Billy E. Vaughn

Billy Eldridge Vaughn (Billy Vaughn, PhD) is an African American cognitive-cultural psychologist. He is a recognized certified cultural diversity expert and author of numerous articles and books in the field. His work focuses on linking cultural competence and organizational inclusion in creating high impact diversity education interventions.
Early life
Billy was born March 2, 1951, in Houston, Texas (United States) to David Isaac and Willie Beatrice Vaughn. He was raised in the predominantly black Third Ward community by his maternal grandparents, Willie (a Baptist minister) and Annie Barzeron, until age thirteen when he moved from Houston to San Diego, California to live with his mother's sister, Norma, and her family. After completing his sophomore year at Abraham Lincoln High School, he graduated (1969) from Helix High School in La Mesa, California where he was one of two African Americans in his predominantly white American class of 500.
Education
Billy excelled in wrestling and track during high school. He was also in the California Cadet Corps for a short period of time at Lincoln High School. After graduating high school, he attended Grossmont Community College in El Cajon, California. His degree earned him admissions to the University of California, San Diego, where he was exposed to Angela Davis and Herbert Marcuse during their efforts to create an inclusive campus. Graduating in psychology from UC San Diego was followed by a master's degree from California State University, Long Beach (1980) before returning to UC San Diego to study to complete a doctorate in cognitive psychology under the supervision of Michael Cole, PhD, Jean Matter Mandler, PhD, Hugh "Bud" Mehan, PhD, Roy D'Andrade, PhD, and David Rumelhart, PhD. Cognitive science was born during his graduate career and UC San Diego was one of the intellectual centers for the emerging field. At the same time, Billy studied cultural psychology in the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition, which also offered him considerable contact with scholars from across globe—even academics from the Soviet Union before the collapse of the Berlin Wall. One Soviet academic stayed in his home during that time.
Academic career
After completing his doctorate degree in 1986, Billy took a job at the California School of Professional Psychology in San Diego (CSPP) where he taught doctoral level psychologists for nearly 20 years. Billy won several teaching awards while on faculty and a national achievement award from the National Association for Multicultural Education. Notable during period was his participation in the early movement to develop professional psychology with an emphasis on training culturally competent psychologists. This led to his designing and developing the doctor of psychology (PsyD) program in cultural psychology for which he served as the first program director. In 1986, increased requests for his services as a consultant led to establishing Educorp of San Diego. He later established Diversity Training University International (now known as DTUI.com) in 1998. After a short period of teaching jointly in ethnic studies and psychology at California State University, Long Beach, Billy returned to CSPP. He severed his relationship with CSPP, which was by then a school within Alliant University, and started consulting full time in 2001, In 2008, he returned to academia in 2008 as core faculty for Walden University, where he teaches organizational, social, and cognitive psychology in the School of Psychology. He is also a faculty member in the DTUI.com Certified Diversity Professional program, which trains Consulting and Diversity training competencies. Billy has been a keynote speaker and major workshop presenter at numerous conferences, including the popular National Conference on Race & Ethnicity in Higher Education or NCORE.
Awards(Partial list)
* Competent Leader Award from theToastmasters International organization.
* Competent Communicator Award from Toastmasters International organization.
* Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition (US House of Representatives)
* Certificate of Appreciation (County of San Diego)
* Special Commendation (San Diego City Council)
* Certificate of Recognition (California State Assembly)
* Certificate of Recognition (California State Senate)
* National Council for Schools of Professional Psychology. Recognized as an individual who has made significant contributions to the organization.
* National Association for Multicultural Education National Achievement Award. 11th Annual National Conference, San Diego, CA.
* CSPP-San Diego Teaching & Service Award
* CSPP-San Diego Multicultural Teaching Award. Award for teaching multicultural competency (June).
Business career
Billy designed and developed DTUI.com in 1998 to train cultural diversity professionals and provide state-of-the-art cultural diversity solutions. He successfully built the company through internet marketing. The services and products the company offers are his interventions. The Organizational Inclusion Assessment toolkit along with the complimentary Show a Little Respect for Me diversity education matrix are arguably one of the most advanced diversity and inclusion systems on the market today. He was the first to devise a solution that links cultural competence, organizational culture, and diversity education in designing and developing interventions to increase organizational inclusion. In doing so, he revolutionizes the field by moving away from out-dated awareness training approaches bogged down by affirmative action assumptions to solutions that focus on building the competence needed to work more productively in culturally diverse settings.
Innovations (partial list)
* Organizational Inclusion Assessment Inventory
* Collision Course I & II (Race relations simulation game)
* Numerous elearning courses
* Numerous face-to-face courses
* Show a Little Respect for Me (Links cultural competence to diversity education assessment, design and development)
* Diversitypedia
Professional Experience
Many organizations have sought out Dr. Vaughn's expertise. He has been interviewed a number of times by international media, such as the Swedish Radio (Sveriges Radio) and the Gothenburg Post (Göteborgs-Posten). He started a doctoral student exchange program between the Lund University and the California School of Professional Psychology. The ENGIME -Network, based in Belgium, invited him to present on a couple of occasions. Numerous American media outlets have interviewed him, including the Washington Post. Dr. Vaughn has served as a consultant internationally as well. His client list includes the European Central Bank, the Canadian Border Services Agency, the Nova Scotia Government, Kreme Ltd of Japan, W. W. Grainger, Esurance, the Internal Revenue Service, Deloitte, AtlantiCare Behavioral Health, Goodwill Industries, the United Way, American Solutions, the Judicial Council of California, Qualcomm, the United States Coast Guard, Wright State University, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, University of California, Santa Cruz, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Central Intelligence Agency.
Professional Connections
* Member of the American Psychological Association
* Member of Toastmasters International
* Frequent requests to meet with foreign diplomats on behalf of the State Department
* Established an international scholarly exchange program between Lund University (Sweden) and CSPP. Billy speaks and reads Swedish as a result.
* On the board of directors for the Elementary Institute of Science (San Diego) for seven years.
* Member of the Urban League Diversity Advisory Committee (San Diego).
* Continues to be a sought after professional speaker, executive coach, trainer, and consultant.
Personal information
Billy has a son, David Torrey Vaughn, who was born in 1984. His mother is Elizabeth. He also has a half sister, Lindsay, who is married with a son. Billy has studied Buddhism since 1969 after exposure to it in several eastern philosophy courses taught by Paul Wheatcroft at Grossmont College. He recently discovered Nichiren Buddhism, which is the practice he has been seeking. His mentor is Daisaku Ikeda. Thich Nhat Hahn, the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, has also had considerable impact on his spiritual growth and views. He received Dharma name, Concentrate on Compassion of the Heart, from Thich Nhat Hahn, during a people of color Buddhist retreat at Deer Park (San Diego) several years ago.
Bibliography(partial list)
* Vaughn, B.E. (2007). The history of diversity training & its pioneers. In Billy Vaughn, PhD (Ed.), Strategic Diversity & Inclusion Management magazine, Spring 2007, pp. 11-16, San Francisco: Diversity Training University International Publications Division.
* Mercedes Martin, MA, & Vaughn, B.E. (2007). Cultural competence: The nuts & bolts of diversity & inclusion. In Strategic Diversity & Inclusion Management magazine, Billy Vaughn, PhD (Ed.), pp. 31-38, San Francisco: Diversity Training University International Publications Division.
* Vaughn, B. E. (2004). High impact diversity consulting. San Francisco, Diversity Training University International Publications Division (ebook).
* Vaughn, B.E. (2003). Intercultural interactions as contexts for mindful communication. In Smith & Richards (Eds.), Practicing Multiculturalism. Allyn & Bacon: Boston.
* Vaughn, B.E. (2002). A heuristic model of emotion in race relations training. In E. Davis-Russell (Ed.)., The Multicultural Education, Research, and Training Handbook. Josey Bass: San Jose, CA.
* Vaughn, B.E. (2002). Symbolic and realistic threat in the inclusion of immigrants in the workplace. Proceedings of the 11th Nordic Migration Research Conference, The University of Gothenburg, Sweden, October 28-30.
* Vaughn, B. E. (2000). Managing emotion in race relations training. In Carl Grant (Ed.), Proceedings of the National Association for Multicultural Education 7th Annual Conference. Albuquerque, New Mexico, October 29-November 2. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Pubs., pp. 159-175.
* Vaughn, B. E. (1993) Teaching cultural diversity courses from a balanced perspective. In Creative Teaching, 5 (4), November. (1994). Exchanges: Newsletter of the California State University System Institute for Teaching and Learning, Vol. 5, No. 2.
* Vaughn, B. E. (1993). Earning the right to serve. Proceedings of the 1992 Proceedings of the National Council of Professional Schools of Psychology, Nassau Bahamas. National Council of Professional Schools: Washington, DC.
* Vaughn, B. E. (1990). Recruitment and retention of ethnic minority faculty in Professional Schools of Psychology. In G. Stricker, E. Davis-Russell, E. Bourg, E. Durante, R. Hamilton, J. McHollan, K. Polite, & B. Vaughn (Eds.), Toward Ethnic Diversification in Psychology, Education, and Training. (pp. 113-120) Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
* Vaughn, B. E. (1988). Incorporating multicultural issues in professional training. National Council of Schools of Professional Psychology Newsletter, Spring. Cole, M. & Vaughn, B. E. (1987). Classrooms as activity systems. In Contextual effects in education. Cole & Griffin (Eds.). University of Wisconsin Press: University of Wisconsin.
* Vaughn, B.E., & Mlekov, K. (2003). A stage model of developing an inclusive community. FEEM Working Papers, No. 17, The Social Science Research Network, www.SSRN.com (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=389283)
* Vaughn, B. E. (1994, Fall). Harnessing the multicultural debate in the classroom, in Thought & Action, 10(2), 37-46.
* Vaughn, B. E. (in collaboration with the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition, 1986). Cross- Cultural Psychology & education. American Psychologist, November-December.
* Vaughn, B. E. (1985). A report on interactive learning and technology: Some cultural factors. Quarterly Newsletter of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition, October.
* Vaughn, B.E. (2004). High Impact Diversity Consulting. Diversity Training University Publications: San Francisco, CA.
* Vaughn, B.E. (2004). Managing diversity e-Coach Book. Diversity Training University Publications: San Francisco, CA.
* Vaughn, B.E. (2004). Designing, developing, & implementing e-courses. Diversity Training University Publications: San Francisco, CA.
* Stricker, G., Davis-Russell, E., Bourg, E., Durante, E., Hamilton, R., McHollan, J., Polite, K., & Vaughn, B. E.(1990). Toward Ethnic Diversification in Psychology, Education, and Training. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

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