I work with individuals, teams, and organizations to strengthen how they understand and improve cultural awareness, sensitivity, and intentionality in their institutions, in order to be more effective in their work.
- Cultural sensitivity, also known as cultural awareness, cultural intelligence, or cultural competence, is a process whereby organizations and individuals can work more effectively across cultures; increase their capacity to understand, value, and adapt to diversity; and increase equity and inclusion within the organization and across policies, service delivery, systems and administration to better serve communities
- At its best, it embodies a racial justice framework that seeks to overcome disadvantages associated with racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, other -isms, and the power, privilege, and prejudice that may pursue.
- In public health, embracing culturally intentional lenses and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is vital to enabling organizations to understand how to serve the needs of the community, no matter where in the world they are located.
- In higher education university settings, including schools of public health, cultural awareness is critical to educating emerging leaders to effectively deal and respond to the challenges of an increasing globalized world.
SELECT EXPERIENCE
- I am certified in administering the Cultural Intelligence (CQ) Certification, Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI), and Intercultural Conflict Style (ICS), tools for assessing individuals’, teams’, and organizations’ ability to understand and work with cultural differences and similarities
- At the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, I was selected to serve on an advisory group for the Center of Excellence on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to advance organizational programming
- At Harvard, I led a working group of 7 to develop and implement the University’s first anonymous bias-related incident reporting mechanism and related protocols, reaching 3792 students, faculty, staff, and researchers.
- As Senior Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Fellow and former consultant for 7 years at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health Office of Diversity and Inclusion, I worked closely with administration and staff to create an educational environment that is culturally-responsive
- As a selected representative of the Dean’s Advisory Committee on Diversity and Inclusion and Co-Founder and Chair, Student Voices Sub-Committee at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, I worked closely with administration, staff, faculty, and students to inform the school’s policies on diversity and inclusion over 3 years.
- I created and facilitated workshops for the Global Health Corps training institute and alumni retreat to promote critical thought and dialogue on challenges to cultural competence in global health leadership.