Joe Gerstandt | keynote speaker, freedom fighter, freak-flag flier

I am in Chattanooga, TN and will be presenting for the local SHRM chapter tomorrow.  Here are my slides…lot to cover! Why (and How) Diversity Matters Now View more presentations from Joe Gerstandt.  

It was my privilege to kick off the 15th Annual OCI Diversity Summit last week and my presentation was titled Facts, Fictions and the Naming of Elephants.  My hope with this presentation was to shine some light on a really big, really dangerous blind spot that we have regarding how we make decisions.  We like   [Read More…]

I know smart people. When you have no original ideas of your own, like me, you have to find ways to be around smart people and I have a massive collection of smart people in my life.  One of them is Mark Hirschfeld.  It is always cool to see someone that you have known for   [Read More…]

Diversity (difference) and shows up in a lot of different ways…there are many ways that we can be different from each other.  A couple of important characteristics of difference: Difference is relational…it exists within the context of relationships.  Diversity (or difference) does not exist in people, but between people.  Difference is a relational attribute and   [Read More…]

When I tell people that my work is about helping organizations and communities build inclusive cultures, they generally think that I advocate a kinder, gentler way of doing things.  I do not.  I do not have anything against kinder or gentler, but inclusive is not kinder, gentler.  Inclusive is not giving everyone a trophy.  It   [Read More…]

I am attending HRevolution 2010 and not entirely sure what to expect, but I am very much looking forward to it. Giddy, you might say.  It will, at the very least, be a great opportunity to meet a number of folks that I know online but have not yet met in real life. I am   [Read More…]

It is Friday.  And on Fridays I try to promote and celebrate the flying of the Freak Flag.  The Freak Flag represents a lot of things.   Here are a few… It is the celebration of coloring outside the lines. It is for wearing socks that say something. It is the celebration of chair dancing, because   [Read More…]

Does your organization or community have an inclusive culture? Really? How do you know? A lot of organizations say nice, happy, shiny things about inclusion and about diversity.  For most organizations that is about as far as it goes…they have “inclusion of the mouth” but they do not have any real clarity on what inclusion   [Read More…]

I am attending the 2010 Multicultural Forum on Workplace Diversity, and yesterday I presented a session called New Rules, New Tools which was a basic intro to Web 2.0 for diversity and inclusion practitioners and a consideration of how these tools might be applied to D & I work.  This is my slidedeck. New Rules   [Read More…]

I came across yet another article recently questioning the value of diversity training, and I always find the responses to these articles interesting, but I also find the articles themselves to be interesting in the way in which they hold diversity training up to standards that I do not see applied to other bodies of   [Read More…]