Life at Wilson | Leading the Multicultural Collective EBG

Hi, good afternoon. My name is Henry Carmona. I am a TAC talent administrator and coordinator here at Wilson and I'm set in Chicago, Illinois, in the United States. And today I'll be talking about the Multicultural Collective EBG at Wilson.

The Multicultural Collective Group is an EBG that celebrates diversity at Wilson, and it welcomes individuals from all cultures, ethnic backgrounds and belief systems from around the world. It's an EBG that welcomes everybody's different backgrounds. Even if you think you don't have a culture, I believe everybody does have a culture. Because it doesn't necessarily have to be something that's just from another country or something that's different. It can be your own family traditions, your own things you're accustomed to doing, and it may be very different from what someone else does, even someone like in the same ethnic background as you.

I would say one of the most rewarding parts is the people that I've gotten the opportunity to work with. The people that have helped me co-chair the group because they help me also learn things that I hadn't thought about. And when we lead the calls each month, there's always different ideas coming. It's always rewarding to see people join our calls and see the ideas that not only I get from my co-chairs but also from the audience that we get because every call I learn something new. So that's been the most rewarding for me.

I feel it helps strengthen Wilson's culture because our EBG focuses on learning about other people's cultural aspect, learning about other people's backgrounds, diversity, traditions, and embracing it. There may be things that you don't know about why somebody else does things. It may look strange because it's a different culture. So this EBG embraces things like that, the differences that we have, but at the same time bringing them together. each month we have a call and each month we have a topic. We've had actually collaborations with other EBGs. At one point we had a collaboration with the Be Well group, one of the newly formed EBGs, talking about how being in a good state of mental health. but also how does that affect cultures? Having a a good mental health looks different in different cultures. And so collaborating on how we explore each culture and people sharing how their cultures view mental health. That has been one of the the most interesting ones, as well as we've had collaborations with Parents at Wilson. How they different cultures parent their child, how they raise their child, how people grow up learning what they are today. And each culture looks different. So that's also been one of our favorite topics. I I could go on and and talk about many more. But just to finish off, our last month's call was about work-life balance, a topic that we hadn't explored in the EBG since it was formed, almost three years now. And we decided to talk about that because it's very important having a work life balance and how that also looks different in different cultures because not every culture views it the same. And so that people definitely share and we're happy to talk about that. definitely we have various topics already lined up. We did send our EBG members an agenda for the year. Our next topic is linguistics, language linguistics, talking about how different dialects and languages and how for example they're viewed different in another culture because sometimes what word you say in one language and even if it's in the same let's say English or Spanish, different Spanish cultures it could mean a different thing. it could mean something totally innocent, totally general, you know, nothing harmful. But in another culture it could mean something that's a little more aggressive. We have our our recipes. That's always a topic we revisit each year, just because different cultures, same thing. They share different dishes, different recipes that they do, and that's been a long tradition that they have. So that's definitely coming as well as more collaborations. looking to collaborate with more EBGs.

I've personally learned that everybody is different. Everybody has a different way of expressing their thoughts and being more open minded, where somebody can be very open. it's always gonna be it's gonna be willing to speak up, but there's also people that may not be as open in the sense that they they will want to share it, but they won't speak up in front of an audience group or on a call, but they will send stuff that we as co chairs and other leaders of the EBG, we can share for them and say this person, you know, this is something they have about their culture and share with the rest of the group. So and also welcoming new ideas. We've had topics that we've changed because somebody in our group, a member said, it would be good for if you guys talked about this. Have you guys thought about doing this topic? and we're like, that sounds good. We have our agenda, but we can kind of tailor it and see where we can fit it in, or take out a topic that maybe's a little repetitive than the previous one and put this one. So being welcome and receptive to ideas.

If somebody's interested, the easiest way I would say is reach out to me directly. I will definitely read your message, send me a message, send me a ping, your email, however it's easier for you, and then from there introduce you to my co chairs as well, and then we can have you formally join the group.

To learn more about Wilson's culture, please visit our careers page.