A Man of Incredible Diversity

I am a Man of Incredible Diversity!

 Let me explain.

 Who we become and are is a function of the influence of factors from nature (genetics) and nurture (environment). The contribution of nature and nurture is complex and varies with each individual.

I cannot list the number of people who influenced or nurtured me, because this is a geometric relationship. Everyone who influenced me was themselves influenced by several individuals, who were each influenced by many other individuals, etc.!

Therefore, I shall mention the institutions that had an impact on my life and hope you recognize that each of these institutions had thousands, if not millions, of influences from thousands of influencers, that had shaped the prevailing cultures of those institutions.

 My childhood and youth were spent in Guyana where my playmates, classmates, fellow church goers at Christ Church Elementary School, Cambridge Academy High School, Queens College High School, Elim Evangelical Church, and the Youth for Christ Movement were Afro-Guyanese, Indo-Guyanese, Chinese-Guyanese, Portuguese-Guyanese, British-Guyanese. I did not have daily contact with our Aboriginal-Guyanese, so they had little influence on the development of the way I thought, behaved, reacted to, and felt about incidences in my life.

 There were a total of four Blacks (three of us were foreigners, and one Afro-American) among the 6,000 students and graduate students when I entered Lehigh University. I was in an unfamiliar world of White Americans, many of whom had a Republican political leaning.

Graduate School and Medical School at Cornell University; Medical Residency at The Johns Hopkins Hospital; Fellowship at the National Institutes of Health; and being an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago Pritzker Medical School exposed me to the ideas of many students, professors (including two Nobel Laureates) and patients who influenced me, and from whom I also learned passively and actively.

Building the Austen BioInnovation Institute in Akron and the MIT Center for BioInnovation added additional influences from students, fellow faculty members and physicians.

 The Biopharmaceutical Industry was an incredible crucible that further formed my present personality. It started with Ciba Geigy (now Novartis), a Swiss-owned company. It continued with many merged companies. First, Marion Merrill Dow was the merger of the Development-focused Biotech type culture of Marion and the Research-focused culture of Merrill Dow. Hoechst Marion Roussel followed. This combined the German-based culture and approaches of Hoechst, with the French-based culture of Roussel Uclaf and the American-based culture of Marion Merrill Dow. The formation of Aventis SA continued this complex mixture of German, French and American cultures with the merger of the French company Rhone-Poulenc Rorer SA and Hoechst AG. This is now Sanofi SA, the result of the acquisition of Aventis SA by the French company, Sanofi SA. Please note that each of the members of these mergers had significant daughter companies in Japan, so the importance of the Japanese culture was not lost on me.

The success of these companies: Hoechst Marion Roussel, Aventis and Sanofi depended (and depends) on the associates from different cultures working together, valuing each other’s ideas and approaches, and openness to being influenced by each other’s approaches.

 As mentioned above, I cannot list, by name, the many playmates, classmates, friends, fellow students, teachers, professors, fellow physicians, researchers, scientific leaders, managers, directors, subordinates, and patients who all have contributed to who I am.

I am the PRODUCT of all of those influencers above and the millions of concepts and thoughts that finally formed ideas that I either actively or passively adopted or adapted as part of my personality.

However, the most important and lasting influence of the nurture component of my personality is the impact of the love and learnings from my family. I was nurtured by a single mother who raised four of her five children in one room, for 16 years. We received help from two of her close friends, one of whom paid the initial fees for me to go to high school, prior to my getting a scholarship. I have lived closely with other aspects of diversity as one of my sisters is mute and cognitively diminished. I grew up also understanding differences in sexual orientation as one of my brothers was gay and lived with us (my family, mother, and sisters) during the last year of his life before he died from AIDS.

 I am A MAN FULL OF GRATITUDE FOR THE DIVERSITY they all contributed to me.

 I encourage you to take some time to Review Your Diversity!

 #DEI

#equityandinclusion

#safehavendllc

#D&I

#Diversity

#Sanofi

#Novartis

#UA

#MIT