Jones-Fosu Speaker For Annual Diversity And Inclusion Summit

Spiral notebooks can be the bane to a left-handed person's existence.
 
Desks in grade school, high school and even college that suit left-handed people aren't exactly plentiful. Left-handers are always looking for a seat on the left end of a long table so as not to bump elbows with their neighbor.
 
Oh, and those scissors that say they are "multi-handed" were actually created for right-handed people.
 
Justin Jones-Fosu, a right-handed person, says he never knew of those plights for a left-hander until he was 30 years old.
 
"I didn't know left-handed people lived a totally different life than I did," Jones-Fosu said. "It didn't mean I hated left-handed people, it didn't mean I was malicious toward them. It just meant I lived in a society that catered to my right-handedness."
 
Jones-Fosu uses the right-hand paradigm as a non-offensive approach, something to which everybody can relate, to address the more serious topic of diversity and inclusion.
 
"It's the same thing we have to do with the other luxuries in our lives," Jones-Fosu said. "That's race, that's gender, that's sexuality, that's religion, that's education, that's socioeconomic status, that's country of origin."
 
Jones-Fosu, an international speaker, young-award winning entrepreneur and author, is this year's speaker for the Nebraska Athletic Department's annual Diversity and Inclusion Summit. Jones-Fosu, who speaks 50-60 times a year for professionals, colleges, and youth, will speak to Nebraska's student athletes on Sunday and to athletic department staff members on Monday.
 
Jones-Fosu's message is embracing every day adversity and moving the conversation from head to heart; he's discovered many people have head knowledge about diversity but not many who have heart knowledge. He takes complex topics and simplifies them in non-threatening ways so people are able to grasp his message and also take action and move forward to create a more diverse inclusive environment.
 
Why does Jones-Fosu have so much passion and care for diversity and inclusion?
 
"I feel like our culture, our country, has lost the art of respectfully disagreeing," Jones-Fosu said. "Some of the things I see on the news I would literally put my children in punishment over some of the stuff that's happening with adults. What in the world is happening? How did we get to the point where we lose sight of peoples' humanity?
 
"My whole message on diversity is not that we call agree and hold hands and sing Kumbaya. No. It's that when I disagree with you and I can still respect you. That's why I'm a big believer we shouldn't be anti-any person. I might be anti-policy, anti-ideology, but I never will be anti-person.
 
"We've lost the art of seeing people as people. I know it's hard. It's not an easy thing. But to be able to separate what somebody thinks, believes or does, even if I disagree, I still see their humanity and figure out ways I can respect them and show them the beauty of the respect of humanity."
 
Teaching people to think with their hearts, Jones-Fosu said, means understanding vulnerabilities and reconnecting people to the feeling they once had when they were the ones being disrespected or not valued.
 
Diversity exists everywhere, even places where it wouldn't seem possible. While race gender and sexuality are "the big three" in terms of diversity, and very important, Jones-Fosu said, they're not the only pieces.
 
"Diversity in its simplest form," Jones-Fosu said, "is difference."
 
Originally from Ghana, Jones-Fosu now lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, and has spoken in four countries, although he mostly travels the continental United States and Canada. He is the President/Chief Inspirational Officer of Justin Inspires International, LLC, and he has given more than 450 presentations for more than 250 organizations. He is also the founder of Respectivity (www.respectivity.com), a company helping workplaces to develop better cultures of respect.  
 
Jones-Fosu is also the author of two books, the most recent, "Finding Your Glasses: Revealing and Achieving Authentic Success," which challenges readers to live a life of success based on their core values. Jones-Fosu obtained his MBA specializing in leadership and organizational change.
 
Reach Brian at brosenthal@huskers.com or follow him on Twitter @GBRosenthal.