Some of Sandia’s work takes place in sterile environments — literally. But mathematician Bert Debusschere says the process of working together doesn’t have to be that way.

“Try simple things like, when you’re in a meeting, start with asking how everybody’s day is going,” he said. “Tell me something that’s going well in your life. Take that first five to 10 minutes, and just go around the room and talk about what’s happening.”

Fostering connections at Sandia

Bert took this tactic of making connections into his work at Sandia, pulling from his external work as a social justice trainer who focuses on building human interactions. Until recently, he was planning on retiring early from Sandia to focus on social justice work full-time. But when he brought elements of that work into Sandia, he realized what had been missing.

“It wasn’t that I didn’t like the work — I was missing the human connection,” Bert said. “We have these sterile, cognitive work environments where we focus on meeting milestones for deliverables. And I had the insight that there’s nothing keeping me from bringing that human element into my work at Sandia. It’s really reconnected me to my love for the work I do at Sandia and also reconnected me to the people I work with.”

Taking the time to get to know people on a team will make the collaboration better, Bert believes. At the least, he suggests starting meetings with introductions whenever there is someone new — even better would be starting with a human-interest question to help form connections.

“At first, people were confused, asking, ‘What is this guy doing? Where are we going with this?’ But I found that after you do this for a couple months, people actually love it,” he said. “It creates an environment where people show up to connect rather than because a meeting happened to be on their calendar.”

Helping others feel like they belong

Since becoming a Sandian in 2001, Bert has been working to make others — and himself — feel a sense of belonging.

He originally joined Sandia as a foreign national and quickly discovered roadblocks to accessing seemingly simple things such as Information Release, the Sandia Daily News and even benefits information. Bert became part of the Division Diversity Council — now called the Sandia California Diversity Council — to represent foreign nationals and cofounded the Foreign National Networking Group.

“Once I became a U.S. citizen, the fact that I was born outside the United States did not seem to matter anymore,” he said, recognizing that it’s not always as easy for others. “As a white male from European descent, I fit right in here. Nobody ever questions what I am doing at Sandia. I’ve never had to argue for belonging.”

Bert stepped down from the Foreign National Networking Group once he became a U.S. citizen, but he is acutely aware that people of other backgrounds may not feel the same level of belonging. He’s now part of an Integrated Security Solutions division Integrator Team focusing on identifying opportunities to drive belonging and connection.

Forming and leading diverse teams

Working with Kelly Nykodym, the human resources business partner to the Sandia California Diversity Council, and Cindy Vu, a human resources specialist for Integrated Security Solutions, Bert led workshops this spring and summer on forming diverse project teams and leading connected teams. Anyone who missed them but is interested in these topics can contact Kelly Nykodym.

“I hope the Labs continues to invest in teaching people how to be good meeting facilitators, both in virtual and hybrid spaces, and figure out how we can be a truly connected workforce,” Bert said, adding that Sandia has trained facilitators on staff who can be brought in. “Let them design the meeting so everyone gets to say what they need to be saying. We have resources at Sandia — we don’t have to do this on our own.”