When I was in sixth grade, I used to spend recess hiding under a truck in a garage at school. One of the few Caucasian students enrolled in what was my "neighborhood" school—on a Native American reservation in northern Wisconsin—I was regularly beaten up because of my skin color. Recess was guaranteed torture.

It started on my first day of school, when the tribal leader's son punched me in the face. I made the mistake of defending myself and fighting back and actually "won" that fight. No sooner had my attacker scurried away than a pack of seventh and eighth graders gang-tackled me. Every day after that, I was kicked, punched, spit on, or pinched, due solely to the color of my skin. Lying in the dirt and grease under a pickup truck was serenity compared to the cruel reality outside the school building. That garage became my refuge from racism.

I was fortunate the reservation didn't have a tribal high school. Graduating students were funneled into a much larger public school about 20 miles off the reservation, and I was suddenly in the majority ethnic population (white) and no longer being discriminated against. My Native American classmates who had once been in the majority were now minority students, getting picked on by their Caucasian classmates. Shockingly, about 40 percent of Native American freshmen dropped out within the first two weeks. Essentially, the reservation system had been a protective bubble for the Indian kids who were now ill-prepared for a very different demographic reality.

Although I was no longer the object of discrimination, I couldn't shake off the knowledge of what it's like to be harassed and terrorized because you are different. Indeed, my childhood experience with diversity would shape my outlook on life and later my career path.

At HBS, I started thinking about how many young people never get the chance to go to college for reasons outside their control, including the disadvantage of discrimination. Largely due to a concern for helping this "forgotten half," in 1988 I founded a company, Collegiate Research Services, designed to help all students, including disadvantaged minorities and the first-generation college bound. Over time, my initial focus on students has evolved into a larger mission: helping organizations build true and sustainable employee engagement.

Studies show that an organization's treatment of diverse employees and customers, including diversity defined by age, strongly correlates to employee engagement, satisfaction, and performance. To promote understanding in a diverse workplace, I've found some of the best practices are simple, familiar activities, such as brown-bag lunches where employees share their backgrounds and perspectives. Role-playing, between a baby boomer and a millennial, for example, on how often one should be recognized for a job well done, also helps increase employee awareness of other perspectives around an issue common to all.

According to a 1995 Wharton School study, companies with higher levels of employee engagement were more than three times as profitable as firms with average engagement. Fostering a diverse culture is the right thing for a firm to do; it can also lead to a stronger bottom line, especially in today's world where virtually every company serves a diverse customer base at home or abroad, or both. Diversity understands diversity. That's why I deeply believe that imparting the value of diversity to all business leaders will benefit their employees, customers, firms, and communities, and create a better reality for future generations.

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My Two Cents represents the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of HBS or Harvard University.

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