On The Road to Brazil — “Diversidade” Latin American Style

by Andrés T. Tapia –

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be blogging from and about Brazil, land of powder white beaches, five-time World Cup champions, the great Amazon River, and melodramatic telenovelas. It is also about to become the fifth largest economy in the world. Despite the opening sentence, I will be confined to Sao Paolo on this trip, because I am delivering the opening keynote at a Hewitt sponsored conference on diversity and talent management, and also co-chairing the Conference Board’s Global Diversity Council. At both events we will cover a gamut of diversity and inclusion issues as they extend across this vast country of 3 million square miles.

Brazil is a country of tremendous diversity: a landscape that flows from an expansive rainforest to its Atlantic coastline; an astounding variety of flora and fauna; small towns and major cities like Rio de Janeiro; and its wide diversity of residents who are descendants of Indigenous people, Europeans, Asians, and, most significantly, Africans. In Brazil, this awesome diversity comes together in a country known as much for the natural beauty of its land and people as well as its many carnivals and distinctive musical beat. It’s an exciting place with much to tell us about diversity and inclusion as it, paradoxically, on the one hand, showcases an extraordinary ability to celebrate its diversity and make it work, yet, on the other, like in every other place on the planet,  faces its own seemingly intractable challenges.

The world is waiting to see what happens in Brazil’s upcoming presidential run-off election. Most bookmakers and political pundits predict that Dilma Rousseff will prevail and succeed beloved President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as the next head of state. With the election scheduled for October 31, Rousseff may become the first woman president in Brazil, which would make her the sixth woman elected president in Latin America. Which makes me wonder, ¿Qué pasa, USA?

Sports are always a hot topic when talking about Brazil. Known for its championship soccer team, also known as “futebol,” the Selecao or the Selection, as the national team is called, has won the World Cup 5 times. Brazilians like to say that “os ingleses o inventaram, os brasileiros o aperfeiçoaram” (”The English invented it, the Brazilians perfected it”.) Fittingly, Brazil will host the FIFA World Cup in 2014. And indicative that we are in an upside down world, this emerging country beat out the USA’s bid city, Chicago, to host the 2016 International Olympics.

A country as large and diverse as Brazil has its own flavor of pop culture. Singer Ivette Sangalo recently sold out New York’s Madison Square Garden with her high-energy performance. Compared to stadiums in Brazil, the New York Times posited that the Garden must have seen like a comparatively intimate setting for her show.

So whether it’s about politics, sports, pop culture, or issues like race, gender, and disability, Brazil offers its own take on diversity and inclusion. Starting next week, I will be reporting via tweets and this blog on what we discover and learn.

Até logo! (until later!)

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