Knox students at the third annual Career Impact Summit were guided in a discussion about the importance of being culturally competent in your career.

Emily Putnam '10 presented "Cultural Competence and Your Career," in a November 19 session attended by more than 20 students. The talk featured insights from Putnam's experience as a Knox student, teacher, and professional, as well as small group discussions about how to identify, avoid, and overcome workplace microaggressions. Putnam, who now works with Teach for America, defines microaggressions as subtle verbal and nonverbal slights that are usually committed by people with good intentions, but create harm due to a lack of understanding the experiences and identities of individuals around them.

"The identity markers that we carry, both seen and unseen, really make a difference in terms of what happens through the course of our life," Putnam said. "Every person in this room and in this world is operating from a place of bias and different layers of privilege that come with those identity markers. Nobody is above or free of bias internalization."

In order to generate a dialogue, students were presented with five different scenarios of microaggressions in the workplace. In small groups, they then discussed the biases in play, the harm done, the goal of the aggressor's communication, and how they could better deal with the issue by displaying more cultural competence. Putnam urged students to be open about their own biases when discussing these issues and to be open to the biases of others.

Those present said that being a student at Knox has helped prepare them for having these discussions and being aware of the weight of their words.

"These are things that people talk about on campus and have a lot of dialogues about," said Elizabeth Clay '17. "It is cool to know that we are not just talking about these things here, that they are in the real world too."

"It's always an ongoing process." Neb Babbott '16 said. "We talk about diversity as if it is something to achieve when it is something that has to be done on a daily basis."

The Career Impact Summit is a two day event organized by the Knox College Bastian Family Career Center that gives students the chance to hear from and network with Knox alumni representing a variety of industries. It was sponsored by the John D. Carlin Career Development Support Fund.