Welcome back students, this is Dr. Aviva Legatt To my left is Torian Richardson, he is the Principal of Torianite Inc. Welcome, Torian. >> Thank you for having me. >> It's great to have you. So for the folks out there, could you introduce yourself for us? >> As Dr. Leggatt said my name is Torian Richardson >> I'm originally from the Chicago land area. And I've had the opportunity to not only work in Chicago, but also the opportunity to work around the world, in Europe, Africa, and in China. So hopefully I'll be able to bring yourself and some of your students some insight to some of the management opportunities that I've had around the world. >> So as you said, you've lived all over the world. Does the country context that you've lived in set the agenda or the priorties for diversity on teams and what those values are? >> Absolutely. For me as a manager and as a potential leader, you want to go in and really have a sense of awareness for where you are actually going. And in order to have an awareness for the culture, you have to have a self-awareness as well. So one of the things that I have always tried to do, and continue to do as I go forward professionally, is to walk into situations whether it be personal or professional, and say well, what I know isn't necessarily the right way, nor is it the only way. So when I go into those situations, it really helps me to kind of level set and see things with a neutral mindset. >> Mm-hm. That's great, and that's something we're encouraging our students as well, that they have to be self-aware of themselves in order to figure out how should I relate to this person? What sides of myself are important? What behaviors are appropriate to this team versus that team? So I'm curious, you were a foreigner in these cultures. As a foreigner, how were you either welcomed or possibly excluded from these teams? What was your experience? >> [LAUGH] Well it's interesting. I worked In Europe, when I was a Pearson education, and that was fairly similar to the United States, because culturally we have a lot in common. Even when you start to matriculate to countries like Spain and France and things of that nature, but as an African American working and living in Africa, that was a very unique experience. I was the Business Solutions Director for Pearson in education based out of Lagos, Nigeria, but I actually covered the whole continent. So I had the opportunity to live there, but work in different cultures, and I was received, welcomed. I was very welcomed for the most part, but there was a sense of, as an African American, you are from here, but you're not of here, in some places. And a lot of that wasn't in a derogatory way, it just was the term African American doesn't exist in most of their languages there. So even that term, having to explain that, what that means to us in the United States was a challenge in itself. But overall professionally, utilizing some of the things that we talked about before, as far as going in and being as neutral as possible, it was a very welcoming experience, for the most part culturally. There's an implicit understanding, because there's so much diversity across the continent of Africa. I mean, if you think about from a cultural standpoint, language, just the traditions of the different tribal areas and villages that are there. So there's an awareness of yes, we all want to work together, and we do work together, but there are things that maybe make us a little bit different. But they're embraced. For the most part, they definitely are embracing. People come together under the common bond of we are trying to do something, particularly working in education, that is positive, personally as well as professionally.
