All Together

All Together for me it represents how a team with focus and coordination can accomplish tasks that otherwise would be impossible. We the Leaf team strive for this goal with joint efforts that each contributes to reaching our goals. The diversity of people and skills that make up the Leaf team add tremendous abilities that build us for success. We at Leaf have many types of personalities, heritages, and cultures that bring different perspectives and ideas to our group as a whole. We strive at Leaf to embrace these differences to enrich our team and each member. To embrace these differences we all need to keep an open mind and hear and treat everyone with the same respect that we expect from others. Our challenge is to overcome stereotypes and prejudices both consciously and unconsciously. Being a white straight male I cannot speak from a position of authority on this subject as we may be the group that has historically had the least amount of prejudices working against them. I have to assume that other minorities should be more able to overcome these prejudices because they themselves have experienced it. Our task as a group is to overcome these stereotypes and treat all with mutually earned respect. I myself strive to seek out and listen to as many diverse people as possible. I think it adds richness and valuable knowledge to my life. My life would be very monotonous only sharing with people much like myself. The artist Hozier says it best in the song Someone New: Love every stranger, the stranger the better. I encourage each one to reach, engage, and learn from someone new. Love every stranger the stranger the better.