Diversity Zeitgeist and Corporate Goodwill

The word diversity has been thrown around for quite some time. It is not just hiring people of diverse ethnicity and gender to give the illusory appearance of diversity. It is a socially responsible corporate thing to do. While some socially responsible companies get it, the vast majority of companies still linger in the purgatory of inaction. As a rather sensitive area of corporate social responsibility, it behooves accountable organizations to do the right thing. If all the focus is on a company complying with all equal opportunity legislation…this is at best myopic. First, companies need to answer why diversity policies are good for business. Here’s why: Diversity means fostering an environment of trust: Anka Wittenburg, the Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer at SAP, for whom I have a high level of respect said it best. “Diversity is also vitally important to ensure that our employees have an environment that allows them to work flexibly, in a caring and trusting environment, where respect for one another is the bottom line." This needs to be said as there are companies where in spite of diverse hiring practices, individuals routinely work in an environment where they feel a sense of discomfort and social detachment. The workplace along with religious places of worship are the best harbingers of social interaction. Diversity means hiring competent individuals across the race and gender spectrum. In an article published by the IrishTimes, Apple revealed its diversity numbers and CEO Tim Cook admitted that he was not happy with Apple’s diversity numbers. Many organizations do themselves goodwill harm by refusing to hire a diverse set of human capital. By specifically hiring individuals who are passionate and competent across the race, age and gender spectrum and leaders in their chosen field of influence, companies gain an advantage and position themselves to compete at a much higher level. The data is there. By doing so, they mine the collective creativity and intelligence of their diverse employees. The returns are huge. Diversity means equal mentoring resources to diverse individuals in the organization. When an organization promotes from within, many employees do not always benefit from these upward mobility moves. This is because they do not always benefit from equal mentoring opportunities. Training is not mentoring. Placing training materials on a corporate website is not mentoring. Equal opportunity does not always mean equal quality of access. True diversity means promoting your products and services using actors and companies across the ethnicity and gender spectrum. True diversity is not about ethnicity and gender but fairness. It's not even about hiring practices but operating your business above reproach and at such a high level that you as a corporation judge yourself before anyone else does and just simply do what's right for business and society as a whole. Diversity means the possibility of economic mobility for all. Social media though not a real panacea for true human interaction has revealed a veritable Pandora's box of social vacuums in business and society. Companies that covertly or openly refuse to diversify their hiring and business practices and promote a culture of dynamic inclusion are making deleterious business decisions. Marc Guevara

Student Loans: Banks Get Paid, Students Get Played!!

If anyone would have told me that I would get stuck with a $70,000 plus student loan, I would have told them they are crazy. but as it turns out, I have a student loan like millions of Americans and we are struggling. The question is can we as a nation continue down this road of heavy lifting. The student loan tsunami is mind-boggling. Some researchers have indicated that the student debt load is creeping up to a whopping 1.3 trillion. Yes, 1.3 trillion. This by the way is an estimate.

This then brings me to look at the way student education has been looked at from the beginning… as a financially viable vehicle to make money. Do not get me wrong, I am all for free enterprise; but when a system of capitalism fails to include social responsibility hooks rather than cold revenue generators alone, the red flag goes up. This is unsustainable. If this continues in its current trajectory, we have the next impending imploding bubble.

I am not a practicing economist but an ardent student of economics. I understand how Capitalism works and it works well in developed nations to encourage businesses to thrive and entrepreneurs to create the next big thing and create more jobs. This is the beauty and mystery of Capital as Hernando Soto calls it. It is okay to go to institutes of higher learning and acquire targeted education that will or at least is supposed to lead to higher earnings. That is no longer the case. Higher debt accumulation in the well-oiled machinery of the West creates an interesting problem.

When we consider how cyclical markets are by nature and they are driven by economic activity not by magic; debt is not like water that turns a ship's turbine engine or acts as an enabler for electricity. My definition of debt is a stark reminder of what really happens when we accrue debt. "Debt is not accumulating wealth for the poor or uninformed, it is spending future earnings." So here I am a student fresh out of college, hopeful because I did the American thing. I acquired a college degree which twenty years ago was the initial step for higher earnings. I get an education, get an entry level position, move up the ranks in a few years, get promoted and consequently make more money as I move along. I get married buy a house, have children buy a minivan because the car is now to small for a family of four. I am an economic driver. Even if I have student loans, they get paid because I am working and generating revenue in my own personal economy. My spouse might be working so we both are economic drivers and participating in economic activity.That is no longer happening with rapidity.

Here is what we have instead: I finish college, I have six months reprieve ,(student loan companies call it the grace period) before I start paying my student loans. The six months come and I am still unemployed or underemployed. I am unable to start making payments on my student loans so the interest starts piling up. Then the rates go up and I am still unable to make satisfactory progress because the monthly payment becomes like a millstone around my neck. I have now become a deferred consumer. I have to defer getting married, purchasing a car, a house all the things that are relevant and pertinent to my participating in overall economic activity.

I am a representative microcosm of millions of other college students who are now a burden to economic activity. We are not generating any economic activity except accumulating interest, while student loan companies and the banks that support them are salivating over my accumulating interest. Here capitalism does not work for me but against me. Capitalism fails dreadfully when creative social responsibility is left out of the equation. There are a number of organizations that are trying to help push the student debt juggernaut to a place where the debt can be treated as a mortgage (and frankly some student debt are as high as a mortgage). The objective is to help reduce the indebtedness and provide some relief. This in my humble opinion is noteworthy but woefully inadequate. My understanding of economics make me cringe when I think of these efforts.

The real losers here are the uninformed or under-informed students. Student loans are really intended to be used to pay for tuition. Instead students use student loans for housing, spend the checks that are sent to them from the school instead of banking it. When a student applies for a loan with the FAFSA process, there are some incredible financial processes at play here. The college is informed of the application by the Department of Education, (that is why one has to put the school code,) the loans are now administered by private banks such as Wells Fargo, Citibank, and every other bak in between. This is hug business. The interest that is generated from student loans is astounding–– beneficial for banks, ruinous and detrimental to students. In the final analysis what really happens is that Sallie Mae who makes students feel that they care, but they are really looking out for revenue. So the banks get paid and uninformed students gets played.

Mark Hernandez

USF Student spends 22nd birthday performing 22 random acts of kindness

The Nuclear Option: A Government in Crisis!!

Anyone who lives in the United States and Europe having access to the Internet, cable or satellite media would tell you in no uncertain terms that the United States government is dysfunctional. This did not happen overnight! If we did an analysis of a time in this country's history where the government functioned like a true democracy, it is not surprising to note that it prospered. Human beings came together recognizing their shortcomings, their inability to solve all of the country's problems under one political banner and worked together. That is not democracy but wisdom. Solomon in the book of Proverbs in the Bible, purported that wisdom is the principal thing but in all your getting, get understanding. Wisdom he asserts is the ability to discern and understanding is the ability to apply.
When we look for reasons, we have to look at the big picture. US immigration policy is awful, slow and painfully outdated. People used to come to this country because of the opportunities to live a better life. that reason is dying slowly because of the slow immigration processes in place. Twenty years to get a visa to join your family. Really? I know someone from my immediate family who waited 25 years. Yes. Twenty five years to obtain a visa. At first She was ten years old when her aunt applied for her, her mother and her younger sister. Do the math. After waiting until 2005 from an application that was placed in 1988, her mother and younger sister made it. She did not. she had passed the age of eligibility because it took so long to process. She had to wait another eight years to join her mother. Go figure. Why is this still a problem? Where are the big thinkers to solve this rotten problem? In the Torah, God admonished the Israelites to be kind to immigrants to their land and to treat them fairly, seeing they were strangers in Egypt too (Lev 19:34).
Which brings me to the reason for this writing. Where are the new ideas, where are the common sense strategies that men and women in the political stratosphere should be employing to solve the socioeconomic problems that this country faces. Jobs are scarce, the United States is in the low rung of the intellectual totem pole,

"The real scourge of the U.S. education system—and its greatest competitive weakness—is the deep and growing achievement gap between socioeconomic groups that begins early and lasts through a student's academic career," writes Rebecca Strauss, associate director for CFR's Renewing America publications. Wealthy students are achieving more, and the influence of parental wealth is stronger in the United States than anywhere else in the developed world.

There is a striking absence of ideas to move this country forward. When a politician can devote twenty-four hours reciting drivel in an attempt to prove a point. I ask where are the new ideas. Filibuster? Really? No wonder the Democrats had to drop the Nuclear Option. Enough Already! In full disclosure, let me say that I vehemently oppose many of the bills that President Obama has presented. I am an Independent thinker and I vote for whomsoever I deem the best and brightest candidate. Period! But obstructing his ideas and commonsense strategies that are good for this country is not the way to move this country forward. Again, where are the alternative ideas? If the opposing party cannot come up with a better plan, better ideas, then they just need to simply go quietly in the night.

Mining Social Media Connections

As the information juggernaut swiftly moves across the business landscape despite its size, it's leaving a trail of mineable data confetti. Good and bad. As the database has risen to become the de facto repository of critical business data, so social media has become the data candy that businesses are drooling over. It provides businesses wanting to get inside the minds of consumers the Holy Grail of all business data… what you like.

Social media is quietly distilling human behavior patterns in many ways. As analysts pour over data collected from social media activities its frightening what that data reveals. That data reveals where you shop, where you live, who your friends are, what your interests are, who you are following, who or what you like, how many kids you have, what kinds of games you or your kids play, and the list goes on ad infinitum.

It is no mistake that privacy advocates are sounding the warning bell. The FTC (http://m.npr.org/story/166935136)yesterday in a live press conference said that some kids game app companies were collecting too much invasive data about children. This in my opinion is not going to go away quietly. Social media platform companies and other social app makers depend on these kinds of data to target their products development and engage their advertising partners to make money.

Companies need to also take data privacy laws seriously. But better yet, act transparently and tell consumers what kinds of data they are collecting so consumers can ascertain if it is in their best interest to give up their data privacy in exchange for something more valuable…free services. The price is high the verdict is still out on the rewards.

Who is mining you? Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn all collect data. They do not tell members how they are using it. That would be like telling you their trade secrets. Yaamo collects data as well but they are responsible and transparent with your data. They take privacy laws seriously and as a company poised to become a social media leader they are proactive, for all too often companies fail to read the technology tea leaves because in case you haven't noticed, the writing is on the wall for data privacy (no pun intended).

Mark Hernandez
Social Media Architect

Yaamo.com: What Interests you?

If there ever was a time to carefully examine the social media tsunami as regards to interest, Yaamo.com deserves a look. Sure, Pinterest.com allows you to pin images of things that interest us but monetizing interests belongs to yaamo.com.

Yaamo is about who you are as a business, your soul brand, your business identity. They have re-engineered what interests you as a business and connects you to the world of people who are interested in your brand of products and services.

So what are you interested in? What is your brand of products and services? Perhaps yaamo.com needs some looking into.

-Mark Yaamo.com

The Music Business and Drugs

Anyone will agree that way too many musicians have succumbed to the effects of prolonged drug use. I often wondered why the music industry executives who were patently responsible for the financial successes of the artists they represented and promoted did not do enough to help them. Musicians are not money making machines, they are human beings with a tri-dimensional problem…the need for recognition, the need for recognition and the need for recognition. Whitney Houston's death we all agree could be avoided. Michael Jackson's death could have been avoided.

It is a darn shame that no one could have helped these individual in the time of their greatest need. Many would say that it is lonely at the top but it is really lonelier at the bottom of your addiction. The brain is a multi-faceted organ in the human body that scientist are still grappling with. It is complex, elusive and machinated to the point that its very own human housing can get played by it.

Addiction's cure clearly has eluded even the most talented among us. Could it be that there is more to the cure than following a set of prescribed steps? Could Jesus really be the answer to those hanging in addictions's limbo? Most clearly, the music business executives have not shown up when those most vulnerable among us were in jeopardy.

dArtery,
A Musician

The Quest for Authenticity

In a highly volatile election year, both President Obama and his presumed Republican rival Governor Mitt Romney have a gargantuan task ahead of them.  Governor Romney has to prove to prospective voters that he is the best candidate to not only beat the incumbent but that he has chutzpah, is authentic and has the leadership quotient to lead this country down a different path…not the current one.

President Obama on the other hand has to convince voters that his hands were tied by a do-nothing Congress, that in fact the economic progress was not his fault entirely and that he can turn the economic Titanic around in the right direction.

-dartery