This month, we took pride in celebrating our LGBTQ+ employees at Glassdoor. Our Pride ERG shared what Pride meant to them in honor of Pride month. Check out their video and quotes below!
“Pride is important to me because it’s an opportunity to celebrate my chosen family! For me, Pride is about unconditional love for ourselves and for others, and Pride is a great opportunity to celebrate that family is about much more than parents or cousins or siblings. Family is anyone who’s there for you and gives you that wonderful unconditional love.” -Maura Foley, Senior Data Scientist, Glassdoor
“Pride is important because: It’s a chance for LGBTIQ+ identified folks and our allies to create and experience what it could be like if our world celebrated queer people, protected them, and loved them for their uniqueness. For me, it’s a time to reflect on my queer ancestry, remembering that the first Pride was an act of resistance and civil disobedience led by transgender women of color and that our fight for liberation and justice is far from over. I celebrate with my community to honor those whose lives have been lost to injustice and to recommit myself to keep sharing, educating, and fighting for basic human rights.” –Ains Hill, Director, Global Workplace Experience at Glassdoor
“Pride is a celebration of our culture, honoring the heritage of those that have gone before me, and rededication to the liberation of our people. It’s also a big party where revelry becomes a form of protest against the strictures of society.” – Jacob Little, Director of People Experience & Diversity and Inclusion at Glassdoor & VP of the Board at SF Pride
“Pride means to me I don’t get to hide who I am. It’s about accepting, loving, and being a proud Gay male. It gives me the ability to show everyone who I am, and I’m proud of it!” –Jesús Suárez, Sr. Workplace Operations & Events Coordinator at Glassdoor
“Pride means recognizing and celebrating your Family of CHOICE.” – Anna Jensen, Senior Enablement Specialist, Customer Success at Glassdoor
“Pride means my unconditional love and support for my sibling, my best friends, colleagues, and anyone who has ever had the bravery and conviction to tell the world who they are and love who they love! It represents my love for my adopted city of SF, which has always only shown me love and respect. Most of all, it means love for and acceptance of people for who they are.” – Brooke Maury, Senior Manager, Data Engineering at Glassdoor
“Pride, to me, means having the courage to be unapologetically you. It means learning to love yourself and celebrating what makes you different.” – Austin Hendrix, Customer Success Systems at Glassdoor
“Pride means having permission to find one’s identity without fear of judgment from anyone else. It means loving yourself for who you are, even if you’re uncertain about that yourself. It means celebrating this universal right, remembering those who’ve fought for you to have it, and standing up to protect it.” – Trevar McNamee, Customer Success Manager II at Glassdoor
“When I think of PRIDE, I immediately think of family – but the kind of family you discover and create. I think of years of fear, oppression, self-loathing, secrecy being broken down by perseverance and passion, and I think of the loss of a whole generation and the work to rebuild and recover. I think of the many people in my life, who helped raise me, who I helped raise, who fed me a steady diet of culture and creativity, which I endlessly adore and appreciate and celebrate because I know the strength and bravery it takes to be 100% authentically *you*. That work is deserving of so much Pride. Pride is the LGBTQ+ Community – of its history, its ongoing evolution, of all the persons it encompasses and all the persons on their journey to self-discovery who may find themselves within it. I am so proud of all of you and so blessed that I have the opportunity to stand up for you and with you.” – Brittany Bellgardt, AdOps Expert at Glassdoor
At Glassdoor, diversity and inclusion are near and dear to our hearts. Not just because we know it’s the right thing to do — but because time and time again, diversity and inclusion have been proven to lead to a more innovative, high-performing, and welcoming company culture for all employees.