In 2009, I left a great job at the U.S. Department of Agriculture as an American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) Employment Program Manager, to follow my former boss to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on a detail. A year later, I was hired as an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Specialist and was assigned a myriad of duties that consisted of special emphasis program work, barrier analysis and report writing.
In 2011, my supervisor came to me and indicated she wanted to add another job duty to my portfolio-training. She claimed that her busy schedule did not allow her to keep up with training demands prompted by the IRS’s incorporation of diversity inclusion programs and policies into a work environment historically wedded to EEO.
Keep in mind, I had only done a minimum amount of trainings in my career mostly around AI/AN issues. These presentations amounted to 2-3 trainings a year and were mostly linear brain exercises that consisted of data analysis for AI/AN affirmative employment trends.
I had never taken a stand alone subject, researched it and created a substantial training exercise.
She sent me a PowerPoint presentation on leveraging differences. She instructed me to familiarize myself with the slides and deliver this material to her without a script within a week.
After passing this test, she indicated that I would gradually assume the role of a full-time generational diversity and inclusion trainer. When 2012 rolled along, I gradually took on more diversity and inclusion topics as I juggled other work responsibilities.
By 2014, I was transferred to a team of full-time trainers and conflict mediation experts. Without a degree in education, with little experience in public speaking and the personality of an obsessive introvert, this former stutterer had become an accidental diversity and inclusion trainer.
I felt it important to tell you this personal narrative to debunk this notion that you must be certified, sanctified and baptized into the waters of education certification to wear the title of trainer. There is nothing wrong with wanting someone or something to recognize your communication skills through certification and recognition. But the most important things you must have for our challenging task at hand is the ability, passion and purpose to tell the diversity and inclusion story from the lens of your own personal story.
At the end of the day, anybody can be a diversity and inclusion trainer because as human beings, we all have a diversity and inclusion experience that deserves to be told. The challenge of a diversity and inclusion trainer is to tell their story in a way where it enriches, validates and encourages the recognition, acceptance and expression of the diversity and inclusion narratives of other adults in the room.
