Representatives from a global investment firm, an armed services office and a university may seem like an odd mix of people to put on a panel, but when they all addressed diversity, their views were surprisingly very similar.

"We invited these representatives because we believe that in order to understand something, you need to look at it from several contexts," explained David Harris, deputy provost and vice provost for social sciences, who as a member of the University Diversity Council's working group helped organize this semester's Diversity Forum, "Tales from the Front Line," held Feb. 28 in 104 Sage Hall.

"There is no single way to define diversity," said Anne R. Erni, managing director and chief diversity officer for Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., whose 50 offices span 20 countries and employ over 27,000 people. "In each region of the world, when you talk about issues of diversity, the conversation is different and encompasses different concerns."

Yet there are some principles that she believes apply broadly. For instance, not all career paths are linear, and organizations need to rethink their career progression models.

"Research has found that 40 percent of women leave the workforce to become moms, but of those, 93 percent want to re-enter the workforce and less than 60 percent are successful in doing that. So at Lehman, we instituted a program called 'Encore' and increased our support of work flexibility to attract off-rampers to the workplace," Erni said.

Erni also noted that organizations need "champions" at all levels to develop spheres of influence that are inclusive and affect organizational climate change. The assumptions guiding decision-making need to be re-examined, and diversity and corporate performance need to be systematically aligned. At Lehman, managers are eligible to receive incentive bonuses based on efforts to develop a more inclusive environment.

Allan D. Bishop III, director of the Recruitment and Employment Center at Cornell, concurred with Erni's principles, and noted how Cornell is making progress in its programming and policies. In discussing organizational culture, he appealed to the audience to help develop a welcoming and inclusive environment at Cornell.

"Of the three areas Anne mentioned - recruitment, retention and climate - the hardest to influence in a decentralized environment is climate," he said. "We can make progress in recruiting people to campus, but what good does that do if they leave shortly thereafter? Turnover at Cornell, or people leaving the university, is double for minority staff and faculty than for the majority. Newcomers need to feel welcomed to the area and become connected and networked quickly. All of us can play a part in making that happen."

Panelist Lt. Col. Brian Page of the Reserve Officer Training Corps at Cornell, noted that the military holds its leaders accountable for supporting diversity and equal opportunity programs. Diversity training is conducted at all levels of the Army, and begins from the point of recruitment, said Page. "When we recruit, we talk about the military's equal opportunity values and its intolerance of harassment in any form, and discourage anyone who has a problem with that from joining," he said.

For Page, who has served in Iraq, the issues of diversity take on life-and-death significance, because in combat members of a unit must be able to communicate well with each other in order to work as a team.

Questions at the end of the presentations ranged from issues of commuting from outside of Ithaca and dual careers to religious diversity. Although the organizations' representatives acknowledged that their approaches to diversity regarding religious beliefs differ, for example, all agreed that small signals in the system -- the availability of vegetarian food, the scheduling of meals, how religious symbols are displayed, recognized or ignored -- send the message on how inclusive an organization's culture really is.