Thank. You.

Dear Longtime Friends & Newcomers to Out Leadership,

Wow!

My heart is so full– THANK YOU to everyone who joined us for Out Leadership’s first-ever Global Town Hall (if you missed it, you can find the recording below). I was blown away that we had nearly one thousand people register and the vast majority of you joined! It was so amazing for me to synthesize 25 years of learnings and share them with so many people at one time all over the world from my hometown to Dubai.

I’m also so grateful for the calm and rational approach of our brilliant guests Camilla Taylor and Rufus Gifford who carved out time from their demanding schedules. Their insights are truly inspiring and I was honored to share just a glimpse of the work we’re doing together.

So many of you in the chat asked how you can help with Out Leadership’s work (which is how we’ve built Out Leadership throughout the years)! In the short term, we will be creating 3 official working groups. Please reach out if you’d like to be a part of any or all of them.

Corporate Impact: Partnering with Lambda Legal, and building on 20 years of what companies have been doing, how do we bring together organizations, data, and amicus briefs to forge a unified response?

Trans Leadership: Expanding on the last six years of our work with the trans community, including convincing 330 major companies (in 2018!) to sign the first ever Business Statement for Transgender Equality and announcing it at the NASDAQ, we’re creating our Trans Parent Initiative, expanding our Trans Leadership Summit to be global this year and expanding our Trans research.

The Future of Out Leadership: And finally, to do all of this, we need more support from member companies—current and new. If your company is a member, how can they do more? If your company hasn’t engaged with Out Leadership before (or you are connected to companies who could) would you introduce me?

Separately, in the coming months, I will also be raising investment capital for the future of Out Leadership (remember, we’re the first gay B-Corp in history!). If you’d like to be part of my brain trust for the future (including Out Leadership AI) let’s talk!

I had two goals for yesterday’s Town Hall: To share perspective & learnings and to hear from you. And I heard loud and clear that so many of you want to do something at this moment. So, now consider yourself involved!

Let’s keep this momentum going, we’ve got a lot of work to do!

Together,

Todd Sears
Founder and CEO
Out Leadership

Out Leadership Resources

Talent

We’ve been publishing LGBTQ+ talent research for 13 years. Our latest, most significant study, launched in 2024, Out to Succeed 2.0 is the largest-ever global survey of the LGBTQ+ workforce conducted by Out Leadership, in partnership with Out for Undergrad, to analyze the full potential of LGBTQ+ talent.

Allyship

We’ve known for years from our research that allyship is the number one reason that LGBTQ+ people and all people in the workplace feel comfortable.

We did the first global research on this 5 years ago with AllyUp™, a guide that helps organizations build LGBTQ+ allyship at every level, demonstrating the positive impact of leadership support and inclusive practices on both workplace culture and business success. There are versions for US, Asia, Europe, and Australia.

Board Diversity 

When Out Leadership started the board conversation almost 9 years ago, only 4% of companies were inclusive – now 51% of the NASDAQ is. As I said, companies aren’t going to be undoing these policies – how can we help them do more?

Here is Out Leadership’s 4th annual OutQUORUM LGBTQ+ Board Diversity Report, sponsored by Egon Zehnder and KPMG, tracks the progress of LGBTQ+ inclusion on corporate boards globally, advocating for greater diversity and providing resources to support this goal. We’ve also published board diversity guidelines for the US, UK, Australia, and Hong Kong.

Trans Equality

Out Leadership has a long history of supporting and advocating for the Trans community, from the 2018 Business Statement for Transgender Equality, to publishing our latest Trans Business Guide in May 2024 (a practical guide for business leaders around the issue of Trans equality in the US), and holding the fist ever Trans Leadership summit in New York in 2024.

Corporate Engagement 

Nine years ago, we published the Guidelines for Corporate Engagement, which provide a set of practical guidelines to help companies navigate the landscape for when and how to engage on LGBTQ+ issues, with input from 30 companies who shared their internal decision-making frameworks. These guidelines remain relevant today and we will be refreshing them in 2025.

Books and Organizations

Lambda Legal 

Lambda Legal has been on the front lines of the fight for LGBTQ+ equality for 50 years, literally fighting every form of LGBTQ+ discrimination in every court, often in the Supreme Court of the United States. Their work is more important now than ever. Please consider donating to help them with this essential work.

Kenji Yoshino & David Glasgow – Say the Right Thing

Longtime Out Leadership friend, supporter, partner, and amazing legal scholar, Kenji Yoshino, Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor at NYU, along with David Glasgow, published Say The Right Thing, a how-to for addressing identity, diversity, and justice.

Kenji, in collaboration with the Meltzer Center, has also released a comprehensive guide to the DEI executive orders issued by the Trump administration this week. This resource also outlines key implications for private employers. It’s a must-read for staying informed on these developments and ensuring you and your team are well-prepared for the evolving landscape.

Martin Davidson – The End of Diversity As We Know It: Why Diversity Efforts Fail and How Leveraging Difference Can Succeed 

The brilliant Martin Davidson is someone I have known and worked with for 18 years. Published 14 years ago, Leveraging Difference explains how diversity can make a company more efficient and innovative, which leads to greater profits. This has helped so many companies and leaders think about difference in the right way and is incredibly helpful when we’re thinking about reframing language in regard to inclusion.

Malcolm Gladwell – Blink 

To the point of meritocracy – yes, we’re all for meritocracy, but unfortunately, there are structural issues and human blind spots—implicit biases, or however you want to frame it. Humans react in certain ways, and we have to be able to remove the structural biases that exist within corporations.

Gladwell does a brilliant job of explaining human nature in terms of what companies have been trying to address, especially with inclusion efforts and trying to remove these blind spots. I’ve given this book to countless CEOs, as well as Kenji and Martin’s books, and I think these are all fantastic reads that add context to what’s going on today.