What Ike taught me about embracing Diversity (as published at http://www.americandiversityreport.com/)

I live in the United Nations, well, to be more accurate I live in a suburb that looks very much like the United Nations located Southwest of Houston which I have learned to embrace and love.
Right the days before Ike strike and the day after it hit, you could tell that ethnicities and national origins were totally out of our minds when it came to the sense of helping and supporting each other and our kids to feel safe.
I took this picture right after Ike was gone and all of our American kids were cleaning up the leaves and branches left behind by the winds. It is an image as the real richness of this wonderful Country I will always remember. The so called ‘Latinos’, ‘Europeans’ and ‘Texans’ were all working together as just good neighbors would do. I can tell they are growing to be part of a new generation, one that completely disregard anything related to race or the biases surrounding that concept.
Full inclusiveness totally gets your heart with the realization that we all are human beings with pretty much the same needs and goals.
When I started my business of career coaching, my thought was about helping professional immigrants that struggle to fully succeed in the labor culture of this Country but on my subconscious I was focusing on my own ethnicity – Latinos. However, as time has been moving by and I have extended my own network and relationships as part of my marketing side, I’ve discovered how biased I had been by not understanding that the working culture in the US is not as easy for anyone coming to this country, regardless of their ethnicity or continent of origin.
I am an immigrant myself from Venezuela. I have been a professional whose international exposure as a HR Consultant for a major oil company empowered her to create and focus her practice in Diversity and inclusion matters related to the professional success of her clients.
On my first year in the US, though I'd been previously exposed to working in a global working environment and I’d lived previously in the US as a student, I felt 'culturally blind' not understanding the fact that I was not just a person but a category that happened to be part of two minority groups - Latino and women -. It took a few punches to my self-esteem to discover that there was nothing wrong with me but the fact that as a new comer in a new world I just needed to understand how to relate, work and sell my ideas effectively in a foreign corporate environment. By then, I was part of a bunch of foreigners under the same circumstances supporting each other to be successful and learning the importance of having and extended and globally effective professional network.
The learning curve took us a while and now that I see it, I understand how I could have benefited myself from a mentor or career coaching services. Therefore, life had it that people started referring their colleagues and friends to me to help them to get out of the hole some of them saw themselves into for not being able to move ahead on their career development or career moves as planned which has become my inspiration to open my business, so they overcome their fears or doubts related to their own chances to succeed in this international and very competitive corporate world. And then, I see my own neighborhood stretching our minds and hearts to realize how easy it would be that what we do in our community life, we manage in our working environment.
The assumption that everyone is as best as they are completely switches your mind towards an open and generous listening to what the other side has to tell and how you can incorporate or blend what you know towards a richer outcome.
I think the boom of all Cross-Cultural Career Coaching businesses will last maybe just our generation as the new one will be a global, open, unbiased generation used to and welcoming to all sort of ideas and dynamics. I can tell by the way the interactions so naturally occur and kids deal with each other and their commonness far more easily than their presumed differences.
It is us, the parents, the workers, the immigrants, the neighbors, the nationals that get pushed everyday out of our comfort zones to add to this mix. In the meantime, we just get along and do our best to understand or at least be open to an understanding of what others have to bring to the table. Ask yourself, am I transferring my good neighbor skills to my professional ones at work? I wonder what the answer would be, but I hope you get the picture on your mind of all the people that right now in Texas are re-building the disaster zone with the unique sense of a community building a better future together.