what a diversity consultant is well my area is cultures and basically we live in a very multicultural area and world and and so i help people understand one another and learn more about cultural differences in everyday life and work and children in schools because we learn differently in different countries and we're taught differently in different countries and if we think of culture we can talk about our family culture where we do things a certain way and neighborhoods that me do  things a certain way and different foods and have different expressions of that and so i hear that you are learning italian so we are more familiar with especially here in new jersey we know about italian food and some of the gestures so it's fascinating so basically i'm always hearing about people and from people and trying to train to interact and enjoy different cultures whether they are have a here for a longer time like an african american culture or native american culture or chick or italian or other cultures but there are ways of life here and what makes them truly special what they contribute to our side so what does well do you do at school well two different things one is character building so kids at times it's one activity after another short in the way of games and so it can be how communication goes in a certain culture and they may be just ass kicking them to tell a story without words so that they see how challenging it may be not to have the words to express themselves and  how they use other elements and maybe their bodies their facial expressions their hands whatever is said hand to tell a story that may be interesting and full of emotions so he and other language games just to feel what it feels to be any different culture not knowing every word that everybody else in their school in their neighborhood knows because if not be some people think that speaking a foreign language is something negative rather than positive how did you get started in this work i started studying english when i was little like eleven and i'm still learning it because you never finish learning a language and  i was always fascinated by cultures and so i'm originally from argentina and my four grandparents were immigrants in argentina and they spoke other languages as well  one was banished but then another one was basque and i know two words and basque and the other one was french and the other one was whistling the language of the cultures where smoke signals well it's the same in the canary islands that are there are gorgeous so if one person is here and the other person is here and they try to communicate  whistling is that language they may use as so because whistling travels farther and so kids over there are learning how to whistle to communicate so it's like a second language what  to last and not feel threatened and sometimes when you have people who are from a minority opening up to say what they think or what they need to say in a certain circumstance many become a threat for other people who are not used to differences and and so there's that are gaps that are misunderstandings  in so creating a safe space that safe for people i've dealt or children from different cultures so that they really listen to one another what hurts them what offends them what they expect from others all those things that are not spoken about and that he that force people from different cultures to function and the way they are expected to behave but not that way they would culturally act normally he or daily so in american mainstream american culture people from abroad learn to do things the american way and me some people may think that everybody should speak english us thinking that there is an official language in the us and there is none that our constitution doesn't state that there is any official language so our a fellow citizens would be better off speaking many languages and i know a little ones who speak three languages when they are three and a half four years old and so because biologically we're ready to learn from languages from the moment we're born and so we forget about that and science has shown that so if we speak only one if we never expand our horizons linguistically or through travel we are limiting ourselves and our brain can create two codes our heart can create different ways so feeling of we can think in another language and so if we have to dictionaries in our minds that's much richer if we can function their way we are personality wise in different cultures then we will understand that others may feel differently may think differently may learn differently you mentioned that you were always interested in cultures even from when you were younger so did you always know that you wanted to hold this position or did you not know that something like this was something you could do on my path i discovered that i wanted to learn to different things and and so because he i was interested in different areas or disciplines then i kept learning so it was the pass that led to my new interest to learning about that and becoming a professional that area my soul wants to be a bridge among cultures if i could sit everybody and help them to get along and understand and listen to one another i have been having and so when i first came in argentina i was an english a second language professor when i came i learned how to be an interpreter school i realized that it wasn't a question of intelligence it was a question of practice and perseverance and and the university where i was doing my graduate work and teaching invited me to give training in cultural differences in business for big corporations so that's how i started doing it and and by now i train people from seventy five countries relocating to twenty five countries and the beauty it is that i learned what is common to human beings and what is different and indeed you never finish learning that so i'm more of a lifelong learner and i'm fascinated by the differences by the gifts the talents that we all have everybody's unique and we were born to make a difference in the world somehow and we need to discover that and we need to open up the path for those differences to appear and not be offended or  them or reject them but accept them welcome them and and share them so let's you ladies having this program that's beautiful so if you started doing this  our country here where any as strong a merciful also fors attorneys merchants all these things and so we have made the potential to be so many more things and and so we you know many people here have two or three careers in their lives you started yours early and i would be fascinated in ten  automotive industry and he was transit well at first he was traveling to china on business for a long time for many years and then he moved there and what he said to me was that he learned humility he was from the south of the u s i believe he was live and he's his parents were lebanese are from that area and he said that he had learned humility in china when in the middle of the night he was at this very fancy restaurant and where is chinese executives trying to do business  outside the government's eyes and the tee ball had a very long table cloth almost all the way to the floor and he said something touching his feet and so he thought there would be rats and he thought here are meeting here and there are brats right here and and then he kept on talking and it happened again and so he lifted the tablecloth a little bit and he saw there was someone there on four feet polishing people's tin in people's shoes so this person and go in the dark working polishing shoes cleaning all these top executives was so he said that when i returned home once it was given in life company these how privileged i was in because it was someone working in the dark polishing my shoes so niceness like that that  transformative i learned from when someone tells me all these stories of both themself the boat different countries about their own culture you know here when i learned th stories from african americans you heard a woman who say historian here in princeton sitting that her great grandfather was sold and his value as a slave and he said you was less than it piece of furniture so that was a human life so there's so much that needs to be shared to understand others  was curious i hear that sometimes people know more than one language just the feeling the language can kind of put them into a different persona have you noticed that with people who or with yourself that no multiple languages that you find yourself maybe saying things that you would normally say are just being a little different there was say when i was in graduate school in my bilingualism class my professor had us read a research paper  where and in mate in a murder case was interviewed and he was interviewed in two different languages and he was he's he statements were much clearer in one language than in the other so in one it was not clear that he had done it in the other one it was clear that he had killed someone so we yes we are difference in different languages and the daughter of a friend of mine was an exchange student in germany an american girl and she called her father up and she said dad you know what i don't have a personality in german not in germany in german because it is different you you learn a lot about that language but about the culture and you function within those it within that cultures paradigms and ways of being and saying and doing that's more social different ends and we are global and i'm an immigrant your ancestors earned with france your mom is an immigrant so i don't know how far back you trace your immigrant parents any ancestors from grandparents great grandparents yeah i'm not like i am is specially our three and sister all cultures have a lot in common because they're very group branded i don't know enough about czech culture but i know that our polish spanish cultures are very group or indeed very communicative very together very cohesive and that we love sitting down with large groups of people generally  that's a trend it's not that everybody is like that but to to share food and set a break whether it's a baptism or bat mitzvah whatever but across over the years of course let an american cultures was my first specialisation i would say but over the years having trained people coming and going i have specialized in several countries and i'm fascinated by the people i have it the opportunity to train so we when was it last week i trained someone from a professional from tanzania who grew up in great britain and was going to a country relocating to a country in europe so it's there's a flow there's a there are all these immigration waves that may be temporary but that enrich and basically building and cultures and and so i always say that we when we if one culture or one country we are at the core of an onion and we develop new layers new interests new qualities we acquire new skills so the core of the onion is still there but there are so many more layers and then more we travel to different cultures they're more understanding with may become and that better the bigger the heart maker we we're willing to give people the benefit of the doubt much more throughout your job have you witnessed a lot of perhaps ethnocentrism in some of the people that you have like since doing your job have you notice ethnocentrism people more than good before i had say it depends on the area  where i lived i lived in different states and so the earth stereotypes and so people have different perceptions of those they don't  know and if they don't know of them they cannot understand them this year like i lived in a little town in kansas called independence which had a community college and many international students and that little town was very internationally minded and it was a tiny town and sort of east kansas and it was beautiful because there were a lot of exchange students so families there brought in to their homes to expose their children to local cultures kids from  japan all over africa all over the world cyprus russia and so it was beautiful so because those south koreans open to differences we become more as people as human beings we understand more we may become more tolerant if we we all have the same needs and many people go to a different culture out of need because they need to feed their children and and so it's not that they want to steal from anybody they just want to feed their children and give their children more opportunities that they themselves had and i believe that just as my grandparents were immigrants in argentina i'm an immigrant here and i'm trying to make a contribution and if we open up to those differences we be a better society maybe we won't impose on others because we want to learn how you do things and why do you do things every culture has its own internal logic and but unless we communicate and we are open to being challenged by other ideas we will never understand and we will remain scared so i wish every class every kindergarten where allowed to play games from around the world and try different words from around the world and of different things again songs dances literature ways of thinking we think differently around the world and and so it more ethnocentric you are the more closed you are the less permeable the less porous you are to learning other things that are not whether they look different they dressed differently they different flavors don't fear differences just welcome them be curious