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

I believe that events and places could do a better job of making changing stations readily available to both men and women that are with small children. I believe it now and I believed it ten years ago…but it was only a REALLY big deal to me for a few years. The years when I   [Read More…]

Ug. I am not a patient person, and that is why I often have a love / hate relationship with the body(s) of work that I am connected to. Most of what I do lands somewhere in the Diversity & Inclusion / Human Resources / Management / Learning & Development / Leadership & Organizational Development   [Read More…]

I came across the above quote earlier this week and it reminded me of the topic of my last few blog posts and some of the responses and e-mails that they have generated. Thanks for those, by the way. It seems to me that there might be something important to be sorted out here. Mr.   [Read More…]

I spend a lot of time helping organizations come to a more applicable and activist understanding of inclusion. Inclusion is not a state of mind—it is an activist orientation toward difference. It is about the things that you do to deliberately include additional difference in a group or process. Every time that I ask managers   [Read More…]

I got a few e-mails after my last post. Some of my peers feel that it is lazy and/or inappropriate and/or cowardly for me to say I am just not that interested in making the business case for diversity and inclusion work. I value the perspective of my peers, but I am still not interested.   [Read More…]

One last post about privilege. In a situation of discrimination or inequality there are four roles that you can play. You can be the target, you can be the perpetrator, you can be a bystander or you can be a leader. Privilege often times helps us find our way into the wrong role. I used   [Read More…]

The word community gets thrown around a lot today. I see and hear lots of conversations about building community, managing community, etc. As I have mentioned before, I think that community requires much more than simply sharing physical or other kinds of space. I think that real community demands a certain amount of mutual commitment,    [Read More…]

What kind of community will we choose? I am not a native of Omaha, but it is my home. I have now been here for close to fifteen years and am no going anywhere. I met my soul mate here, found my calling here, started my business here and am raising a family here. I   [Read More…]

My last post did some foundational work toward building a framework of inclusion. I defined inclusion as “the act of including additional difference in a group or process.” I went on to say that inclusion is:  activist (it is not something you are or are not, it is something that you do) generative (it increases   [Read More…]

I hope to bring greater clarity to diversity and inclusion work. Being sloppy and careless with our language easily and often undermines the behaviors and outcomes that we work toward. If we create a solid foundation with our language, identifying definitions, characteristics and indicators, it becomes much easier to then build behaviors and target outcomes   [Read More…]