Recently, I took a few moments to just wander around the fields where I work, the Sun Valley Floral Farms. Looking around, the beautiful early summer flowers were blooming: irises, hydrangeas and greenhouses were brimming with tulips and lilies. I took notice of all the sizes and shapes of trucks, production lines and giant coolers. Then I thought to myself, look at all these team members – the most valuable assets of all.
Sun Valley Floral Farms is so diverse. Where else but America would you get this amazing ethnic blend of people, all united in the complicated task of bringing California-grown flowers to the rest of the country? When you talk to the people who make their living planting, picking and packaging our flowers, you see that Sun Valley is a great example of the American melting pot. It’s like a beautiful bouquet of different skill sets, worldviews and dreams. And just like a bouquet, the people all complement each other.
We have team members that don’t just speak English and Spanish, but Dutch, Laotian, Chinese, Hmong, I-Kiribati, Indonesian, Flemish and we also have a guy from The Bronx, who speaks “New York.” Lane DeVries, the CEO, realized years ago that a large majority of our team members on our Oxnard farm only spoke Spanish. So he and the rest of the team leaders learned Spanish themselves and now conduct the all-farm meetings in both Spanish and English.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: Sun Valley Floral Group's Flower Talk
