Category Archives: ADR Advisors

American Diversity Report Team: ADR Advisors

Commerce, Levine ADR articles, Southern Culture

Another Volkswagen Moment — by Deborah Levine

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The president of the Chattanooga area Chamber of Commerce opened the combination reception, celebration, and press conference at Chattanooga’s Hunter Museum on July 15, 2014. The online invitations had gone out only 24 hours earlier, but the room was packed with 800 people. It had been six years since I attended the announcement of the Volkswagen plant coming to Chattanooga in this room. This year was noteworthy because of the wrangling over union representation, politics, state funding, and various personality driven conflicts that would determine whether Volkswagen would build a second car here.

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Levine ADR articles, Women & Technology

Women in Engineering Part 1: Careers – By Deborah Levine

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A discussion of engineering careers for women was recently held at the office of the Interim Dean at the UTC College of Engineering and Computer Sciences/ University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. The dialogue highlighted issues of work-life balance, career choices and STEM education. Convened by Lulu Copeland, the diverse discussion group included the following participants from the Chattanooga and North Georgia area.

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Levine ADR articles, Of Women, Women & Technology

What Women in STEM? – by Deborah Levine

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The Double-Dog-Dare Challenge

One of the positive side effects of the recent, rather dismal, report on Google’s diversity workforce data is the determination to see it as “a double dog dare” challenge. When PBS NewsHour alerted me in advance of the airing of the show, I leaped at the chance to jump into the fray. My thanks to PBS for providing a transcript for “Google’s diversity record shows women and minorities left behind.” Here are highlights from the PBS NewsHour conversation on the diversity of STEM nationally and how Chattanooga is responding to that challenge on a local level.

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Levine ADR articles, Poets

A Poem and Prayer in a Soldier’s Memory — by Deborah Levine

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For those who put themselves in harm’s way for their families, friends and country,
For those whose lives were taken in war-torn lands far from home And for all those who carry the wounds of war proudly and with honor,
Let us say a prayer of thanks and remembrance of courage and of valor.

To recall a war whose evil was heard around the globe and changed us forever,
To watch the destruction of civilization and hear the cries of the oppressed,
Is to know that good people cannot remain silent or deny commandments from above.
But must believe that “There, but for the Grace of God,” go you and I, and all we love.

As peaceful as this field of headstones As beautiful as the bouquets that mark your graves,
So may be – the rest you’ve earned so well,
While your lives touch our hearts with the stories that they tell.

 

Authors A-H, Levine ADR articles, Religious Diversity, Social Issues, Teams & Leaders, USA Culture

Does Religious Diversity Have a Future? – by Deborah Levine & Terry Howard

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Despite an increase in lawsuits related to religious expression and workplace discrimination, religious diversity is an area of Diversity & Inclusion often missing from leadership development.  The silence is due to lack of exposure and to fear, perhaps well-founded, that religious diversity training may actually increase animosity in the workplace, rather than build bridges. Given the recent Supreme Court ruling sanctioning public prayer as an American tradition, a tradition that has often been Christian, the role of diverse religions in the US is increasingly murky and contentious.

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Levine ADR articles, Teams & Leaders

Inclusion: Controversial, Emotional, but Not Optional — by Deborah Levine

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Inclusion is not new

Six years ago, I described how Inclusion-related policies and legal regulations have long been part of economic and social change, and, at times, part of emotional and combustible debate.  Inclusion took 50 years of wrangling after the first Women’s Suffrage conference in the mid-1800s to achieve a constitutional amendment granting women the vote.  It took another 50 years for the Civil Rights Movement to seriously impact the workplace and establishment of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).  Now, with COVID-19 and serious calls for racial justice, we are seeing another major societal and economic transformation that questions how we can achieve an inclusive diversity.

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