Well it is said that what goes around always comes around.
In the corporate world, very many people have found themselves eating humble pie after finding the very the same people they looked down upon, seating on the opposite side of the table they are seeking employment from.
Factor this, Aaron Philips, the founder of Green Earth Sustainable Solution Inc, a California-based environmental nonprofit, shared a compelling anecdote about his career journey.
After leaving a job where he faced bullying, Philips founded his own company. Interestingly, the same bullies who had once demeaned him came knocking, this time seeking employment.
During an interview with a local media outlet on Monday August 21, the CEO who was in Kenya for a fundraising event, recounted his remarkable career trajectory.
Before founding his nonprofit organisation, Aaron Philips worked in a cleaning company in the US. At the company, he was assigned various jobs depending on client briefs.
Despite seeking assistance from the drivers he worked with, they picked on him due to his dyslexia and refused to help him with tasks like lowering him into gas tanks, which the company cleaned for energy firms.
Years later, fate took an unexpected turn when the very same bullies sought jobs at the company he founded.
“Even though they abused me, even if they were 10 times harder on me, I knew they were good at their jobs so I didn’t really care,” Aaron Phillips said during the interview, confirming that he gave them the jobs anyway despite his negative experience.
Aaron emphasised that leaders shouldn't hold grudges or seek revenge against those who once did wrong by them.
In his view, promoting advancement and efficacy requires leaders to evaluate professionals solely based on their skills and competencies.
During the interview, the CEO said that, apart from the main objective of his trip to Kenya, he is very keen to absorb knowledge from Kenyans who he described as very talented.
Moreover, he is leading an initiative to combat the stigma and shame often attached to dyslexia—a learning disorder characterised by challenges in reading, stemming from difficulties in recognising speech sounds and understanding their correspondence to letters and words known as decoding.
Termed a reading disability, dyslexia is rooted in distinctive brain processing differences related to language.
Having personally experienced the impact of dyslexia, Aaron Phillips highlighted that his company is in the process of establishing a non-governmental organisation in Kenya which will dedicate its efforts to offering assistance to those living with dyslexia.
“I am here in Africa because I want to learn the issues and the problem, because it’s not about the money. If I can change a three or five year old to think positively about themselves, they're going to teach their next generation how to have that positive way of thinking,” he remarked.
