Increasing Empathy and Diversity Intelligence

”Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation, and this means we must develop a world perspective…

It boils down to this: all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Cultural Translation ©: Depolarizing Difficult Conversations

This training does not seek to force participants to agree with any one position. Instead, our goal is to increase participants’ ability to see the world through another person’s ideological perspective. This reduces contempt for others while increasing compassion, respect, understanding, and the complexity necessary for them to depolarize difficult conversations that lead to win-win solutions in their personal, professional, and civic life. This training understands that we are all connected.

This training helps us celebrate differences by developing worldview diversity that enhances our ability to
listen compassionately,
understand complexity,
and translate authentically.

It reduces bias and discrimination by
encouraging compassion for all
by better understanding the complexity of humanity.

The Training Model

The model for Cultural Translation © has been tested over hundreds of coaching success training with leaders in challenging personal situations. In the business world, this model has helped hundreds of social venture start-ups to understand that the investor’s viewpoint is critical to getting funded by some of today’s leading social entrepreneurs. And the most significant test and challenge have been in the polarized political world, where it has been the core of many of the most successful social change policy success stories in the past thirty years.

“I can confidently say that this was one of the more effective short trainings I've been to as a professional peacebuilder. Rich and his team gave me a completely new frame of looking at people's interests and perspectives, and how to speak of those as I try to shape a more peaceful and understanding world. Thank you!”
- Maxine RichProgram Manager, Common Ground USA/Search for Common Ground

“I have been struggling the last few years with how to be both a peacemaker and an activist. Relationships dear to me have been painfully damaged because of what have felt like insurmountable differences. Through the Cultural Translators Program, I gained insights, understandings, and processes I can utilize to connect, engage and collaborate with others in a healthy, productive, compassionate way in both my personal and professional life. I'm so grateful for the opportunity and glad I participated!”
- Alex GayheartChief of Administration, Renaissance Academy

“It's life-giving to engage in a community of diverse thinkers who are motivated to move past individual agendas of "rightness" and "wrongness", to lean into discomfort and into a namaste version of connection and open-hearted inquiry.”
- Susan BlackBlackTrack Consulting

“The cultural translation program was a powerful framework for understanding the prevailing world views in in America and how to approach each view with understanding and compassion. Most importantly how to speak the language of each world view to move from contempt and gridlock to empathy and forward progress around solving problems we all care about.”
- Sheri SmithCEO of the Indigo Education Company

“I can confidently say that this was one of the more effective short trainings I've been to as a professional peacebuilder. Rich and his team gave me a completely new frame of looking at people's interests and perspectives, and how to speak of those as I try to shape a more peaceful and understanding world. Thank you!”
- Maxine RichProgram Manager, Common Ground USA/Search for Common Ground

“I have been struggling the last few years with how to be both a peacemaker and an activist. Relationships dear to me have been painfully damaged because of what have felt like insurmountable differences. Through the Cultural Translators Program, I gained insights, understandings, and processes I can utilize to connect, engage and collaborate with others in a healthy, productive, and compassionate way in both my personal and professional life. I'm so grateful for the opportunity and glad I participated!”
- Alex GayheartChief of Administration, Renaissance Academy

“This program allowed me to gain understanding for other perspectives and how to find common ground based on common values to create a space for meaningful, constructive dialogue with people who hold different perspectives than myself.”
- Shannon FischerTeacher

“Diversity doesn’t automatically confer advantages in decision-making. In fact, if diverse teams aren’t managed actively for inclusion, they can underperform homogenous ones. That’s because shared knowledge is key in decision-making, and diverse teams, by definition, start out with less of it. But if you create conditions of trust that allow diverse team members to bring their unique perspectives and experiences to the table, you can expand the amount of knowledge your team can access—and create an unbeatable advantage.”
- Frances X. Frei and Anne MorrissLeadership Consultants

Executive Leadership Coach

Cheryl Robertson

Cheryl Robertson, HR Leader, Executive Coach, brings over 30 years of experience in HR management, leadership training and development in the public sector. Today, she works with executives and teams to address trauma, look at their growth through the lenses of "whole person" leadership, and find a path forward to their desired success.

Program Faculty Director

Rich Tafel

Rich Tafel spent a career bringing together coalitions of unlikely partners to solve the most significant challenges of our day. He created the Cultural Translator project to increase empathy and Diversity Intelligence in high-conflict organizations and communities. Tafel worked in the public policy arena, putting together diverse coalitions to achieve historic civil rights and healthcare breakthroughs in the United States and worldwide.

Mediator, Facilitator

Ryan Nakede

Ryan Nakade, Professional Mediator, Facilitator, specializes in depolarization and dialogue across differences. Nakade came into prominence through his work with former extremists to counter radicalization and extremist violence, focusing on outreach to rural conservative communities.

Activist, Community Organizer

Annabel Park

Annabel Park, Political Consultant, Community Organizer, and Documentary Filmmaker, recognized for creative activism, community organizing, and narrative strategy. Her passion is to promote participatory democracy and social change with innovation and community-building. Park's activism has been featured by CNN, Washington Post, New York Times, Newsweek, and others.

Our Approach

We work with a talented team of executive coaches and leadership development experts, policy and business advisors, as well as community change makers to bring this learning experience to the public. As such our curriculum brings both the academic rigour as well as practical experience into the classroom to help the participants understand how they can apply the learned concepts to their own real life situations immediately.

We partner with public, private, non-profit and faith-based organizations to customize the program experience, including program delivery methods, specific case studies and wrap-around services to their unique leadership and organizational challenges. Don’t hesitate to reach out to our team for a conversation on how this program experience can be translated into your own professional and community culture.

Public Squared is a strategy company created in 2012 to increase citizens’ impact in the public square. It provides strategy and hosts collaborative events for stakeholders from different perspectives to reach common goals.

Public Squared Project, under the fiscal sponsorship of Companies for Causes, is a 501(c)(3) organization, based in Washington, DC.

Our current list of organizational partners and clients include faith groups, non-profits and corporate institutions. Reach out to our team with questions and requests about training options right for you!