[Chris Hibner]

This is an interesting thread. These topics can be difficult to talk about, but it's one that's interesting and important to me. I think diversity is very important, for multiple reasons.

First, with respect to being competitive, having a diverse team has many benefits. This isn't just in terms of FRC, but also in engineering and business in general. It's easy to fall into the thinking of the "best" (by whatever measure you can imagine) people should be on the team. The thing is, you'd be surprised how much diversity impacts the problem solving process. When you have people of many different backgrounds try to solve a problem, different people with different backgrounds bring different thought processes to a situation. This leads to some great ideas during brainstorming that may not happen with a group of people that all think alike. It really is a competitive advantage to be diverse - especially in the real world.

The second aspect is social responsibility. To many people, they don't understand how to get from their lot in life to somewhere else because they don't have the example of how to do it. I have a great personal example. I became an airline pilot. For me, that was something that "other people" did. I didn't think it was something that just anyone could do - you had to join the military, know someone, have some type of connection, or whatever. Then I knew someone that did it. I found out that it wasn't beyond the scope of possibility. More importantly, I found out from this person exactly how to do it - what I needed to do to make it happen. I followed their example and did it myself. I would have NEVER thought it was really possible without having that example path to follow. As mentors in FIRST, we owe it to the kids who think that becoming a successful professional is something that "other people do" to show them exactly how to get there.