joe gerstandt

joe gerstandt is a speaker, author, and advisor bringing greater clarity, action, and impact to organizational diversity and inclusion efforts.

joe has worked with Fortune 100 corporations, small nonprofits, government entities, and everything in between. He speaks at numerous conferences and summits and is a featured contributor for the Workforce Diversity Network Expert Forum. His insights have been published in Diversity Best Practices, Diversity Executive, HR Executive, and numerous other print and online journals, and he co-authored the book “Social Gravity: Harnessing the Natural Laws of Relationships.”

He serves on the Intersectional Culture and Diversity (ICD) advisory council for the social networking platform Twitter, and the board of directors for the Tri-Faith Initiative, which brings together in permanent residency a synagogue, church, mosque, and interfaith center on one 38-acre campus in the middle of America’s heartland.

joe grew up on a family farm in northwest Iowa, served four years in the United States Marine Corps including participation in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, attended Iowa State University, and then spent six years working in management and business development for technology and communication companies. He then made a career change and went to work for a grassroots nonprofit organization, and this is where he found himself drawn to issues related to diversity and inclusion and became actively involved in that work.

Today, joe believes that we can ill afford to continue applying a 20th-century approach to an increasingly critical set of 21st-century issues. A strong advocate for resetting the diversity and inclusion conversation, joe sees diversity and inclusion as poorly understood and often misunderstood. His keynote messages and interactive workshops bring greater clarity, action, and impact to existing and new organizational diversity and inclusion efforts.

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