What I do…
I am a Keynote Speaker, Workshop Facilitator and Blogger.
I help teams and organizations become what they aspire to be. I help smart people, smart groups and smart organizations actually function in smart ways. I illuminate blind spots that often can get in the way of healthy interactions and help to liberate potential that is overlooked and underutilized. A big part of that involves understanding human nature and especially how we are wired to function socially. To borrow an idea from my friend Cy Wakeman, I help people implement “reality based” interactions and decision making.
My work deals with what exists in the social space, between people…the things that cannot be seen, inventoried or counted but play a huge role in our individual and shared success. These invaluable, invisible and intangible assets, such as communication, difference, trust, listening, empathy, culture, social capital, decision making, self awareness.
So…I speak (at conferences, summits, retreats and other events), consult, and facilitate workshops (for organizations as well as some of my own open-enrollment workshops), and write (for my blog, other blogs and occasionally for print publications.
I have spoken at local, regional and national conferences to a variety of audiences, including Human Resource professionals, students, educators, social workers, business leaders, non-profit leaders and others. I have consulted for Fortune 500 corporations, public school districts, congregations and small non-profit organizations.
The methodology for my group work is focused on experiential learning, individual and collective inquiry.
- I examine core-concepts providing a valuable and often new definition of the work at hand for participants.
- I apply the relevant business context(s) and value for the topic being examined.
- I apply the relevant social psychology / cognition / neuroscience research to the topic being examined.
- I specify competencies to generate most beneficial outcomes and provide supporting resources.
My work is not about sensitivity or compliance.
I am part of an aspirational and activist craft, a body of work that requires having one foot firmly planted in who we aspire to be, and one in who we truly are today. This work is about closing that gap, and it is at times painful work because many choose to ignore or deny the gap, and because at times the gap is great. (infinite hope, finite disappointment).
To a large extent, this work is about removing false barriers to progress and liberating the unrealized potential that exists in individuals, groups and organizations…doing a better job of utilizing the powerful intangible assets at our disposal.
Who I am….
My name is Joe Gerstandt (and I am here to recruit you!). I work anywhere and everywhere, but live in Omaha, Nebraska, with my wife and two girls. I have been in Omaha for about 10 years, and have grown very fond of this community. I grew up on a small farm next to a small town in Northwest Iowa. After high school, I spent four years in the United States Marine Corps, which was an amazing opportunity for me and took me to a number of locations throughout the U.S. and overseas. After finishing my enlistment, I returned to the Midwest and enrolled at Iowa State University, graduating in 1996. I spent a couple of years in Lincoln, Nebraska and then made the move to Omaha.
My first profession was sales, and I spent about six years in sales and sales management. There were a great many things that I enjoyed about sales, especially working directly with clients. And, for the most part I had the good fortune to represent good products and services. But, I never felt quite at home in sales and eventually came to understand that I needed to make a change. I knew that I wanted to find work that felt like it had a more direct connection to making the world better, to positive social change.While I was in the process of determining how to actually make this career transition…it came and found me!
I had been actively volunteering for a number of organizations in Omaha, and one of them was Nebraska AIDS Project. After being impressed by their mission and many of the people involved, I had joined their speakers bureau which gave me the opportunity to take the agencies message out to a variety of groups.While I was in the process of trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up and how to make that happen, I received an unexpected e-mail from the then Director of Education at Nebraska AIDS Project. She let me know that she had decided to pursue a new opportunity and thought that I would make a good candidate for her job, would I like to throw my hat in the ring?
I said that I would absolutely like to apply for the position, it was exactly the kind of work that I wanted to do. I was pretty sure I would not get the job, as I did not think that I was in anyway qualified for it, but I was very excited about the opportunity. The interview process was kind of lengthy, primarily because the agency had hired a new Executive Director and he had not yet started or moved to Omaha, so interviews were scheduled around the dates when he was in Omaha. Because the universe works in wonderful and mysterious and bizarre ways, I ended up getting the job.
As jobs go, it was every bit as life-changing of an experience as the Marine Corps had been for me when I was 18. I had the good fortune to be a part of really amazing and hard work with really amazing, passionate and creative folks. Being a part of the education and prevention team meant being able to work well in a variety of settings, from recruiting volunteers in corporate settings to speaking to church groups on Sunday morning, conducting street outreach to homeless folks, people involved in prostitution and intravenous drug use, doing outreach in correctional facilities, bars, schools, you name it. It was inspiring and amazing and it changed much of how I view the world. It also is where I was originally began to seriously examine issues of diversity, inclusion, cultural competency, health disparities and related issues.
While I was working at Nebraska AIDS Project, I also began volunteering for the National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ) (link), which does some truly amazing work in the area of diversity, human relations, leadership…especially for youths. From the beginning I was quite inspired by the work of this organization and worked to figure out how to best contribute to their efforts. And because the universe works in the way that it does, a day came when they were looking for a new Program Director, and they talked to me about this opportunity and I realized this was my next step.
It was very difficult for me to say goodbye to Nebraska AIDS Project, but this work with NCCJ was another blessing to me. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to focus directly on issues related to diversity and network with and learn from others that worked on diversity and human relations issues. I studied hard and read everything that I could get my hands on regarding diversity, race relations, gender violence, hate crimes, privilege, discrimination, institutional inequality, social change and related issues. It was while I was a part of this work, and this learning that it became crystal clear to me that this was my calling, to be a part of this work. And as I gave it more thought, I realized that with my leadership and business background I was uniquely positioned to bring this message to organizations and communities.
My next job, would give me the opportunity to do just that. I went to work for a healthcare system as their first ever Director of Diversity and was able to build a diversity, inclusion and cultural competency effort from scratch. This was an incredibly unique and incredibly valuable opportunity and included developing a comprehensive strategic plan, infrastructure, training for staff and leadership, developing strategic relationships and working with marketing and communications efforts. I also was able to help plan, organize and facilitate two decision accelerators to seriously and aggressively examine issues of diversity and inclusion and the state of the healthcare workforce. This role also provided me some wonderful opportunities to work with other practitioners for large organizations and seriously examine the business cases for diversity and inclusion, the components of effective training and how to effectively employ employee resource groups.
And in late 2007 I went to work for my self. I had been doing some freelance work for 5-6 years prior to this which included some speaking engagements, staff and leadership training and some targeted consulting. But the universe let me know that the time had come for me to get serious about doing my own things and here I am! I am enjoying and appreciating the opportunity to talk about, think about and create healthy change for organizations and groups of people who know that work can be about more than what we have been settling for.
I am blessed to do work that I love and be surrounded by good people. I live in Omaha with my wife and our two beautiful and wise girls. My parents still live on the small farm next to the small town in Northwest Iowa and one of our favorite things to do is to visit the farm for a weekend (especially in the summer!). My sister and her beautiful family live in Sioux Falls, SD and we have great fun visiting them as well. In addition to my own work, I am part of the Talent Anarchy team with my good friend and co-conspirator Jason Lauritsen who has been a life saver to me in more ways than one.
I serve on Advisory Councils for the Center for Transcultural Learning at College of St Marys, and the National Network of Libraries of Medicine. I also work with the Organizational and Industrial Psychology Graduate Program at UNO to examine research looking at issues of diversity in the workplace. I have also served on the Board of Directors for Catholic Charities, the Young Professionals Council , Midlands Community Planning Group, North Omaha Health Coalition, and Next Generation Omaha. I have worked in a volunteer capacity for several organizations including Big Brothers, Big Sisters, Boys and Girls Club, Nebraska AIDS Project, National Conference for Community and Justice.
