What Pride Month 2023 Taught Me

For those of you who may not know, an important part of my role at Sage is being the Executive Leadership Team ambassador and ally to members of the LGBTQ+ community. It means I get to work closely with our LGBTQ+ colleagues and DEI team to represent and champion our efforts towards greater LGBTQ+ inclusion at Sage, and encourage our company’s leaders to take ownership and engage with this critical work. 

As you can imagine, Pride Month is a huge moment in my calendar- and I got to attend my first Pride Parade in Toronto just a few days ago (see attached pic!). As we close out this month, I'm looking back at everything I’ve read, heard, learned and absorbed from our LGBTQ+ colleagues, as well as other figures in the community. Here are three things that stood out to me, which might also be useful for other allies-in-training. 

• There is a high emotional toll to being under-represented: We had the great Gabrielle Claiborne come speak to our colleagues about her experience of being a trans woman, and the challenges and opportunities that come with living one’s truth. One of the things she talked about was ��minority stress,” which I can best describe as the emotional toll of having to calculate every move in your day-to-day to ensure you don’t get harassed or discriminated against. For LGBTQ+ people, this can come up while doing simple things like going to the bathroom, or through airport security – experiences the rest of us probably never think twice about. While the resilience of our LGBTQ+ peers in overcoming these challenges is inspiring, their daily life shouldn’t be so chock full of stressful choices. 
• Saying nothing is worse than saying the wrong thing: It has taken me a while to come to this point, but I can now confidently say that showing up as an ally means that you will make mistakes – and that is OK. I have often said the wrong thing, or not fully understood the lived experience of my LGBTQ+ colleagues, but they have always welcomed my mistakes and learning with grace. For others who may want to be effective allies but are worried about offending someone – educate yourselves as best as you can but push through that discomfort and engage. The goal is to learn, and to show up for others -- not to be right, or silent. 
• We need to focus on the joy as well. Given the recent increases in crimes against LGBTQ+ people, as well as anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, it can be all too easy to focus on the negatives – which, by the way, deserve our full attention. But it would be a disservice to the rich lived experiences of our LGBTQ+ friends to focus only on the negatives. We need to also understand the positive transformations that take place when LGBTQ+ people are able to bring their whole selves to their daily lives – as my colleague Jeremy Ploessel and Gabrielle Claiborne pointed out, this makes them better parents, better children, better colleagues, better friends, and better business owners. This happens because they are not trying to hide an important part of themselves and are able to form authentic, meaningful bonds with the people around them. That benefits everyone. 

There are many other learnings from this Pride Month that I’ll be mulling over for a long time. But given the urgent need for understanding and allyship to the LGBTQ+ community, I’ll be looking for ways to bring more of the above lessons into my work at Sage through the rest of 2023. I welcome everyone’s thoughts and hope to exchange notes with fellow allies on a similar learning journey. Happy Pride, all year long!