Passion or Profession?
“Find something you’re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.”
Julia Child
So, at what point does one’s profession become a passion? Or, which one comes first, the profession or the passion?
For me, it was the passion! My whole world has always been one of finding commonalities and differences and finding the middle ground to make them work.
One of my first memories was growing up in a university campus back in Ibadan, Nigeria and having my closest friends and next door neighbors as white Canadians. The Owens family. Their dad was a professor at the university and the children were Philip Serwin Owen and Elizabeth Owen. They were French Canadians (they spoke English fluently) but their grandma spoke only French. I was very curious and interested in the differences between us (customs, practices, and traditions) but my best memories include going over to their house for dinner! We all were very close until they left for Canada years later, but the seed was sown!
Also, as a child of the sixties growing up in a newly independent country from British colonization, Nigeria was going through identity development – British? Traditional? Or both? – a good training ground for what is now my profession, Deliberate Diversity Designs!
I have worked as a diversity professional with Auburn University in Alabama since 2015. Here is a presentation that I made to my selection committee as I competed for the job:
