Millennials get a bad rap. And they don’t even get a cool nickname. The people that fought and died in World War II got the inspiring moniker “The Greatest Generation.” The group after that received the tongue-pleasing and alliterative “Baby Boomers.” “Gen Xers” sounds like some sort of Marvel superhero gang. But “The Millennials” sounds like a BBC period drama.
Even worse is the walloping they take in the media. When I Googled “Millennials,” the first thing that came up was “worst generation ever.” Whoa. Another article started out, “If you’re reading this article voluntarily, you’re probably not a millennial, because everyone knows millennials don’t read news.”
Millennials (born circa 1980-2000) are the largest generation of our time, numbering more than 75 million — so we’d better start being nicer to them. Fortunately, despite the bad press, there are quite a number of engaged and engaging youngsters out there, starting with this week’s profile.
Jess Gregan is a go-getter who bridges business with social activism. As the new administrative assistant at the Independence Business Alliance (the LGBT chamber of commerce), she’s all about helping LGBT businesses and people create open and successful workplaces. Before that, she learned LGBT history while volunteering for the Equality Forum and was responsible for a millennial engagement-strategy program for Americans for Informed Democracy to get young people involved in politics and world affairs. A dean’s-list student, she graduated magna cum laude in 2015 from West Chester University while also volunteering for The Land Conservancy for Southern Chester County and the Humane League — before that, wielding a hammer for Habitat for Humanity. Now that Gregan is in Philly, this powerhouse has been going to LGBT Elder Initiative meetings and is an ad-hoc volunteer for the William Way LGBT Community Center. Take that, bashers.
PGN: So is your name pronounced “Gree-gan” or “Greg-an?” And what’s the history behind it?
JG: It’s “Greg-an.” It used to be O’Gregan generations ago. It’s an Irish name.
PGN: Are you from Philly?
JG: I identify as a Philly person. I grew up in the ’burbs — West Chester — but as soon as I came to the city, I knew that this was where I was meant to be.
PGN: I understand you’re fresh out of school.
JG: Yes, our executive director, Zach Wilcha, jokes that I’m the office millennial. I have to advise him on all things pertinent to my generation.
PGN: So why do you guys get a bad rap? What’s true and not about millennials?
JG: I’d say the truest thing is the idealism of millennials. People think that we’re idealistic but don’t know how the real world works. I think yes, we are idealistic, but it’s not that we don’t know how things work; it’s that we want to change the way things work. I think that I’m definitely an idealist but I also have a pragmatic side too.
PGN: You’ve certainly walked the walk with your volunteerism and activism. What’s the first cause you got involved with?
JG: I grew up going to Catholic school so I had to do a lot of charity projects with them, but they weren’t exactly social-justice causes that resonated with me. I got more involved with that type of work in college. Like a lot of college students, I was interested in trying to make a tangible impact on the world. It’s funny, I started out going to college for pharmaceutical development because I wanted to do AIDS research. That was kind of my first area of interest. I liked chemistry and thought it would be a good way to combine the sciences with activism, but it took me one college chem class to realize it was not the place where my social-justice passion would be best applied. Throughout the course of my college experience, I changed my major a couple of times but the consistent courses were philosophy, women’s studies, all of those fun classes that help expand the way we think.
PGN: What degree did you end up with?
JG: I ended up with a liberal-arts degree and four minors.
PGN: Oh my! What were the minors?
JG: Philosophy, peace and conflict studies, business and technical writing and … oh gosh, I forget the last one. Communications!
PGN: You spread your wings wide!
JG: I did. I knew I wanted to work in the nonprofit world and I was a business major for a short time. I didn’t like it, though.
PGN: [Laughs] And now you work for a business organization …
JG: Yes, I do. But it’s from a much different lens. We are a business organization but we’re also a nonprofit, so it’s the best of both worlds.
PGN: You also worked at a company that was right around the corner from me but I could never quite figure out what they did. Explain Next City.
JG: Ha! They are an online magazine that focuses on urban affairs, so urban architects, city planners, local government, etc., were the main audience. I started there when I was in college and actually took a fifth year in school so I could stay there. It was one of the best decisions I made. They were super-progressive, focused on tackling urban issues and we hosted a lot of conferences in different cities, so I got to travel a bit, which was nice. It was a great place to get me started in nonprofit. You should check them out at nextcity.org.
PGN: Will do. What was a favorite course or teacher in college?
JG: I had a few really good professors: an English professor my freshman year who encouraged and validated my love of writing and, as a peace and conflict-studies minor, there was one professor, Rebecca Subar, who taught phenomenal classes in a roundtable style. I worked my way through college so I took mostly night classes and there was something romantic about talking about philosophy and global issues at 9 p.m. on a dark college campus. It didn’t seem like classwork.
PGN: How do you identify, and when did you start realizing you were on the LGBT spectrum?
JG: I identify as both or either queer or lesbian. I think “queer” has a slightly different connotation with more of a political context, but either works. I definitely had inklings when I was pretty young, elementary school — the typical crushes on girls and friends — but I didn’t actually come out to myself or friends and family until college. It was hard; I went to Catholic school my whole life and homosexuality wasn’t exactly welcomed in any form there. I probably had some internalized homophobia from that, which I had to come to terms with. I had to realize how it impacted me and come full-circle to overcome the Catholic guilt and things along those lines. My college experience definitely helped me with that. I shifted over entirely to this radical queer-liberation advocate!
PGN: Was the whole family very religious or was it just because of the schools?
JG: They were not super-religious but were pretty into Catholicism, which never really resonated with me. I think from a very young age I rejected the idea of “original sin,” the idea that people are born bad. [Laughs] Maybe that’s my millennial idealism showing, but I always thought that the logical thing was that we were born good. That’s what I’ve found and what I chose to believe. Then around the time I went into high school, my dad started a Born-Again Christian phase and made me go to a lot of church against my will. That was tough; it’s been an area of tension for us. My parents split at the end of my high-school years and one of the reasons I chose to go to West Chester University was to be near to help support my mom. I came out to her first and then it took me a year to get the courage to come out to my dad. In general, they’ve been pretty accepting. It’s not like they’re waving rainbow flags but I can’t complain. And they’ve learned a lot over the last few years.
PGN: Speaking of learning, you interned with Equality Forum doing research for the LGBT History Month features. What or who did you learn about that interested or surprised you?
JG: That’s hard, there was so much I learned. It was a very impactful experience for me. Working there was the first time I’d ever worked in an exclusively queer space and the first time I truly felt, Oh, I belong here. It was a very powerful sensation. Not just the people I was learning about but the people who I was working with as well. I became super-passionate about it. So to answer your question, there were a lot of Parisian writers who had these amazing salons that were basically like 18th-century versions of “The L Word,” which was just fascinating to me. I remember learning about Talulah Bankhead; she was really interesting to research and had some great quotes attributed to her. The musician Frank Ocean was also someone that we featured bringing us up to current times. I like the way they put together such diverse groups of people to feature. You could find pieces of yourself in any of them.
PGN: What’s something you learned about the importance of learning our history? And why do you think more millennials aren’t interested in learning about it?
JG: I have no doubt that it’s very important that we learn our history but I don’t necessarily agree that millennials are any better or worse than other generations about it. It’s more about what you’re exposed to and what you choose to seek out.
PGN: That’s true. I know a lot of people from my generation who don’t know who Barbara Gittings was.
JG: Yes, that’s why things like the LGBT History Month Project are so important. They put information out there for people who do seek it out and make it easy to access and understand. It was a pivotal experience for me because I hadn’t ever been exposed to LGBT history and to this day I feel like I have so much catching up to do. There are so many important people that have contributed to this movement and gotten us to where we are today that I want to learn about. To not know about and acknowledge those people from our past not only does them a disservice, it does us a disservice in continuing the movement. We need to take their knowledge and tactics and lessons to use them to our advantage when tackling today’s issues.
PGN: Agreed. I didn’t mean to solo out millennials, but sometimes there’s a lack of understanding or appreciation for what came before. When you see young people walking down the street holding hands and it’s no big deal, you sometimes want to say, “Do you know how special that is and how many people suffered for it?”
JG: Right! Even though I am a millennial, I still get sentimental about things like that. Just thinking about it and knowing that it’s not ancient history, it’s very recently that so much of this is even possible. It’s easy, especially in a place like Philly, to become insulated in your happy queer bubble to think that everything is fine and great all over — that there are no more gay issues now that we have marriage equality — but clearly there’s a lot of work to be done involving intersectionality and breaking beyond the urban bubbles and reaching out to communities that don’t have the freedoms that we have. There are places throughout America and the world where people are extremely isolated and/or persecuted still. There’s a lot to be done.
PGN: Tell me a little bit about IBA. What do they do, and what is your role?
JG: I’ll start with our mission statement, which is to provide access, opportunities and resources for LGBT businesses and professionals in the Greater Philadelphia area. Simply put, we connect our member businesses to each other and to our corporate partners and try to help them do business together. What drew me to it was that, while we are a chamber of commerce, we do a lot of things differently than most in that our purpose is to leverage the collective power of a historically marginalized community and allow them to self-identify and support each other. I think that’s huge because our jobs are often where we spend the most part of our lives. Being out or not in the workplace or as a business can be a big deal and this is where people who identify as LGBT can find a place to commiserate or find community or resources for their unique issues, good or bad. We do all sorts of things. For instance, we work with the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce to help businesses get certification as an LGBT business, which can help them with contracting opportunities. As one of two staff members, I get to do a little bit of everything: social media, graphics work, event coordination and mostly member management. We try to be pretty personal and customized with our members, so it’s been nice getting to know everyone.
PGN: What do you do outside of IBA? Sports? Chess club?
JG: I do love nature events though I’m terribly un-athletic. We like hiking and biking, camping and kayaking, anything outdoors.
PGN: And who is we?
JG: My girlfriend Karen; she’s in school for occupational therapy, which is exciting. We’ve been together for about a year-and-a-half.
PGN: Any siblings?
JG: Well, I have a half-sister and as of a few years ago I gained a few step-siblings [laughs] but I still identify as an only child! And I think some of my siblings would concur, based on my introverted tendencies. I was a very quiet kid who intensively observed everything but rarely spoke.
PGN: You’re a snappy dresser. What was a favorite piece of clothing as a kid?
JG: Why, thank you. As a kid, I always loved getting my cousin Michael’s hand-me-downs. He had some really good denim jackets and cool flannels, things I still like to this day.
PGN: Would you rather be in trouble with your boss, your partner or your mother?
JG: Well, thanks to my peace-and-conflict minor, I’ve learned the art of negotiating conflicts and how to handle things diplomatically, so hopefully I’d be able smooth things over with any of the three.
PGN: A sport you wish was more popular?
JG: I don’t know about popular, but I wish snowboarding was more accessible. It’s such a great combination of sports and nature. It’s the one athletic endeavor I’ve enjoyed since I was a kid but it’s very cost-prohibitive. I wish more people had the chance to experience it, me included.
PGN: Something you wish you had a picture of?
JG: A picture of me at the White House with President Hillary Clinton!
For more information about Independence Business Alliance, visit www.thinkiba.com.
To suggest a community member for Family Portrait, email [email protected].