To say Michele Soria had a multicultural upbringing would be an understatement of global proportions.

Her father a native of Bolivia and her mother a Holocaust survivor from Belgium, Soria was born of parents who met at a foreign students' picnic. As a kid growing up in Cleveland, the Jewish Latina didn't just learn about different cultures in her own multilingual home or from the diverse social group surrounding her family, but she also traveled all over the world - from South America to the Middle East to Western Europe - before most children venture out on their first date. And now, the single mom has grown up into the head of a worldwide household aiming to create a global community here in her adopted hometown of Des Moines.

While she always dreamed of a life defined by cultural exchange, Soria never had any aspirations of spearheading an international organization that, this week, won an annual award from the Iowa Civil Rights Commission at the Iowa Mosaics Diversity Conference. Back in high school, career days made her ponder a future as a flight attendant - not because she had any interest in aviation, but because she had a passion for the cultural adventures such jetsetting might allow. After spending part of her college years at the University of Tel Aviv and finishing her master's degree at Drake University, the gentle-spoken Des Moines resident followed the path of her language-professor parents (her mother was fluent in six languages and could communicate in nine) and began teaching Spanish in the Des Moines Public School system.

After teaching took her to Barcelona and back, Soria graduated from the classroom to the conference room, building a business of her own as a diversity trainer and bringing her cultural expertise to countless organizations and government agencies across the country. But 10 years of social-justice entrepreneurship took a non-profit turn in 2001 when Soria became the executive director of the Iowa Council for International Understanding.

The new position, she says, offered the opportunity to continue hands-on training efforts and to diversify her efforts in other directions. As director, she's directly involved with the myriad programs offered by ICIU - from the 24-hour emergency translation services to the annual Global Village extravaganza at Blank Park Zoo - that have allowed the ever-evolving organization to remain a relevant community resource even 70 years after its inception. During her tenure, more than half of the current programs have been created from scratch, not the least of which is the Passport to Prosperity gala - the first event anywhere in the country to specifically honor immigrants and refugees for their social and economic contributions - which celebrated its fourth year of elegant dining atop a downtown parking garage last month. And it was under her watch that ICIU was recently awarded a competitive $200,000 grant from the U.S. State Department to conduct a two-way exchange with a group of Kosovars, and was showered with a glowing evaluation from the same federal agency earlier this year. And it's thanks to her direction that, every year, the international exchange program brings dozens of visitors from every corner of the globe directly into the homes and work places of Central Iowans, facilitating interactions that, she says, are nothing short of life-altering for many.

But, of all her diverse efforts, her voice is most animated when she speaks of the regular cultural competence trainings ICIU sponsors, like the session they're gearing up for next month. Forget what you learned in those antiquated, abstract diversity trainings that left a negative taste in your mouth, she says. Thanks to Soria, ICIU does things a little differently when it comes to readying Iowans of all ages to engage with neighbors and coworkers of all cultures, creeds and lifestyles.

"It speaks more directly to action, being action-orientated and having skills," she says of the trainings. "You're not leaving at an awareness level, but you're able to interact effectively and bring about institutional change through action."

"Last week, I was in the West Des Moines schools," she adds, "and two teachers were in tears afterwards saying it was so helpful, so insightful they couldn't wait to go back tomorrow and meet with several students they'd been having trouble with."

And such stories of workplaces and lives transformed are far from uncommon. In fact, Soria has cultivated a reputation so helpful, so insightful, that, to say she has a multicultural impact on the lives of Iowa residents, might just be an understatement of global proportions.

-Carolyn Szczepanski

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