Diverse Background Quotes

I'm not from a political family and didn't grow up dreaming of being George Washington. I started working in 8th grade and have held every odd job possible - working in a gravel pit, weighing big wheelers, ticket sales, data base management - but I knew if I worked hard and got experience, I could apply that experience to my next endeavor.

When I first started modeling, I realised I was very different from many of my colleagues, but I welcomed the opportunities my career in fashion offered me and the support from many inspiring individuals in the fashion industry.

My parents were both from extremely different backgrounds. My father's Italian, my mother was of Swedish descent. They're both first-generation Americans.

I had white family members, black family members, white friends, black friends by the time I was 16.

I have been influenced in my thinking by both west and east.

My mother's mother is Jewish and African, so I guess that would be considered Creole. My mother's father was Cherokee Indian and something else. My dad's mother's Puerto Rican and black, and his father was from Barbados.

I'm a Christian, but I've coached and played with Muslims and all kind of different religions.

I grew up in a lower-middle-class environment, usually the lone minority among my classmates.

I've done so many funny jobs. I worked at a farmer's market through high school. I worked in the stock room of Ralph Lauren. I graduated to salesperson at Ralph Lauren, which was a big deal to me. I've been a P.A. I've been a stand-in. I've been an assistant's assistant.

I existed in a space where my mother was a black woman and my father was a white man. And that's how I saw the world. I was just like, some dads are whites and some moms are black. And that's how it is.

I've been in a lot of different arenas of life.

In Sweden, I went to an English school, where there was a mishmash of people from all over the world. Some were diplomatic kids with a lot of money, some were ghetto kids who came up from the suburbs, and I grew up in between. There's a community of second generation immigrants, and I became part of that because I had an American father.

I was put on so many different musical stages growing up that I didn't think about what kind of music we played. I just thought music was music.

I was lucky to grow up in a culturally diverse area knowing a lot of different people from all different walks of life.

Military service might sound like a totally different environment, but every experience you fall back on later, it makes you smarter. Why wouldn't that be true of the military, too?

My senior leadership team is half people who have been at GM for a long period of time like me, and others who have joined the company within the last five years from different industries, experiences, and countries. You have a better picture of the world. The diversity of thought is where you can make better business decisions.

I went to schools that had a significantly large Caucasian population and I feel very fortunate because I was able to compare that perspective with my family's. It allowed me to create a wider world view on things.

I've seen a lot and experienced so many different cultures, and that's helped me a lot in my career and helped me mature as a person.

I realized why I can cook for different environments. Because of everything I've gone through growing up. Why can I cook for a Hollywood event without blinking an eye? Because I cooked at the Beverly Hilton and because I moved to Villa Park. Why can I cook for kids on Hollywood Boulevard at night? Because I went through it.

I used to be a model and a medical test subject, though never at the same time. And since we didn't have much money when I was a kid, I know how to fish and hunt for my supper. And I used to win awards in speech in high school, which comes in handy when I speak to 200 people at a writers' conference.

At different times my children went to Polish, British, and American schools, and they learned about 'the nation' in all of them.

When I have basketball camps and I tell kids my story, they're like, 'You played in Maine? In Israel? You did this and that?' I experienced a lot, and I feel like it made me not only the person I am today, but the basketball player I am.

I grew up listening to everything. You know, from Argentinean folk music, tango, jazz, rock, just everything.

It's quite interesting that in my growing up I had several influences. We had gospel music on campus. R&B music was, of course, the community, and radio was country music. So I can kind of see where all the influences came from.

Following graduation from high school in 1948, I attended Harvard University where I became a physics major. Having grown up in a small town, I found Harvard to be an enormously enriching experience. Students in my class came from all walks of life and from a great variety of geographical locations.