In 2012, Samyuktha Vijayan left India to begin her journey as a transgender woman in the United States. But in 2017, she returned to home to begin advocating for her own community back in India. Now, the 34-year-old techie is leading the charge by advocating for trans inclusion and recruitment at the Bangalore-based food delivery startup Swiggy.
In an interview for Quartz, Vijayan shed some light on the initiatives she’s leading at Swiggy to help bring trans employees to the forefront of the industry.
“We just did a survey to arrive at what are the things that need to be included as part of our policies and processes to encourage diversity,” she said, emphasizing the need for companies to turn to their own employees for insight on what policies would best serve LGBT+ workers. “We are in the process of analyzing the survey results. Based on this, we will see what kind of actions need to be taken.”
Vijayan also stated that strict hiring norms are potentially holding back transgender employees from recruitment. “A lot of transgender people do not have the right set of qualification, skills, or training to reach out, and accept a corporate job,” she elaborated.
Read more at Quartz.