Diversity and Disaster

There are great benefits to having a diverse team. What would you say is the most difficult challenge of leading a diverse team?

So at the risk of being a little coy, I find it more challenging to lead a non-diverse team. You don't get the pleasure, the joy of watching debate. You don't get the joy of hearing about other people's backgrounds because you are who you were when you were raised, right? To me, it's boring. It's not elevating. And you lose an edge that you can get by bringing different people that think differently, particularly at a place like The American Red Cross, where the people that we serve are so diverse. I mean, you walk into one of our shelters. It's like the UN. I mean, when disaster strikes, it strikes everybody. And so…

There are no racial barriers when disaster strikes.

At all. I mean, everybody is living in a shelter with cots and their families are in small clusters. And by the time they go back to their home, they've spoken to just about everybody in that shelter. It becomes a family. And if the people that were serving them at the Red Cross were not also diverse, we wouldn't be able to relate to them. So I find it not a thing you should do, I find it a necessity to be successful and a thing that you should do.