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Diversity

Living Life Your Way

Feb 11, 2012 by Dorothéa Bozicolona-Volpe

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Recently I had the wonderful fortune of attending a diversity event at Atlanta’s Pace Academy. The event was the brain child of the Director of Diversity at Pace Academy, Philip McAdoo. Mr. McAdoo had the bright idea to create an event around an evening with Jesse Tyler Ferguson – the famous and out, actor known as Mitchell Pritchett on the ABC sitcom Modern Family.

The program included a reading from the Alliance Theatre’s 10^th anniversary Collision Project that dealt with different views of the Declaration of Independence and the rights of all human beings no matter what creed, sex, religion or romantic persuasion. It was brilliantly executed by Susan Booth and a group of students that were not Pace Academy alums. Those young people did a brilliant job and I am not just saying that because I am a proud pseudo-parent to one of them.

A portion of the evening was dedicated to an open dialogue where parents, students and supporters alike were able to approach the stage and ask Mr. Tyler Ferguson questions about his youth & career, Modern Family, cyber-bullying and diversity. I was lucky enough to have been chosen to ask a question about social media and bullying – Jesse answered it with aplomb.

As I have recently come off of that experience it seemed appropriate that I would be concerned with the recent news that TV host, Ellen DeGeneres was being chastised by a group that formed to unite against JC Penney’s choice of Ms. DeGeneres as a spokesperson for their brand. This is on the heels of Prop 8 being over-turned and same-sex marriage becoming legal in California

One Million Moms (who by my count 2/10 at 5:15 EST has only 43,000 members/Likes) has boycotted Home Depot, Modern Family and now JC Penney thanks to Ms. DeGeneres on their Facebook Group Page.

Howard Stern publicly announced on yesterday that he’d boycott JC Penney if they fired Ellen. And then the groundswell responded by creating their own Facebook Group Page – One Million People Who Support Ellen for JC Penney. At the same time, 5:15pm 2/10, they are at 110, 173 members/Likes.

For the record, I do not typically shop at JC Penney and I live with a Lesbian; she is awesome and one of the most lovely people I have ever had the fortune to come to know.

Diversity counts, it is what our founding Fathers fought for and the groundswell embraces.

Thank you Ellen DeGeneres, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Howard Stern for reminding us of that.

About the Author

Dorothéa Bozicolona-Volpe Has Written 19 Articles For Us!

Dorothea is a senior strategic marketing executive, fluent in 4 languages, who specializes in developing new business for national and international brands via strategic partnerships and technology. She specializes in integrating social media into marketing strategies and understanding how to measure, optimize and build current new media efforts to increase value and develop strong relationships between consumers and brands

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