Monday, November 10, 2008

United Nations, Longwood style

Every Monday morning, I welcome our new employees in their orientation session. It is always a pleasure to meet new folks and sense their enthusiasm at taking on a new job.

I have been struck by the diversity among those being hired. As one indicator of that, I want to provide you with the last names of a recent group. Take a gander at this worldwide assortment:

Agosta, Arroyo, Baronian, Barros, Barry, Beaton, Brown, Daniels, Doherty, Dominguez, El-Nazer, Falardeau, Fallon, Flynn, Ghosh, Gibson, Green, Hudson, Ingram, Jones, Kopcow, Laing, Lacy, Lee, Leonard, Lewis, Li, Mack, Mendles, Mercilus, Nadadur, Nagel, Nistal, Nugent, Ornego, Paruchuri, Perez, Perna, Phin, Pilo, Poelstra, Powell, Qiu, Quintero, Regis, Rick, Rivera, Salko, Schultz, Servis, Silver, Smith, Snyder, Sun, Tadini, Valdez, Valente, Wang, Watanabe, Watson, Watts, Xu, Yeroshalmi, Zipse.

One "game" I play at orientation is to ask people to raise their hands in response to the following consecutive questions: 1) Raise your hand (and keep it up) if you were not born in the United States; 2) raise your hand (and keep it up) if at least one of your parents was not born in the US; and then 3) raise your hand if at least one of your grandparents was not born in the US. By the end, 95 percent of the people in the room have a hand in the air. A marvelous statement about how the US remains a melting pot for the world!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

My orientation was back in June.
You were the best part of the orientation. All of the typical orientation information was present, but you display all of the qualities of a true "lead by example" CEO.

This hospital was founded on the principle of great patient care for everyone.I have found that every single employee looks at how they can contribute to make BIDMC a better place.