I was probably in college before I realized I was “diverse.” That might sound crazy (or just oblivious), but born and raised in suburbs surrounding Washington, D.C., my playground pals and classroom cohorts were simply Karen, Patty, Debbie, Nancy, Susan…not African American, Indian, American, Filipino…such is the factual innocence of youth and also the multicultural metropolitan region where we lived. It didn’t dawn on me then that people might be responding to me based on my appearance or any other facts of my life (my mother wore a sari to work; we traveled overseas in the summers to visit relatives...).

So it was mostly as I entered the wonderful world of work that I started to understand that some people formed their expectations and perceptions of me based not on what they knew of me as a person, but what they knew about my cultural and ethnic heritage. From them, I gathered that I was expected to be well-educated, hardworking, unfailingly nice, polite and probably submissive, and that I just seemed young.  It’s true -- Asians do tend to look younger than their age...and believe me, as the years pass, I complain less and less about that!

When I became a mother, it became alarmingly clear to me that my self perception would help to shape my daughter’s. As parents do, I began to talk to her about the things that make her different, and the same, as her friends and her relatives. I believe she’ll have some of the same challenges as I did...and some different ones. She is her own little microcosm of multiculturalism (an Indian-American) and her appearance doesn't necessarily "brand" her as one ethnicity or another. She's also growing up in a society where an increasing number of her pre-school classmates are of a minority background.

At Sodexo, a family like mine can feel at home. Sodexo is itself multicultural because we do business in more than 80 countries, our parent company is in France and our North America operations are enriched with a workforce that represents more than 128 nationalities, as reported in Sodexo’s first Annual Diversity Report.

I am so pleased that Sodexo was recently named as “Best Company” for Multicultural Women by Working Mother Magazine, a media organization I admire and respect for its groundbreaking commitments to women who face not only the daily dilemmas of working motherhood, but the unique challenges of women with a complex environment or background. I believe Sodexo is part of the list because of our mentor programs that build multicultural women to leadership positions, our network groups for employees to allow them to grow professionally and gain confidence, and overall, for being committed to a work environment where all employees can thrive.

This is the kind of future I want for my daughter, too.  We all want for our children to have the opportunity and challenge to create their own persona, to be fully and uniquely them…and to not have the facts about their heritage or ethnicity define them, and certainly not limit them.

Are you on a similar journey? Which of the “facts” of your life truly define you? Is that by your choice or that of others? Does your workplace support your "whole self”?