Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Trainers

Introduction

If there was ever an example of the adage, “looks can be deceiving,” my father was it.

Varujan “Val” Morukian was short in stature with thinning gray hair, wire-framed glasses, and a creased olive-skinned face that looked vaguely “ethnic” to most people in the suburban Detroit neighborhood where I grew up. He walked around with a friendly smile and a vague look in his eyes. He was hard of hearing, and between that and his foreign accent people often assumed he didn’t understand them or was not “all there.”

The truth was that my father was paying very close attention to everything. His intellect was sharp. His curiosity was endless. His life story could have been a script for an epic movie. What people “saw” was by no means representative ...