponsors do you have right now? 

Dr. Aronson: Over the years we’ve been very lucky in the financial sector. We also had People and Glamour because I won the woman-of-the-year award in ’09. We’ve had a variety of family foundations but we haven’t really gotten yet into the kind of sponsorships that I would love. I would love for the event to be underwritten by one company, companies that maybe have some connection to children. 

We have a Merck grant for $1 million for our academy and we had Bristol-Myers Squibb money for our metric program for HIV training for doctors and nurses. But we want to look to new industry. Where are the growing industries today? That’s what we want to be. 

To volunteer for the Worldwide Orphans, contact (973) 763-9961 and ask for Regina Cariddi. For sponsorship and other information, email info@wwo.org.

– Luke Visconti

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Luke Visconti’s Ask the White Guy column is a top draw on DiversityInc.com. Visconti, the founder and CEO of DiversityInc, is a nationally recognized leader in diversity management. In his popular column, readers who ask Visconti tough questions about race/culture, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability and age can expect smart, direct and disarmingly frank answers.

Question:
What do diversity and inclusion have to do with income distribution, such as in “The United States of Inequality” from Slate? 

Answer:
The broad subject of wealth disparities is a source of constant discussion in our office. What “diversity” in a business context means for most companies is maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of talent development; you want the best and brightest of ALL groups and want them to equitably be developed—and it is of immense advantage to companies that do it well, especially if their competitors don’t.

However, where I think the subject truly makes money for companies (and societies) is that when you harness equitable talent development to the purposeful development of innovative and nimble corporate (and societal) cultures, you have a force multiplier that dramatically outpaces competition. That means taking diversity training beyond compliance and making a real business case for the four stages of diversity management.

In a country-size economy, it will maintain economic superiority, but the nature of economics is that when one group wins, all win because they have to produce the goods and services demanded by increased wealth. Winning in this context isn’t bad; it’s highly desirable.

A Distribution of Wealth

I’m not sure that we’re seeing anything more than a return to traditional distribution of wealth because very few people as a percentage are truly talented, and this has been consistent. What hasn’t been consistent is access for talent to express itself, and from time to time, markets expand to include more people than typical. For example, I think the post-war “middle class” was an artificial artifact of our not having to suffer massive strategic bombing and TWO generations of dead young men (our casualties in World War I were nothing compared to those of France, Germany and England).

The last 100 years have been a process of expanding workforce needs forcing expanding participation of workers; women haven’t had the vote for 100 years yet, and Jim Crow ended less than 50 years ago. When we needed more workers, the workforce market had to expand past Christian Anglo men. When the new groups to the table gained a modicum of power, they demanded their rights. Those rights increased wealth, and that wealth consumed more services and products—a virtuous circle. Good for America. Good for the world. [Click on the images below to view and enlarge the timelines.]

But I’d argue that economic growth didn’t come from labor, the labor came from innovation—and innovation created the economic growth that drove the demand for labor. Innovation is facilitated by a free society, and our society is more “free” than anywhere else (acknowledging our faults, but giving us our just credit). In other words, despite our faults, America gives access for talent to find means of success better than anywhere on Earth.

Recovery Through Education

So if we are returning to a traditional distribution of wealth (more wealth concentrated in the hands of fewer people), what is the answer to the discordant societal damage from inequitable distribution of wealth?

The article on slate.com touches on the one thing I think will save America’s pre-eminence: education.

In my opinion, only a certain percentage (a small percentage) of people have what it takes to be in the top 5 percent—or the top 1 percent. We need to maximize the ability for people to reach that level because they create the things that the rest of the people live on; their innovation creates wealth, which in turn creates economic (and labor) demand. We destroy our potential by limiting good education to a precious few. I believe that we do this because people intuitively feel that if “they” win, “I” lose.

There is also a cynical group of very wealthy people who will prey on the common human emotion of xenophobia to aggregate and restrict access. So we end up with crappy schools for Black and brown people, the prison-industrial complex and healthcare disparities. We kill off that small percentage of truly talented people out of the bigotry that, generally speaking, we mistakenly believe that “keeping ours” is dependent on “keeping them” in their place. Foolishness—and that’s being proven in today’s economy.

Read Ask the White Guy on Racism, Bigotry & White Privilege.

How to Bridge Gaps With Community Outreach

The question for America is: Can we keep the destructive forces lagging behind the constructive forces? I sure hope so, and that’s why all my philanthropy is dedicated to educational disparities, such as the DiversityInc Foundation and Rutgers Future Scholars.

For corporate America, the decision on managing this overtly must be made from the top. I’d say that most companies on a sustainable path are actively involved with managing diversity because the face of educated talent has become much more diverse, and that trend is increasing. Watch the video clip below to hear KPMG CEO John Veihmeyer discuss his best practices for communicating diversity goals throughout the organization.

Companies that are dragging their feet on this one aren’t on the right side of the demographic shift, and if you can say that for your place of employment, it’s a flashing red light that your future is not secure; get out if you can.

I think the larger and far more economically powerful discussion should be taking place around how diversity can build innovation—how the very culture that develops talent equitably has far more potential to have dramatically better innovation and nimbleness than competitors that do not. For cutting-edge best practices, watch our recent innovation web seminar from Capital One and McGraw-Hill, and read Our First Innovation Fest! 10 Companies Use Diversity to Drive Change.

Think about it this way: If “diversity and inclusion” programs can help you achieve a 5 percent improvement in productivity from better human-capital performance (higher engagement, lower turnover/regrettable loss, etc.), that’s wonderful. If “diversity and inclusion” programs can help you build the innovation that facilitates the next generation of pharmaceutical advances or transportation improvement or first-mover advantage in your marketplace, well, you’d be a fool not to pick a workplace that has a demonstrable advantage over one that does not—even if you’re a white, Christian, heterosexual man with no disabilities. Anyone with an evolved sense of survival knows that your chances of success are far better at the successful company. Especially if you’re talented.

Before you jump to sending me an email that I’m beating up on one side or another, please think about this: I am taking a side. I am an optimist and I believe that all people are created equally. If you aren’t or don’t, that’s fine, but there’s no parsing this basic truth: People are created equally; therefore, talent is distributed equitably. Anything less than equitable cultivation of talent is subtractive from optimum performance.

If you are an executive, you have a fiduciary responsibility to your investors. If you’re a worker at a company that operates with this ethos (and it is a matter of ethics and values), then you do NOT have the right to work contrary to your company’s stated interests. It’s that simple.

For more on corporate values, read Ask the White Guy: Decision Making, Clarity of Values & What to Do When It Goes Horribly Wrong

The post Ask the White Guy: Why Are Disparities in Income Distribution Increasing? appeared first on DiversityInc.

The data is represented in the Bayer Corporation’s Bayer Facts of Science Education XV survey, which polled 413 STEM department chairs at the top 200 U.S.-based research universities, as well as colleges known for successfully graduating Black, Latino and American Indian STEM students. 

Discouraging Courses 

Nearly half (46 percent) of STEM department chairs believe that traditional academic approaches—namely the “weeding out” of students via demanding introductory courses—are harmful to women, Black, Latino and American Indian students. More than half (59 percent) reported that this discouragement occurs “frequently” or “occasionally.” Eighty-three percent said that faculty members do counsel some students away from STEM degrees, and 58 percent noted it as a common practice.­ 

Education, Role Models & Stereotypes 

STEM department chairs rate the most significant barriers for students from traditionally underrepresented groups as a lack of educational preparation (32 percent) and a lack of role models (17 percent). Women students are challenged by a lack of role models (13 percent) and stereotypes (13 percent). For more on how stereotypes threaten students from succeeding at higher-education institutions, read social psychologist Dr. Claude Steele’s comments at a DiversityInc event. 

Educational preparation is less of an issue for women STEM students (12 percent). The majority of department chairs (82 percent) perceive that women students enter college with a quality education, compared with majority students (74 percent) and Black, Latino and American Indian students (34 percent). Chairs also believe that women are 93 percent “as likely” or “more likely” to graduate compared with majority students. Only 61 percent anticipate the same for Black, Latino and American Indian students.

Initiating Change 

According to Greg Babe, president and CEO of Bayer Corporation, the most important finding of the study was respondents’ lack of willingness to alter current teaching practices. While 84 percent of STEM department chairs recognized that recruiting and retaining women, Black, Latino and American Indian students is a prominent challenge and 46 percent perceive “weeding out” as harmful to students, more than half (57 percent) felt no need to change. And of those citing a need for change, the majority (71 percent) calls for an increase in academic support and tutoring. 

“No institution should be immune to making changes where change is needed,” says Babe, who notes that “college STEM departments are important gatekeepers to STEM careers—indeed one of the most important links in the chain.” 

Dr. Mae C. Jemison, the first Black woman astronaut, medical doctor, chemical engineer and Bayer’s Making Science Make Sense spokesperson, says that it’s important to note that STEM dropout rates for all undergraduate students are at 40 to 60 percent. For more on how organizations can help improve dropout rates and bolster future talent pipelines, read “Rutgers Future Scholars Enhances Talent Pipelines With Corporate-Student Outreach.”

“This survey is about the perception about how the department chairs rate themselves, and there’s a reality behind that as well,” Jemison says. “The vast majority consider that women come to college very ready to succeed at STEM and graduate at much larger percentages. But when [students from traditionally underrepresented groups] and [majority students] do come prepared, they still graduate in lower numbers.” 

Jemison cites industry research that found that 40 percent of women, Blacks, Latinos and American Indians who graduated with STEM degrees report that they were actively discouraged. “We are still losing other folks,” she says, noting how “weeding out” results in a loss of interest and self-confidence among STEM undergraduates.  

To improve diversity in STEM departments, Jemison says that institutions need to provide expectation, exposure and experience. “Let students know that they should be there and that they are wanted,” she advises. 

Read about the DiversityInc Foundation’s mission to fund scholarships for students who are disadvantaged financially.

Referenced Articles: 

How to Get More Blacks and Latinos in Accounting

The STEM Pipeline for Women

Rutgers Students Excel in Sciences With ODASIS

The Stereotype Threat: Dr. Claude Steele Mesmerizes Audience

AT&T & Rutgers on Solving the Dropout Crisis

 Rutgers Future Scholars Enhances Talent Pipelines With Corporate-Student Outreach

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