Since I started my company in 2010 I have been asked this a lot. I see this as a good thing. Hopefully it means people remember the funny name and the explanation I give to why my company is called Hareonna Diversity.
Hareonna is a Japanese word, in Japanese you pronounce every letter so it's pronounced in Japanses "ha - re - on - na", but I don't mind if people say Hare-onna either. It means a woman who brings fair weather. I've been to Japan with my husband 3 times now and the first two times we visited the weather was indeed lovely, although it was spring and then autumn when we visited. A Japanese friend of mine said I must be a "hareonna," a woman who brings fair weather.
The literal meaning of the word though is a woman who clarifies, or a woman who clears things up. I liked that too. A lot of the work I end up doing is about making things clearer for people, helping others see the simple solutions to problems which seem complex.
The diversity bit is a lot more straight forward, my work is all about the diverse nature of life, people, and situations. It's about finding the positive in diversity, in the complexity and difference. Its about finding diverse solutions to problems, about the many different ways the lives of disabled people can be improved. It also more simply reflects the diverse type of work I do. One day I might be working with young people who have cancer, writing up some research about their needs, the next I'm training housing association staff, then I'm helping a team of teachers work more affectively as a team, then the day after that I'm meeting with a Government Minister. I can never get bored with a job like this!
So I decided to go with it and have a name for my company that I would have to keep explaining but that I hoped would stand out!
