Diversity News 
January 2009 

Yvonne: On Friday, September 26th 2008, the Washington DC VA Medical Center 
presented the fourth session of its Executive Leadership Training Series, a program 
designed specifically to meet the needs of managers and supervisors in resolving conflict 
in the workplace. 

Thomas: This two-hour session focused on cultural diversity and addressed the issue 
from several perspectives, including its advantages, its importance in healthcare, as well 
as overcoming challenges in dealing with a diverse workforce. 

Thomas: The first panelist to speak was Georgia Coffey, Deputy Assistant Secretary for 
VA’s then-Office of Diversity Management and Equal Employment Opportunity, which 
has since evolved to the Office of Diversity and Inclusion. Ms. Coffey talked about the 
business case for diversity. 

Georgia: What I hope to convey to you today is that although each of you are in highly 
scientific fields, medical fields, biological fields, I can guarantee you that the issue of 
diversity is absolutely central to how well you can perform your jobs. 

Georgia: By 2040, by all estimations from the Census Bureau, there will no longer be a 
single demographic majority—it just won’t be. People of color will represent more than 
50 percent of the nation and no one group will be able to claim the mantle of being in the 
majority. We will truly be a diverse organization and that’s good news. 

Georgia: The Diversity Research Network, a well-known, highly-respected organization 
that does a number of studies in the diversity arena and here’s what they found, and I’m 
going to just distill it down to the final outcomes. Workforce diversity, in terms of race, 
gender, ethnicity, now I am talking about, is indeed positively associated—there is a 
positive correlation—between workforce diversity and business outcomes. 

Georgia: Drilling down further, racial diversity in the workforce is positively associated 
with higher performance in organizations that integrate and leverage diverse perspectives. 
That is an important piece of the equation here. Diversity will not work—will not be 
effective in having these outcomes—unless you have the conditions in place that 
welcome diverse points of view. Now we’re starting to get into the link between diverse 
thought, intellectual diversity, and our human diversity—our race, gender, ethnicity. 

Georgia: Just in September, the Journal of American Medicine Association, JAMA, put 
out a study; I encourage you to look at it. In fact, it references one of our own folks here 
in VA. A study was done, led by a UCLA team, that showed that graduates—health 
professional graduates—from diverse medical schools were better equipped to deliver 
higher patient care. Now, to me, that’s an exciting revelation. Nothing we didn’t know, 
but to see actual hard data now confirm what we’ve always suspected is that we need to 
not only embrace diversity, it needs to be something we need to incorporate into 
everything we do. This study, by the way, I am told was led by one of our own VAMC 
physicians out in Portland and he was one of the leaders of this study and it showed 
empirical data that correlated medical school diversity, medical training diversity, with 
higher patient out care; very compelling for each one of you. 

Georgia: If your organizational culture is not equipped with the tools to deal with 
diversity to be respectful and—more than respectful—to empower differences in the 
workplace, differences coming from culture, age, gender, generation, work styles…if you 
don’t have that kind of knowledge and competence in the organization, you will not reap 
the benefits that we’re talking about that the research shows. So that’s an important link 
and that’s why it’s so critical that you folks are here today. You’re the leadership of this 
organization. You will have, by far, the greatest impact on your organizational culture. 
It just goes with territory of being a leader and a manager and a supervisor in an 
organization. 

Yvonne: Next to speak on the panel was Earl S. Newsome, Deputy Director for VA’s 
Center for Minority Veterans. Mr. Newsome spoke about the duties of his office and 
some of the challenges that minority veterans face. 

Earl: We advise the Secretary on things, on VA policies, and how they affect minority 
veterans in the United States and—let me back up—and that’s the ones, the major groups, 
we’re talking about: African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native 
Americans, which includes American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and 
Pacific Islanders. So those are the groups that we focus on. We find that when we make 
improvements that help give these people more access or help bring their issues to light, 
it improves the overall system. Some people have said, “Why have an office for Center 
for Minority Veterans? A vet is a vet is a vet.” It ain’t exactly so. I give the example of 
you need to understand that some of the same adversities minorities ran into that caused 
them to go into the military to better themselves, after they get out and go back home, 
that same stuff is there. 

Earl: So what we look at is the unique needs that these minority veterans have and how 
that relates to the overall VA mission, stuff that you do day-to-day, boots on the ground. 
So we do this by first identifying who our target audience is. If you see, basically 
looking at that chart, minority veterans comprise roughly about 15 percent of the overall 
VA population. There are some unique needs in certain groups. There are some shared 
problem areas that they have. 

Earl: So you have a part in all this to help that 15 percent. So the aspect I’m looking at 
for you—the “cultural competencies”—you know, yes, it’s race; yes, it’s gender; yes, it’s 
sexual orientation, but it’s a whole lot of other things. The veterans you work with have 
lived in other countries, they’ve lived with other people that don’t look like them, they’ve 
married other people that don’t look like them, their kids grew up maybe sometimes 
speaking two languages when they were small and overseas. So you’re working with a 
diverse group there, rather than the general population so you need to be aware of that. 

Earl: That helps to explain why, if you’ve got an American Indian veteran and he wants 
to have a spiritual healer from his tribe to come in, that you understand that the spiritual 
leader—healer—is not a religion for them, it’s part of their culture and that’s some of 
those things, you know, maybe going to the sweat lodge, maybe doing in the talking 
circle. You know, you talk to guys who are out west where a lot of the big tribes are and 
they find that with PTSD treatment, sweat lodge, talking circles and all, does a heck of a 
lot more than what we do with some of the drugs. So, you know, use it as a tool. 

Thomas: Fernando O. Rivera, Director of the Washington, DC VA Medical Center, 
stopped by to talk about the importance and timeliness of this cultural diversity training. 

Fernando: We’re at a time where our cultural diversities are growing, our understanding 
of those diversities are growing, and as we start to communicate better with our 
patients—connect better with our patients—a lot of the information that we’re hearing 
today, our patients have been telling us and continue to tell us. As an organization, we 
want to prepare ourselves so that we can deliver the highest level of quality, the highest 
level of patient satisfaction, and it’s through these executive training sessions that we’re 
able to do that so. 

Yvonne: The final panelist was Carolyn T. Hunt, Associate Dean of the VA Learning 
University, who spoke about diversity and learning. 

Carolyn: My goal this afternoon is to increase your awareness of the importance of 
diversity on the impact of learning in a healthcare setting. Sometimes I don’t know that 
we realize that people learn in many different ways. People have many different needs 
for how they learn and what they learn and, in particular, just thinking about some of the 
statistics that Ms. Coffey presented as our world is changing and as our workplace 
environment is changing, it’s also important that we identify and adopt ways of 
embracing learning as a key element of practice, of outcomes, and of making our 
environment more conducive to recruitment, retention, and all of those things that are so 
key to our survival. 

Carolyn: All of us process information differently. You hear a lot about the generational 
differences that people have and I’m not going to talk about that today, it’s an interest of 
mine and it’s really critical and important to learning; however, every generation has its 
characteristics around such things as information processing, communication styles, and 
patterns. As I look at many of the workers in today’s environment, you know there was a 
time when we frowned on the headphones, and the earpieces, and the iPod in the one 
hand, and the computer mouse in the other hand, and listening to the music at the same 
time, but this is how some of the younger people who are coming into our workforce 
learn and we have to embrace that and find out how we can maximize that technology to 
support their learning needs. 

Carolyn: What should you do as supervisors and managers? This is not an exhaustive 
list, by any means, and we can spend any amount—a lot—of time talking about any of 

these but, just to highlight a few: number one, be aware of learning styles and cultural 
differences because people learn in different ways. 

Carolyn: There are various ways that people learn and we should always be mindful of 
how we can maximize those. Encourage and support appropriate professional 
development experiences, including your own. 

Carolyn: Respect for diverse talents and ways of learning. Encourage feedback and self-
directed learning and to use the Individual Development Plan. How many people are 
familiar with IDPs? Very good. I wanted to tie this in to this discussion because as we 
talk about individualized learning and individualized development, this is one of the most 
powerful tools that we have. 

Thomas: The key speaker for the event was John M. Robinson, Director of the Office of 
Civil Rights and Chief Diversity Officer at the U.S. Department of State. Addressing the 
topic of “Speaking in Your Own Voice,” Mr. Robinson talked about an article he is 
currently working on called “Leadership at the Top” on how important leadership 
commitment is to diversity and how it should be expressed. 

John: This is what we found out. This is what makes the difference in the commitment. 
You can’t just dust off the same speech you gave last year for Martin Luther King Day 
that worked, you know, and do it again. This is what it has to be: visible, specific, tell a 
personal story, and it has to be persistent, and intentional. Visible: without the usual 
suspects. When I’m in the room and my deputy is in the room, everybody knows what 
we’re looking for and what we want to hear and so they say it. It’s what do you say as 
the leaders of the organization when we’re not in the room? It has to be specific to your 
workforce; not vague, we support these principles kind of generally. No, it has to be 
about your workforce. Personal: tell your own story and the default setting which the 
article says, your subordinates believe that it is not important unless you do something 
different. If they’re not being held personally responsible, if they haven’t done 
something that’s going to end up, end you up on the Washington Post front page, they 
know that they’re off the hook. It needs to be persistent. You don’t just do it once a year 
or once a quarter. You check on it as regularly as you check on the budget, as regularly 
as you check on business objectives. And it needs to be intentional. This is where I get 
in trouble with the lawyers because they say, “Well, you can’t…” Yes, you can. You 
need to say, as a leader, “Next time you bring me a cert for some vacancies, I want to see 
some diversity among the candidates.” 

John: Lighthouses do not move. They’re fixed points on the landscape and others find 
their way from the light that they give off. In this business that we all share, the technical 
parts of it, we’re prepared to work on the complaint process and so forth, but those of you 
in leadership positions have to stand for this, you have to stand for something. You have 
to be lighthouses for equity, fairness, and inclusion. People in your organization need to 
see and hear your commitment personally to find their way in the organization. 

Yvonne: That’s all we have for this edition of Diversity News. We appreciate your 
watching, and we hope you’ll tune in again next month. Until then, for more frequent 
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Thomas: And check out our bimonthly newsletter, Diversity@Work, available as a 
download on our new Web site or by e-mail from our office. Also, we want to hear from 
you! If you’d like to share your story ideas, comments, or suggestions, please e-mail us 
at our new e-mail address: odi@va.gov with the words DIVERSITY NEWS in the 
subject line. Until next time… 

Both: Have a great month!