Op-Ed: The future is different. Let’s embrace it together.

Sixty years ago, two young friends raised in Miami decided to create a place where they could make a living and enjoy coming to work every day. They wanted to build a professional resource to help clients seize opportunities and protect themselves from risk. They valued integrity, fairness, professional responsibility and joy at work. They were deeply embedded in the Miami community, supporting causes they believed would make this a better place.

That firm, Kaufman Rossin, has about 600 employees today, and it’s the top independent accounting and consulting firm in the state of Florida. I’m proud to be part of it.

Miami is a very different place today. When the firm was founded, about 10% of Miami residents were foreign-born – now more than 54% were born in other countries. Women were just beginning to enter the paid labor market in the sixties – now approximately 60% of accounting graduates are women. In the 1960s, Miami was a city divided – the first school in the county had just been desegregated in 1959.

As the firm has grown, our vision remains clear: to foster an inclusive culture that encourages different perspectives and enables all our employees to thrive professionally and personally, regardless of their backgrounds.

Leaders in the firm now come from places as far-reaching as Ecuador, Vietnam, India, Cuba, New York, Indiana, Miami and many others… We seek talent that can help us grow and help our clients succeed. And to work together, we need to understand each other.

Humans rely on our experiences, and we tend to gravitate toward people similar to ourselves. Meeting people who are different can challenge our brains. If we can’t learn more about each other, we may make assumptions and rely on stereotypes. Our unconscious biases kick in, and blind spots get in the way of seeing each other clearly.

Maintaining and growing our firm culture is now more challenging. It’s also more exciting because there are so many differences to learn about and share.

At a firm meeting earlier this year, I shared my experiences with being underestimated because of my accent, gender and age. At one important meeting to represent a client, for example, the roomful of professionals assumed I was too young to be the international tax partner in charge of the matter. Risk advisory partner Bao Nguyen, one of the firm’s strongest relationship builders, told us he had been stereotyped, earlier in his career, as someone more technical, not someone who could sell. If our firm wasn’t open to embracing each member’s authentic professional self, neither of us could have succeeded.

That’s why learning opportunities are so important. YWCA​ South Florida’s​​ ​​Community ​Justice Challenge has been a great resource. As a founding sponsor and participating firm for the past four years, we’ve made this excellent source of education available, on a voluntary basis, to our entire firm. This year a group of us have been learning about topics in four areas: disability, housing, music and mental health.

Some of the content has been eye-opening, like the examples of ability privilege. It hadn’t occurred to us to appreciate things like​,​ “I do not have to fear that important decisions about my life will be made by others who are considered more qualified based on their ability status.” When we studied housing, we were surprised and disturbed about ​​​the walls that were built to physically divide our Miami community​. We found the housing discrimination against the LGBTQ community – from youth to senior citizens – frankly shocking.

One of the most powerful elements of the Challenge has been the opportunity to start conversations. “What moved you?” we ask each other. “What actions are you going to take as a result?” We respect where each person is on their journey, and we suspend our right to be offended because we are not always able to communicate perspectives perfectly. We believe that just starting these respectful, voluntary conversations is a big step in the right direction.

At sixty, our firm is endlessly curious. We’re building toward a future where power and possibility aren’t dictated by age, race, national origin, gender or preference. We’re eager for a time when our differences are embraced as strengths. Within Kaufman Rossin and in our community, the best way we know to learn and grow is to talk. And the conversation doesn’t stop when the Challenge ends. You can join YWCA South Florida and keep the conversation going year round. Learn more at ywcasouthflorida.org.

Read the full article in Miami Herald.