If we were to compare our own lives with the lives of people who lived at the turn of the last century in the United States, the first things that would come to our attention would be the many differences that separate us from them. Our early 20th-century counterparts...
Among the many fictional characters who rub shoulders with real historical figures in the pages of E.L. Doctorow’s 1975 novel Ragtime, one who stands out as particularly heroic is Tateh, a Latvian Jew who immigrates to the United States in search of a better life for...
It was at the Tehran Conference between the Allied forces in 1943, during one of the most pivotal moments of World War II, that British prime minister Winston Churchill famously declared, “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a...
Of all the difficult tasks that people are sometimes called upon to perform during their careers, speaking unpleasant truths to the privileged and powerful is one of the hardest. It carries with it the social stigma of being associated with an organization’s problems,...
The pursuit of higher education is one of those personal milestones, like owning a house and becoming financially independent, that has traditionally been associated with the good life in America. Over the last century, going to college essentially replaced the...
In the United States today, the idea of “famine” is something we tend to associate with fiction and the distant past, not our own lives. News stories warn us of housing troubles, poverty and homelessness, but not of nationwide food shortages that endanger human lives....
It’s a sad irony of life that many people who spend their careers making others laugh have little to laugh about themselves. In recent decades many comedians have publicly discussed their struggles with depression, but the relationship between professional humor and...
When we discuss the various kinds of adversity that our Achievers have had to overcome in their lives, we run the risk of overlooking one considerable advantage that many of them had in common: that of living in a society where individual rights were respected and...
Not all the harmful prejudices that hold us back from mutual respect and cooperation are based on visually apparent traits like race or sex. The fine gradations of polite society have given most of us an abundance of criteria that we use to judge people based on their...
The turn of the 20th century was the first great era of female emancipation in the United States. For the first time in centuries, public figures encouraged women to wear clothing that facilitated movement, take healthy exercise regularly, and involve themselves in...
One of the greatest, yet least remarked-upon advances made by the medical profession in the 20th century was the widespread adoption of physical therapy as a means of soothing pain, rebuilding muscular strength and restoring confidence to people with disabilities. At...
Most of us are familiar with Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Ugly Duckling, in which a baby bird is born into a family of ducks who mock him for being ugly and clumsy, only to realize when he has grown into adulthood that he is not a duck at all, but a...
A biweekly series about the lives of great achievers whose differences enabled their success. Differences cause tension, but in the long run that tension can lead to invention, progress, and revolutionary change.
Why Inclusion Comes First The approach to diversity in our workplaces is constantly changing. While there are various acronyms for this work (DEI,...
Every June, businesses celebrate Pride Month to show their support for the LGBTQ+ community; however, true allyship requires advocacy beyond one...
It's Time to Focus on Employee Engagement The studies are clear. Employee engagement affects business performance, and job satisfaction. But what...
Inclusity starts each inclusion training session with a “connection.” This is more than just a euphemism for those (sometimes-corny) ice breaker...
Inclusive Leaders How many of us, at some point in our lives, have felt like we were an outsider – no matter how hard we tried to fit in? Who hasn’t...
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential, is invisible to the eye.” - The Little Prince Why is Empathy and Leadership...
In 1990, I left a corporate management position to join a small company that was focused on workplace diversity. The diversity field was relatively...