Not to many women would have the courage to walk into work, day-after-day, trying to change people’s behavior and open their minds with regards to diversity and culture. It’s a hard job. Especially, in a couple of hours, or over several days, you are trying to change an individual’s behavior that has been learned over the course of a lifetime. But, that is exactly what Sharmila Ghosh is doing every time she enters a room of a client where she has been hired to train individuals about “diversity.” And, being an Indian woman does not help.
What is diversity? What is Culture? How do you teach people to be more open minded, and understand someone else’s perspective? And, perhaps more importantly, understand why, what values drive a person to behave in the way that they do.
“After September 11, one of the evaluation responses I got was, “if you think we are going to learn about diversity from a colored, educated, immigrant woman, you are mistaken….”(full article by Rina Biswas Continued below)

Growing up in Bombay, and attending an International School, Sharmila has always been around people of different religions, cultures, and nationalities. Immigrating to the United States 17 years-ago, she found it difficult to adjust to her new life here in the States, despite having lived in a cosmopolitan city, and traveled the world extensively. “Coming from a collectivistic culture to individualistic culture, there was no roadmap to figure out what the balance was for me.” It was soon after that she became interested in studying Intercultural Relations and pursued a graduated degree in the field. It was while she interned at the Mayor’s Office in the Human Relations Commission that she saw the need for training in diversity to give people a framework to examine barriers and challenges caused by the difference in personal beliefs.
There is no typical day at work in this job. And, a lot of what is learned happens while the sessions are taking place. Sharmila recalled an interesting situation that took place while conducting a Multicultural Teambuilding Session between Africana-Americas and Latinos. The African-American participants were prompt in arriving to the session, and were ready to begin at 9 AM, when the session was officially scheduled to begin. But, many of the Latino participants were late in arriving, and even though they were late and holding up the beginning of the session. Although this may sound rude and inconsiderate to most Americans growing up here, the concept of time has a different value to the Latino culture, and many Latinos feel that the relationship-building that takes place in speaking and conversing with people is more important than promptness and the rigidity of maintaining schedules. The difference in how these two groups of people valued tome was a nice example of one of the course’s main objective, how concepts of “space” and “time” differ between cultures, and that in trying to understand different cultural viewpoints, you can avoid hostility.
With the demographics of this country continuing to change, and the progress of globalization, Sharmila sees the demand for the services that she provides continuing to grow. She hopes to target technology companies both here and in India as outsourcing becomes more a norm in the way that business is conducted here in the States. She is also targeting the healthcare professionals by providing Cultural Competency Sensitizer workshops and helping medical professionals be sensitive to cultural differences in treating patients, and in working with other healthcare professionals trained in other countries.
One of the questions that Sharmila asks the participants at the session is: “If you could have dinner with anyone, deceased or living, who would you pick?” She very Matter-a-factly says that she would love to have conversations with Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and the Dalai Lama; all three have taught the world a lot about Non-violence. And, that was when it hit me—she is very strongly committed to her mission of trying to open minds and bring peace by building understanding between cultures. And, you have to be passionate to be successful in doing this type of work. A quote by Anais Nin, the author, said it best, “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” Sharmila is trying to teach all off us to see things as they are.
If you would like to learn more, or contact Sharmila Ghosh, you can visit the Cross Cultural Collaboration, Inc website at http://www.cccollaboration.com
Ms. Ghosh completed her Masters in Intercultural Relations at Lesley University Cambridge, Massachusetts. She holds a Bachelors in Education and Psychology from Bombay University, and a one year certification in Organizational Behavior from Brown University. She has participated in workshops on Managing Diversity in Organizations at The Zurich University of Applied Science and has attended workshops on designing programs for International and multicultural team building, at the Summer Institute of Intercultural Studies in Portland, Oregon.