Workplace Summit Leadership Day
October 14, 2019
Gaylord National Event & Convention Center
How does a company become an advocate for change? What does a successful, globally-scaled D&I program look like? How can you develop your ERG? What makes for a better ally? If you’re asking any of these questions, look to Out & Equal’s Leadership Day. Leadership Day is a unique opportunity to develop in-depth expertise and enhance best practices for you and your organization. Hosted by top experts from Fortune 500 companies and the NGO sector, Leadership Day offers a pre-Summit opportunity to take LGBTQ inclusion at your company to the next level.
Participants can choose to attend two half-day sessions: one morning and one afternoon. Click on a session to view the workshops in each. While some sessions are offered twice, some are only available in the morning or afternoon. Please read through the descriptions carefully.
Morning Seminars: 9:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Afternoon Seminars: 2:00 PM – 5 PM
Morning Seminars | 9:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Building Q-mmunity: Engaging Queer Identities at Work
Focusing on the “Q” in “LGBTQ,” this session will introduce and define queer identity as well as make the business case for its inclusion in workplace diversity and inclusion initiatives. In the process, it will review the shifting landscape of terminology within the LGBTQ community (going beyond “queer” to also explain terms like “non-binary,” “gender fluid,” and “pansexual”) and explain the importance of queer identification in the workplace, especially amongst Millennial and Generation Z employees. Participants will leave with a better understanding of queer terminology, as well as how to make queer-identifying employees feel welcome and counted in organizational initiatives.
Is your Ally engagement strategy effective, empowering, and executable? Launch your Ally program or take it to the next level through an innovative approach and a new focus.
Are you in the initial stages of creating a new Ally program? Or are you struggling to find ways to grow your program and keep Allies engaged? Join the Global Ally Program Co-Leads from Bank America to explore proven best practices and effective strategies for creating a dynamic, innovative, and executable program to meet the needs of your organization.
Your Journey to ERG Success: Start Local, Grow Global
Understanding and developing the key elements of a successful framework to build and grow an Employee Resource Group (ERG) is the focus of this seminar. We will explore elements that should be in your strategy and how quantifying versus qualifying success is important. We’ll go beyond awareness and look how you build in accountability through communication, content development, internal/external resources and positioning statements that impact everyone from top executives to frontline employees. We will also look at ways to respond to common challenges from existing ERG members, executive sponsors and the general employee population.
How to Be an Inclusive Leader
In a world where the talent pool is becoming increasingly more diverse, it’s more important than ever for leaders to truly understand how to support inclusion. Jennifer Brown, founder, CEO, and President, Jennifer Brown Consulting, and author of “Inclusion: Diversity, The New Workplace & the Will to Change”, and her new book, “How to be an Inclusive Leader: Your Role in Creating Cultures of Belonging Where Everyone Can Thrive,” walks through JBC’s Inclusive Leader Continuum. The session includes an exercise for leaders to discover precisely where they are on the continuum—and to better support their learning journey, an opportunity to take JBC’s inclusive Leadership Assessment. Featuring an Inclusive Leaders Panel Discussion, and audience Q&A, this highly interactive session guides leaders through steps to identify where they are in the journey, tools to increase their learning and capabilities, and a commitment to take the next action step that will help create inclusive workplaces where everyone can thrive.
Intersectional Ally Skill-Building
This introductory session will review the concept of “intersectionality” and how it is relevant for professional allyship. Participants begin the seminar by exploring their own dimensions of diversity and the ways in which they present or cover aspects of themselves at work, before being introduced to the concept of intersectionality and then examining allyship through an intersectional lens, asking how straight people can be allies to LGBTQ people; men can be allies to women; white people can be allies to people of color; gay, lesbian, and bisexual people can be allies to transgender and gender non-conforming people; etc. Through dynamic exercises and group discussions, participants will learn how they can act as intersectional allies in their own workplaces, including by leading conversations around identity with colleagues and collaborating across multiple ERGs/BRGs within their company.
Think Like a CEO! Building ERG Strategy & Actions that Drive Business Results
“Are you looking to take your ERG to the next level? Wish what you were delivering was something your executives were excited to talk about? In this fun and interactive lab, explore how you can take your start-up group into maturity or how take a stagnant chapter and revive it. Hear from personal branding guru and inclusion thought leader Jayzen Patria on his experiences championing ERGs at companies including General Electric, Comcast & NBCUniversal. Use an executive’s strategy & action planning toolkit to define a compelling Vision & Mission that sets a mindset for your team to drive results the C-suite is looking for. Build ERG roles and processes that enable action. Identify the unique cross cultural needs of your workforce, individual worksite and chapters. Imagine an environment where your business leaders are clamoring to hear from your ERG on how to solve some of their toughest problems instead of begrudgingly participating in programs because they are “supposed to.”
LGBTQ Marketing 101
This session will provide a comprehensive orientation to the marketplace based on 25 years of experience and insights, including case studies, research, historical perspectives, best marketing practices, and an interactive “How-To” manual of the tools you need to better understand, reach and serve LGBTQ consumers. This session is perfect for corporate leaders developing an LGBTQ marketing plan; and for those already engaged in the market, it’s an opportunity to update and refine approaches for improved return on investment. Plus, as ERGs explore becoming BRGs, this session will present the business case for LGBTQ outreach, and help you take efficient and practical steps to ensure success.
Case Study: Implementing Global LGBTQI+ Inclusive Benefits at SAP
The increasingly diverse workforce is demanding employee benefits, traditionally designed to accommodate a heterosexual, cisgender, male workforce, be realigned to reflect their needs. As workplaces continue to evolve, employers are losing the war for talent by missing the opportunity to provide appropriate health coverage to some of its critical employee populations. This is adversely impacting their overall health and engagement. With the goal of forging new ground and fostering an inclusive global workforce, SAP engaged Mercer to collaborate on a new strategy when it comes to benefits that are inclusive of the LGBTIQ+ community. Attendees will gain insight into SAP’s progress and Mercer’s expertise in the field, and will leave with an understanding of what it takes to implement positive change for LGBTIQ+ people in their organization and global locations.
Mobilizing Equality (Full Day Session) [This seminar is closed to media]
It’s an historic year for thousands of LGBTQ+ advocates to be descending on Washington, DC for the largest ever Out & Equal Summit! And this year, from the halls of Congress to the Supreme Court, our equality is on the line in ways that have the potential to impact generations. Join us for the first-ever Mobilizing Equality leadership day, an inspiring boot camp to:
• Hear from national civil rights leaders and elected officials at the center of advocacy for the Equality Act and historic Supreme Court cases to uphold LGBTQ protections under Title VII;
• Learn the most up-to-date lay of the land for LGBTQ rights across the United States and understand points of inflection for the business community;
• Network with ERG leaders, government relations champions; and, out leaders and allies;
• Gain insights into the complex decision-making processes that businesses employ when gauging potential impact on various bills;
• Develop ready-to-implement skills on talking policy (not politics!) within your firm and developing a business case for policy engagement;
• Create your own “influence map” and company action plan to take back with you; and, most importantly,
• Make history!
The Power of Executive Sponsors in Helping Drive ERG Success
At HP, we are reinventing the standard for diversity and inclusion. We strive to be innovative and continually enhance the performance of our Business Impact Networks (BINs – or what others call ERGs). Executive Sponsors play a critical role in ERG performance, but many ERG leaders aren’t sure how to engage their Executive Sponsors to drive success. Join HP’s Global Pride Executive Sponsor and Out & Equal Board Member, Annette Friskopp, and HP’s Global ERG Program Manager, Beth Miller, in this interactive session to learn how Executive Sponsors can help drive ERG growth and success. The workshop will include a panel discussion with three HP Executive Sponsors who will share their wisdom, experience and advice on how they provide sponsorship that helps their ERGs grow and succeed.
Building Trans Leadership
Join Mara Keisling the Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality to strengthen your influence, build a valuable network, and learn how you can use your story to make an impact. Being an out trans leader in your community or workplace requires you to lead with strength, smarts, and impact. And personal stories are some of the most powerful tools for advocacy and social change. This interactive workshop covers the basics of sharing a personal story for advocacy, as well as tips for speaking with media, and how to leverage moments of tokenization. Participants will be guided through a simple four-part template for sharing a personal story, with a focus on how to call your audience to take action and how to place your story within a larger context. Group will discuss the pros and cons of speaking with reporters, as well as ideas for staying on-message. In addition, participants will learn how their trans identity influences and strengthens their personal leadership style.
The Inclusive Leadership Experience: Cognizance of Bias and other Inclusive Leadership Traits
Inclusive leadership is a skill developed through habitual behaviors—and it all starts with understanding our own identities and experiences with bias. In this session, Deloitte will create a learning experience to explore bias by zooming in through personal storytelling and reflection; unpacking a lexicon for naming the biases we most often experience; and then zooming out to acknowledge the systemic biases that shape our experiences. Ultimately, participants will leave with a framework on building inclusive habits grounded in Deloitte’s groundbreaking scientific research on the Six Signature Traits of Inclusive Leadership.
Afternoon Seminars | 2 PM – 5 PM
Building Q-mmunity: Engaging Queer Identities at Work
Focusing on the “Q” in “LGBTQ,” this session will introduce and define queer identity as well as make the business case for its inclusion in workplace diversity and inclusion initiatives. In the process, it will review the shifting landscape of terminology within the LGBTQ community (going beyond “queer” to also explain terms like “non-binary,” “gender fluid,” and “pansexual”) and explain the importance of queer identification in the workplace, especially amongst Millennial and Generation Z employees. Participants will leave with a better understanding of queer terminology, as well as how to make queer-identifying employees feel welcome and counted in organizational initiatives.
Your Journey to ERG Success: Start Local, Grow Global
Understanding and developing the key elements of a successful framework to build and grow an Employee Resource Group (ERG) is the focus of this seminar. We will explore elements that should be in your strategy and how quantifying versus qualifying success is important. We’ll go beyond awareness and look how you build in accountability through communication, content development, internal/external resources and positioning statements that impact everyone from top executives to frontline employees. We will also look at ways to respond to common challenges from existing ERG members, executive sponsors and the general employee population.
How to Be an Inclusive Leader
In a world where the talent pool is becoming increasingly more diverse, it’s more important than ever for leaders to truly understand how to support inclusion. Jennifer Brown, founder, CEO, and President, Jennifer Brown Consulting, and author of “Inclusion: Diversity, The New Workplace & the Will to Change”, and her new book, “How to be an Inclusive Leader: Your Role in Creating Cultures of Belonging Where Everyone Can Thrive,” walks through JBC’s Inclusive Leader Continuum. The session includes an exercise for leaders to discover precisely where they are on the continuum—and to better support their learning journey, an opportunity to take JBC’s inclusive Leadership Assessment. Featuring an Inclusive Leaders Panel Discussion, and audience Q&A, this highly interactive session guides leaders through steps to identify where they are in the journey, tools to increase their learning and capabilities, and a commitment to take the next action step that will help create inclusive workplaces where everyone can thrive.
Intersectional Ally Skill-Building
This introductory session will review the concept of “intersectionality” and how it is relevant for professional allyship. Participants begin the seminar by exploring their own dimensions of diversity and the ways in which they present or cover aspects of themselves at work, before being introduced to the concept of intersectionality and then examining allyship through an intersectional lens, asking how straight people can be allies to LGBTQ people; men can be allies to women; white people can be allies to people of color; gay, lesbian, and bisexual people can be allies to transgender and gender non-conforming people; etc. Through dynamic exercises and group discussions, participants will learn how they can act as intersectional allies in their own workplaces, including by leading conversations around identity with colleagues and collaborating across multiple ERGs/BRGs within their company.
Transgender Policy and Benefits in Action
Do you feel like your company has a disconnected array of transgender and gender identity resources through which employees, managers, parents, and HR professionals must navigate? Maybe you need to make sure your policies and benefits cover transgender and gender diverse employees and dependents at all? Do you cover medically necessary procedures for transgender and gender diverse employees like you would for diabetes care or heart disease or pregnancy? How do you assist with workplace transitions including name changes, team communications and bathroom use?
Let Bank of America share our model for how we provide consistent while personalized support to our employees when they have questions, transition or need ongoing support for themselves or their dependents. You will walk away with learnings from our journey as well as our policy language, transition guide and a viewing of other resources we use. We will provide a feel for our efforts to expand globally, how we are tackling gender expansive/non-binary scenarios, tactical examples of how we support employees who sit in sites far away from our corporate offices and how we use training, employees’ personal stories and our Ally Program to shift culture. While we don’t claim to have it all figured out, we will gladly share learnings and suggestions that can simplify things for you and will create a space for other companies to share their best practices as well. Participants will have time to work on their own action plans during the session and we commit to hosting a follow up call after the summit to answer additional questions that may arise when you propose changes or start to implement in your own workplaces.
Mobilizing Equality (part 2 of 2) [This seminar is closed to media]
It’s an historic year for thousands of LGBTQ+ advocates to be descending on Washington, DC for the largest ever Out & Equal Summit! And this year, from the halls of Congress to the Supreme Court, our equality is on the line in ways that have the potential to impact generations. Join us for the first-ever Mobilizing Equality leadership day, an inspiring boot camp to:
• Hear from national civil rights leaders and elected officials at the center of advocacy for the Equality Act and historic Supreme Court cases to uphold LGBTQ protections under Title VII;
• Learn the most up-to-date lay of the land for LGBTQ rights across the United States and understand points of inflection for the business community;
• Network with ERG leaders, government relations champions; and, out leaders and allies;
• Gain insights into the complex decision-making processes that businesses employ when gauging potential impact on various bills;
• Develop ready-to-implement skills on talking policy (not politics!) within your firm and developing a business case for policy engagement;
• Create your own “influence map” and company action plan to take back with you; and, most importantly,
• Make history!
Lead With Your Brand™️ Lab: Branding Your ERG /BRG To Drive Value
Apple, Starbucks, & Nike. The LGBT community loves brands! Lead With Your Brand!™ is specially designed for steering committees to build winning, super-premium, brands for their ERG/BRG using a real marketer’s toolkit. In this interactive seminar, use a brand marketer’s toolkit to build your own winning brand for your ERG/BRG and your key initiatives/programs. Build an Audience Segmentation plan to identify who and how you want to “super-serve” key stakeholders. Identify Brand Attributes that describe how you want people to feel when they’ve participated in an event or initiative. Craft a Brand Foundation that serves as the DNA of what you do by identifying core beliefs, promise and a positioning statement. Finally, create your Brand Filter that serves as your packaging guidelines that all members can follow for on-Brand decision-making and project execution.
LGBTQ Workplace Advocacy in India
This session will start with a brief overview on lessons learned from Out & Equal through our programming in India. More multinational companies have been rolling out inclusive employee benefits, and our corporate partners will shed some light onto how it has been pushing forward initiatives in a post-Section 377 world and what challenges remain. Participants will walk away with tangible action plans that can be implemented to advance workplace inclusion in India.
A Case Study: ERG Impacts in Latin America
This session will feature the case studies of various Latin American Countries, such as – Colombia, Costa Rica, Brazil and Mexico—to provide an overview of the current climate for LGBT+ people, and the specific interventions designed by local ERG networks to provide a safe spaces for employees. Despite some legal advances in this region, there is no recognition of some basic human rights and the landscape remains dangerously hostile, especially for transgender people. The development, success and setbacks of EY’s Unity professional network will showcase best practice models to drive change where the community continues to face high rates of rejection and discrimination. In addition, the newly released NYU research on models for LGBT+ inclusion will be presented as reference points to ground efforts. Participants build out their own roadmaps for global LGBT+ inclusion using template project plans to either begin or expand upon current efforts.
The Inclusive Leadership Experience: Cognizance of Bias and other Inclusive Leadership Traits
Inclusive leadership is a skill developed through habitual behaviors—and it all starts with understanding our own identities and experiences with bias. In this session, Deloitte will create a learning experience to explore bias by zooming in through personal storytelling and reflection; unpacking a lexicon for naming the biases we most often experience; and then zooming out to acknowledge the systemic biases that shape our experiences. Ultimately, participants will leave with a framework on building inclusive habits grounded in Deloitte’s groundbreaking scientific research on the Six Signature Traits of Inclusive Leadership.