Lonnie Lusardo is owner of and Principal Consultant for The Diversity Collaborative, a veteran owned business that specializes in Cultural Competency Training and Strategic Diversity Management for governments and corporations. Additional areas of focus include Management and Supervision Training, Team Building, and Retreat Facilitation.
Lonnie works with organizations across the United States. Past and present clients include the Boeing Company, AirTouch Cellular, Verizon Wireless, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Puget Sound Education Service District, City of Seattle, and many school districts, colleges and universities in Washington State. He is a popular speaker at regional, national, and international conferences and training events.
Lonnie is Founder and currently Co-Chair of Out In Front (a program for LGBT leaders, principal founder and former co-chair of Seattle Race Conference. Lonnie is a former member and Chair of the Board of Visitors for Antioch University (Seattle). He is past president of the Puget Sound Chapter of the American Society for Training and Development and past president of Greater Seattle Business Association. For seven years he served on the Leadership Tomorrow Board of Directors. He is a co-founder of Hands Off Washington, a statewide human rights organization active in the early 1990s. In the mid-1990s, Lonnie served as a mayoral appointee and Chair of the Seattle Police-Community Relations Task Force.
In 1997-98, Lonnie conducted a research project in South Africa to determine the affects of the shift from apartheid to democracy on the people of that country. The project included interviews with 65 government, corporate, and community leaders, including former Archbishop Desmond Tutu, members of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission, the South African Ambassador to the United States. The project resulted in the development of Cross-Cultural Mediation as a way to resolve racial and other cultural differences, as well as improved techniques for Cultural Competency Training in American organizations.
In 2003, Lonnie was profiled in the book White Men Challenging Racism: 35 Personal Stories, published by Duke University Press. He is currently writing his own book, profiles of women and men who have defected from the hate movement to become advocates against racism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia.
Lonnie is committed to civic engagement, social justice, and fostering collaborations among a variety of community organizations, particularly with ethnic community groups and communities of faith. In 2009 he received the Edward E. Carlson Outstanding Alumnus Award from Leadership Tomorrow. In 2006, Lonnie was recognized in as an Honoree for the Thomas C. Wales Foundation Passionate Citizen Award.