Dear Mrs. Obama,
Wow, what a cool appearance on I-Carly (debuted January 16, “iMeet the First Lady.” How exciting to use such a popular platform to spread the message about how important it is to support military families.  It was a brilliant marketing idea (I understand it was yours) to reach the 5.5 million people who [...]

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Hey you racist, why did you mention only Serena Williams race in last week’s post about the Mother Nature/Tampax ad?
Luckily that comment didn’t come in, but as I was riding the train (or the “L” as we call it in Chicago) downtown yesterday, I realized I did mention Serena’s race, but not “Mother Nature’s”.  Why?
As [...]

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Obama’s school visit this week is very reminiscent of a program we have in Chicago, called the Black Star Project–the project is all about black male adults serving as role models for black children.  In fact, that’s Secrectary of Education Arne Duncan in the photo above in 2008 in Chicago, participating in the Million Father [...]

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I’m nervous about the “Beer Summit” tonight.  It actually could be a great opportunity to have a meaningful conversation about how stereotypes and bias play out in the media, and how that, in turn, influences [...]

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 I am admittedly a woman of action.  I see something broken, and I want to fix it.  In the annals of ‘how to lists’ advising employees to get noticed, there’s the advice if you see a problem have at least one suggestion solution to present to the boss before you go in and speak to [...]

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I shared with my husband the article in yesterday’s New York Times, about President Obama’s decision to give a meeting with Prime Minister Putin a backseat to some time with his family. 
 From an intercultural communications perspective, it struck me as 100% against the grain–the entire idea is to understand your counterpart’s orientation and frame of [...]

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 My first reaction?  Totally inappropriate.  My second reaction?  If it meant not raising taxes due to new revenue streams, why not?   Although, “why not” might be answered by Conan O’Brien’s experience with international advertising (below).
The Wall Street “China Journal admittedly hasn’t verified this with Robert Gibbs, but we’ll go out on a limb and say [...]

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I met an interesting woman the other day, founder and owner of Workforce Language Services, who has a PhD in Linguistics and Anthropology.   We were talking about the ongoing challenge as practitioners to prove the business case for diversity, and she told me about a language training project she had done for a client in [...]

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The Huffington Post has taken up the cause of 10 year old Damon Weaver, reporter for the Kathryn E. Cunningham Canal Point Elementary school TV station,  to get a one-on-one interview with President Obama.   As his story continues to grow, he did get credentials to cover the Inauguration.  Dwayne Wade also has offered to play [...]

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 Okay, now I’ve said it, so what’s next?  Traditional diversity trainings and rules of political correctness dictate you should suppress that instinct to notice race or be declared a racist.  The fact is that categorization is an innate survival response dating back to the era of the hunter/gatherer:  Edible, non-edible? Male-female?  Friend-foe?  Rather than suppress [...]

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