Category Archives: About Us

About the American Diversity Report

The Tehran I Remember – by Ann Craig-Cinnamon

As someone who lived in Tehran, Iran back in the 1970’s, I especially enjoyed seeing the movie Argo win the Best Picture Oscar. It’s a great story, with compelling characters and lots of suspense. The fact that the story is true makes it even more incredible because the plot is like something that would spring from the mind of Tom Clancy. Imagine sneaking US embassy personnel out of Iran right under the noses of militants using the far-fetched story that they were there to scout movie locations? I had no idea the CIA was so creative. The film also serves as a reacquainting of how America got where we are in our relationship with Iran.

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Helping Pakistani Women — by Riasat Ali Changazi

I have a passion for promoting standards formulation, standards adaptation, standards implementation, Indigenous development and working for a sustainable technological base in developing countries. It is due to this passion that I work with Pakistan Standards and Quality Control Authority, Pakistan Engineering council and other professional forums.  
My HRD project aims to empower deprived woman and their children in order to give better human beings to this world. I operate in Pakistan, but I plan to expand to other countries. Women in this part of the world are very deprived; they do not stand equal to men (male- dominated society).

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Multicultural Marketing – by Elisabete Miranda

Communicating with clients and customers is the most important job for any marketing professional. Clear, precise communication skills are an integral part of connecting with any audience. When the contact is from a different culture than the marketer, communications can get tricky. But understanding how to convey a message appropriately to a multicultural audience in the global economy is critical.

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African Cultural Differences — by Pascale Sztum

Many African leaders have used the term ‘We Africans’ in their speeches and statements. Subsequently, many researches and works based on findings in one African society have been deemed to be relevant elsewhere in Africa. For example there are books on African organizations, on the African management style, on African values…Those pieces of work are never based on empirical studies covering the entire continent.

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Should Artists Starve for Their Art? — by Georgina Lester

To suffer for one’s art has long been taken for granted as the only way to succeed. Monetary gain for any kind of artistic or creative work can to some be outrageous and unforgivable. Artists who demand high prices are frowned upon for being too money orientated as if they are sullying the arts profession by prostituting their own style and talents. Art for money is not considered to be the acceptable primary directive as we should all be purists in heart and mind manifesting our art for the satisfaction of being able to express ourselves through our chosen medium.

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Fiction is a Driver of the Future – by Roy Huff

There are many reasons why writers write. Some have a story that simply has to be told, others like to create worlds that can be shaped and molded by their own thoughts and desires. Regardless of the reason, the end product is not just ink on paper or words on a screen; the final product is a blue print that can be used as inspiration for more ideas and a driver of innovation and technology that can be developed further at some point in the future.

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The Writing Star — by Kim Gosselin

Saturday, my husband followed our GPS to a conference center bordering the inner city of St. Louis. He drove our four door, sandy colored Chevy. I sat on the passenger side, gripping an imaginary safety handle to make me feel more secure. The day was dull, cold and cloudless. Slight rain began to bubble on our windshield. My cell phone rang. “Hello,” I said. It was my forecaster son, calling to warn me of the freezing rain ahead. “Be careful,” he said.

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The Eye of the Obnoxious Bird — by Dr. Mukta Panda

He was showing me paintings that hung on his living room wall. He had painted these over the years and wanted me to have one. He pointed to a painting of a Bosnian girl (whom he had met in Seattle) with a very serene expression on her face. “Or you can look at this one”, he said with a chuckle as he turned around pointing in the opposite direction; “it is interesting but not very pretty.” He called the painting -“the obnoxious bird, the bird from down under”.

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Another Volkswagen Moment — by Deborah Levine

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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A Baptism Guest — by Spencer McCall

The good people of the First Waughtown Baptist Church were consumed by utter jubilation – it was Baptism Sunday. Wearing the best of their Sunday best they sang hymns as they proceeded to the banks of the Belview Creek not far from the Church and just beyond the old Belview School. The candidate for baptism was none other than my mother’s distant relation Brother Hines. Bro Hines hailed from a strong old Baptist family and his people were numbered amongst the founders of First Waughtown and it’s mother church First Baptist Winston and his father was a Baptist pastor of the family church in Davidson County.

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