Testimonials

Leslie Aguilar, founder of Diversity & Inclusion Center, is the most thorough and conscientious developer I have ever worked with. That’s why I continue to use her work year after year.

Having worked in the diversity / inclusion field for over twenty years, I have been privileged to encounter dozens of valuable products designed to increase both awareness and skills. None has surpassed Leslie Aguilar's training video, Ouch! That Stereotype Hurts! and I was thrilled to recently learn that the Ouch! material and message is now available in an eLearning format. I just completed it and found it straight-forward, easy-to-follow, and, as with the video, filled with practical skills. Perhaps most important, there is something about the design that made me want to keep clicking and moving on – maybe it's the flow of the content or the "look" of it, but it seemed to carry me along. Great job, Leslie!

Whenever I evaluate how effective a learning program is, I pay attention to three things:

1. Does it get the job done? YES!

2. Will people learn and be able to fix their mistake? YES, and in a way this is the most important criterion because it's a learning program.

3. Will people enjoy the process? YES, I sure did!

For creating a common understanding of diversity and inclusion concepts the Ouch! e-learning course is fantastic. Well done!

I invited Leslie Aguilar to facilitate the DiversiScan™ workshop as the keynote for the 2016 Diversity Research Symposium. DiversiScan™ adapted well to an academic setting. It is a comprehensive, flexible, highly adaptable road map that allows people in all tiers of an organization to make valuable input regarding the current state of affairs and future priorities of diversity.

The instrument design is excellent, and the method of implementing it permits people of different ranks to come together comfortably and create honest exchange, leading to insight and synergy.

Highly important in the success of this model is facilitation. I had the good fortune to have Leslie Aguilar facilitate the workshop. Among her many strengths include her thorough advance research into the background of an organization, which she uses to adjust DiversiScan™ to particular settings. On site, we benefited from Leslie's experience, charisma, approachability, and skill at facilitation.

I was pleased with the results and recommend DiversiScan™ as a way to effectively map diversity goals, needs, and accomplishments in any setting.

We utilized the DiversiScan™ process with our two diversity teams. The result is that we created four task forces for the four signposts that we determined were critical for us. The Diversity team members were thankful - they had been caught up in sponsoring special events. This allowed them to focus and move forward. We will use this process with our Senior Executives later this year.

We used DiversiScan™ with a mixed team from our manufacturing plant. It is a nice mechanism to get people started on a meaningful discussion about their organization and then to come up with a diversity plan. I was very comfortable using DiversiScan™ and I am confident I will use it again. It’s a good tool for doing strategy work within the business.

I think it [DiversiScan™] is a fabulous tool, elegantly simple, and I mean that in the best sense. I once heard Hersey (Hersey and Blanchard) say that if a model is not simpler than reality, it is of no use. I would say the same for any tool / method such as your assessment. It gives people a way to get their arms around a very complex issue in a real, practical way that helps them prioritize and figure out where to begin their change efforts.

As a diversity and inclusion facilitator, I love to use this Competency Assessment [Diversity Competencies Assessment]™. It is easy to use, gives participants great insights and lets them develop a plan to be more inclusive – whether as an individual contributor or leader.

I highly recommend Ouch! That Stereotype Hurts! for companies intent on promoting respect and inclusion within their workforce, workplace and marketplace. We’ve been promoting this training course for several years and consistently receive high marks from our participants. The video vignettes are highly engaging, encourage thoughtful conversation around how best to communicate when faced with stereotypes and bias, and the six techniques are powerful and easy to use. This program spans every imaginable stereotype and bias that we encounter in our world today. It’s worth every penny!

The Ouch! program is wonderfully helpful and was embraced by our senior leaders with interest and enthusiasm. Unlike many other diversity programs that focus heavily on “why” we need to be more inclusive, the Ouch! program provides pragmatic, easily-implemented and actionable strategies. These strategies help employees learn, practice, and quickly put into practice specific ways to respond when they hear unkind, alienating comments or conversations. This program immediately empowers people to DO something without putting them in confrontational situations. A total bonus is that the material has been very well designed and any trained facilitator should be able to lead the content and the learning / discovery process.

"Thank you so much for creating Ouch! That Stereotype Hurts. It really fills a niche in my training. It provides the practical, "what can I do?" skills. I've reviewed dozens and dozens of videos and Ouch! is so much better than anything else I've seen. Now that I've used it many times with my clients, I've completely internalized the skills and am using them myself as well as training others. Thank you!"

Your Ouch! video is even more powerful than the book. And I LOVED your book!

The Ouch! video is a great complement to our harassment training since many potential harassment situations involve those "not so obvious" stereotypical comments. As participants watched the video, we could see heads nodding in agreement that stereotypes still exist. Since rolling out the training, employees in all of our facilities across the U.S. are saying "ouch" to speak up against stereotypes.

I just wanted to let you know that we taught the Ouch! That Stereotype Hurts class yesterday and it was awesome. We were told by many of the 95 leaders present that it was the best diversity training they have ever had. It scored a 4.9 out of 5 on the evals. Ouch! really is an excellent program and very easy to teach. Thank you!!

Thank you for making a difference for all of us. Ouch! is brilliant. Keep going because you’ve touched a lot of lives.

The voices in the shadows was a stirring image, and the specific examples of what to say were effective. The most powerful piece of learning for me was to establish that it is better to say something that is imperfect, rather than waiting to think about the right words and saying nothing.

Leslie, when I think about working with you and with your organization, I think about the ease with which we were able to get the job done. You captured our culture and what we were looking for so easily and delivered just the right kind of program for us with the right tone. You are very easy to work with, you hear your customer, and you deliver what your customer has asked for. There are two important pieces to me. First, your very broad, appreciative approach allowed us to look at the diversity question in a new way. You got us thinking about similarities and differences, and thinking about creating an environment that is inclusive rather than exclusive. How useful this is – it yields results in performance for the organization in the long term! Secondly, but certainly not least, from a Bean perspective, you provided very useful tools. Tools to use when confronted with a situation – or in advance of – tools that allow us to think things through, to think differently, and to behave differently as a result of your training sessions at Bean.

Leslie Aguilar was the principal in the design and implementation of four Diversity training modules for Campbell Soup Company over the last five years. Her continued involvement with our Diversity staff has contributed to the movement of several diversity initiatives across Company locations. Whenever I recommend International Training and Development, LLC to my colleagues, I always mention that Leslie Aguilar exemplifies all of the "P"s that are imperative in my decision to use consulting services regarding diversity issues — proficient, professional, practical and personable.