The inspiration behind setting up the Academy for Diversity and Innovation

The long and short of it is that the COVID-19 pandemic was the initial catalyst for designing the first Train The Intercultural Trainer Program in Spanish and after the successful roll-out of that project, we decided to set the academy up.

I remember back in early March, I was teaching in a study abroad program at The Autonomous University of Barcelona where the majority of my students were from the U.S. On March 12 I walked into my classroom to find it completely empty! My students had all left to return to the States in such a hurry that we’d not had time to say goodbye. I went home with a deep feeling of sadness and emptiness as we’d been together for nearly three months and now they were just gone. 

I was used to teaching and working online so I was no stressed because of this change but I was very worried about the future as a lot of businesses started cancelling the courses and consulting projects. I’m a businesswoman and knew that I needed to re-invent myself in order to continue working. What helped me no-end was a phrase I heard from Simon Sinek, at the start of the pandemic: “The question is not how we go through it but how we can change to go through it.”

So with this in mind, I called my business partner Stefan Meister, who set up intercultures in Germany, to suggest that we change our modus operandi in Spain to focus more on B2C than B2B as the business is paralyzed by the pandemic. I got his OK for our first B2C product: Train The Intercultural Trainer Program in Spanish. I always wanted to set up this kind of course as there’s a lot of interest in it and an in-depth, complete course in Spanish was obviously needed. I knew that selling tickets would be tricky in the current economic climate but I had faith that the quality of the program would speak for itself. And, I was right, it was an incredible success! Exactly this success was also the impetus for setting up the Summer Academy for Diversity and Innovation.

I also must give credit to the influence that Paul Brunson had over everything. He had a livestream on LinkedIn several times a week for business entrepreneurs. I found his energy, authenticity and generosity in sharing his knowledge incredibly motivating. I learned loads from him. I learned that now is the moment to learn new things. I had to start from zero in this new sector and he gave me the courage to do so. Paul's energy, generosity and authenticity empowered me a lot.

In May, together with Barbara Covarrubias, who is another co-founder of the Academy of Innovation and Diversity, we organized our first business event - Virtual World Café for Diversity Champions. This turned out to be a seminal moment in terms of the Academy’s future, as it put me in contact with Tayo Rockson. We signed him to speak at the event and so I became more familiar with Tayo’s work. He’s written a great book called: Use Your Difference To Make A Difference which I’ve found very useful in terms of reflecting on my own path. I fell in love with Tayo's work. I enrolled in a mentorship program with him. We did a bit of mentoring together just when the news of George Floyd’s murder broke, which affected Tayo greatly. He decided to create a daily #letstalkbias challenge on his social media to make people question their own biases. One such challenge was “How to make an impact on our own community.” 

This challenge got me thinking about how I personally wanted to help the Black Lives Matter movement and I realized that I have an enormous multi-national network of contacts. I love creating spaces of learning and have also seen how people enjoy getting to know new contacts, especially in an intercultural environment. So the idea of the Summer Academy came to me out of these experiences. I wanted to create corresponding courses of diversity and innovation. Diversity is a source of innovation that is often under-appreciated. When we talk about strategies of inclusion we rarely talk about innovation. I don’t know of many businesses that really work on that part of innovation, who really get the most out of diversity to find creative solutions. And this is something that we need even more nowadays. We’re in a new climate where we have to reinvent ourselves as people, as businesses, as a society. 

And this is not something that can be done by a Directors’ Board or by governments - we have to listen to all the voices that form part of our societies and organizations. Today, more than ever, we have to listen to all voices throughout the world. It’s made me think that we really need to work on that capacity to listen properly, to open our minds, to listen to people with a different opinion from ours. Our unconscious biases can have a massive negative influence on peoples’ lives and can stop innovation, which I think is such an important discussion to have. And today, more than ever, we all have to be creative and innovative. And the key question for me now is: how our organizations and societies can leverage diversity for innovation?

At the Academy for Diversity and Innovation we've already started to work on this topic. Follow us and stay in touch. We have few ideas that we've been already testing :)