Ogury celebrates pride with purpose

In June, many communities celebrate Pride Month. In conjunction with the culture team, our employee-led diversity and inclusion committee, the Mosaic, launched a campaign to increase awareness around the LGBTQIA+ community. This community continues to face discrimination in their personal lives, in the workplace and in society.

Read on to learn about the history of Pride and discover the initiatives and resources that we have shared across the month.

The history of Pride

Pride Month is a yearly celebration that takes place throughout the month of June to honor the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in New York, a tipping point for the Gay Liberation Movement. Today, we revel in the triumphs of trailblazing individuals who have bravely fought — and continue to fight — for full equality.  

Since the Stonewall uprising, the LGBTQIA+ community has achieved significant progress.  Historic Supreme Court rulings in recent years have removed regressive laws, affirmed the right to marriage equality and secured workplace protections for LGBTQIA+ individuals. The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act broadened the definition of hate crimes to include crimes motivated by sexual orientation or gender identity. This progression is also occurring across the globe, with sexual identity added to protected grounds of discrimination laws across Europe.

Despite this progress, there are still many individuals that lack protections for fundamental rights. The LGBTQIA+ community continues to fight to live freely and authentically. In doing so, they are laying the foundation for a more equitable society. 

Ogury’s Pride Month initiatives

In support of Pride Month, we launched various initiatives. This included a stop and listen session with Mere Abraham. As co-founder of Urbody Functional Fashion, Mere spoke of their personal journey, the future of gender-neutral marketing and the driving change towards making the world more equitable. We also hosted an internal panel discussion on being queer in the corporate world and ways to ensure Ogury remains a safe space for all our employees. And to add some fun, we hosted a Pride Pub Quiz. We learned about Pride and raised donations for the Workplace Pride charity.

We launched a “Call Me By MY Pronouns” initiative to ignite a conversation about pronouns. Ogury is also donating $5 on behalf of each person that updates their email signature to the Marsha P.Johnson Institute. And lastly, we shared the stories of individuals within the LGBTQIA+ community, both in history and at Ogury. This included Barbara Gittings, who is regarded as the mother of the LGBT civil rights movement, and WWII veteran, Christine Jorgensen who became the first American transgender woman to be widely recognized for having gendersex reassignment surgery.

Helpful resources

The culture and Mosaic teams have compiled a list of resources for you to continue learning about Pride and queer history.

Books

• ‘Detransition, Baby’ by Torrey Peters
• ‘The Color Purple’ by Alice Walker
• ‘Giovanni’s Room; bt James Baldwin
• ‘Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story’ by Jacob Tobia

Podcasts

• ‘True Tea’ hosted by Kat Blaque
• ‘OutSpoken’ hosted by Sam Collins
• ‘LGBTQ&A’ hosted by Jeffrey Masters
  •  All podcasts are available on Spotify and Apple podcasts

Movies and Documentaries

• ‘Philadelphia’ – available to stream on Hulu and Amazon 
• ‘Pride’ – available on Hulu
• ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ – available on Hulu
• ‘Moonlight’ – available on Amazon
• ‘Paris is Burning’ – available on Apple TV

The Mosaic strives to continue providing underrepresented groups with an equitable voice and continue integrating diversity and inclusion into Ogury’s business strategies, recruiting, development, client relationships and work methodologies.