As the leader of the firm’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council, I had the pleasure of coordinating Hirons’ recent LGBTQ cultural competency training with Chris Handberg, the executive director of Indy Pride, Inc.
Part of the agency’s DEI plan, distributed to all employees in October, was encouraging staff to share their pronouns on platform profiles and more commonly in meetings. To help individuals understand the importance of sharing of gender pronouns, I worked with Chris to place a strong emphasis on pronouns in his presentation. Of course, it is also critical for staff to understand the basics of identities different from their own. This helps us both from a workplace culture perspective and as marketers.
I was very pleased with the high level of engagement my coworkers expressed. In the graphic below, I collected some of the feedback I received during and after the training:
