High above Center City, on the 43rd floor of the Comcast Center, workplace professionals congregated over cocktails and conversation while attending the Comcast/ Out & Equal 2017 Workplace Summit Kick Off & LGBT ERG [Employee Resource Group] Panel May 17.
One of the highlights of the evening was a panel discussion with Selisse Berry, the founder and CEO of Out & Equal Workplace Advocates, and Amber Hikes, director of the city’s Office of LGBT Affairs.
Before the event, PGN had a chance to catch up with Berry to ask her about Out & Equal’s 2017 Workplace Summit coming to Philadelphia Oct. 9-12, the inequality that continues to persist in workplaces and her inspiration for starting the nonprofit.
PGN: Why did you choose Philadelphia to host the 2017 Workplace Summit?
SB: We have the Out & Equal Workplace Summit in different cities around the country and we look at geography and, we often say, we look for places that need us and that feed us. We saw a lot of different venues and it just kind of seemed like it really fit well. It’s a great city right here on the East Coast. We came for site visits and it was a couple of years ago that we actually chose Philadelphia but we’re excited to be kicking off the fact that we’re here.
PGN: With the Trump administration rolling back support for LGBT issues, are there any new initiatives being taken by Out & Equal to combat that kind of inequality?
SB: I agree it’s really hard to go from eight years of a very positive experience with a friend in the White House and an ally who’s supportive of our community to the current administration, and the influx of religious-exemption laws and things that are clearly aimed at the LGBT community. Our work is really focused on the workplace. I started Out & Equal 20 years ago because there was an absence of any kind of federal protections or most states didn’t even have protections for LGBT people at work. I started going company by company to make sure that the workplaces themselves included policies so that people could come out at work, and we’ve more recently continued that work with Fortune 1,000 companies as well as federal agencies. We ask people to roll their policies out globally and we do global work within the workplace. Over the last several years, we’ve seen corporate America being the people that stand up against a lot of that anti-LGBT legislation so we will continue to give people the kind of resources they need in order to make these stands. We saw in places like Georgia and Indiana people backing off of these kinds of anti-LGBT policies and bills that are moving forward. We’ll continue that work and also support our colleagues that are doing more work specifically in [Washington] D.C. and on the [Capitol] Hill.
PGN: Have you seen an increase in complaints regarding anti-LGBT workplace discrimination since Trump has been in office?
SB: The woman that just recently is suing her workplace because of being fired because she’s a lesbian in Kentucky has made a lot of national news. We want to make sure all workplaces are safe, regardless of who’s in the White House but definitely it does kind of create a culture that suggests that it’s OK to discriminate. And if there is no state protection, even if the large companies in the area have policies, many small- and medium-sized businesses don’t necessarily have policies in place. We’re still in this situation where we can be married on Saturday and fired on Monday in 28 states.
PGN: What inspired you to start Out & Equal?
SB: A lot of the passion that I bring to Out & Equal was my own experience of discrimination. I went to seminary to become a Presbyterian minister and wasn’t able to get ordained as a lesbian. So, I kind of bring that passion, that people should never have to choose between a career that we love and a person that we love.
For more information about Out & Equal and the 2017 Workplace Summit, visit www.outandequal.org.