Diversity University

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Back in the 1980s, my friend Tony Genovese built a beautiful new house out in Holmdel. Soon after the house was completed, he and his wife Gianna invited me and my wife and some other friends over for dinner. Tony’s new place was fabulous, and we had a great time sitting around the dining room table talking and eating Gianna’s good cooking and drinking Tony’s fine Italian wine. After a while, I excused myself to go to the bathroom. While I was in there, I noticed a fixture that I had never seen in a bathroom. When I emerged from the bathroom and rejoined everyone at the table, I said, "Tony, this is a great place, but I couldn’t help wondering about the fixture next to the toilet. Is it a drinking fountain?"

Tony looked at Gianna, and they both roared with laughter. "Dave", Tony said, "that’s a bee-DAY". At that point, everyone else at the table started laughing, and I felt like a complete idiot. I would have felt like an even bigger idiot had I known that "bee-DAY" was spelled bidet, and that it was a French word that described a bathroom fixture designed for cleaning one’s private parts.

That night was one of the more painful albeit humorous episodes at what I call Diversity University. That’s the learning experience you get when you blend people of different backgrounds and life experiences. I met Tony back in 1976 when we worked in the same group at AT&T Bell Labs, and we quickly became good friends. Our supervisor, a fellow by the name of John Colton, was unusually committed to having people of different races and backgrounds working in his group. At the time, the idea that motivated John’s commitment wasn’t called Diversity, it was called Affirmative Action, and John practiced it with a passion. In our little group, we had my friend Tony, Earl Brown (Jamaican American), Juni Critchlow (African-American), Jose Garcia (Cuban American), Steve Sato (Japanese-American), Lloyd Ottesen and Rick Obey (European-American), Mike Tom (Chinese-American), and Steve Moore, Charles Simmons and me (all African Americans). At a time when other groups at Bell Labs were saying that they couldn’t find "qualified minorities", John just went out and did it. I think he did it because of the lip service that was being paid to Affirmative Action by top management, and I think he did it because he wanted to prove that he could make it work.

I remember interviewing with John back in early 1976. In those days, engineering candidates were interviewed by at least three different groups at Bell Labs. John’s group was the only one I interviewed with where the issue of race didn’t seem predominant. John seemed genuinely interested in my capabilities and experience, and he had a clear idea of what I could contribute to his group. The other groups I interviewed with didn’t seem nearly as interested in me as a person, and I didn’t get the feeling that they expected big things from me. After all the interviews, it was an easy decision. I chose John’s group and never looked back.

I learned a lot from my co-workers at Bell Labs, and I think they learned a few things from me, too. The lessons we learned from each other were both technical and non-technical. As a team, we worked extremely hard, and we had a lot of success. Our little group ended up being the launching pad for not just one, but three of the most successful projects in Bell Labs history. In the ensuing years, John got promoted, and the people in his group moved on to new assignments and promotions. A few years later, I left Bell Labs and started a new company with Steve Moore and Charles Simmons, two of my talented co-workers from John Colton’s group.

These days, many organizations still struggle with the issue of inclusion. In schools, non-profit organizations, and for-profit corporations, the buzzword today is "diversity". In all of these settings, people still talk of not being able to find and hire "qualified minorities". When I hear that, I think of John Colton. John understood that he had to take affirmative action to change the culture of his group, and he did it. He didn’t do it by going to workshops, or by forming a "diversity committee", or by appointing someone to be his "diversity specialist". He just did it.

I’m grateful for John Colton’s leadership. Without it, I might not have achieved the success I achieved at Bell Labs. I might never have met Steve and Charles, the guys I built a great company with. And I might not have learned that one should not drink from the bidet.

Los Angeles, CA

March 22, 2005