Celebrating & Learning: Pride Month 2022 at Credera

Laura Jackson and Thor Schumacher

Celebrating & Learning: Pride Month 2022 at Credera

As allies and LGBTQ+ individuals at Credera, we help when we show up, educate ourselves, and find ways to make the workplace a welcoming safe space for all.

Pride in a Global Boutique

At Credera, we want everyone to feel safe and authentic about bringing the best version of themselves to the workplace. We want people to feel free and open about their sexual orientation if they want to be, but not be defined by it. We are all multifaceted and can all face different types of oppression (e.g., race, gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, etc.). Acknowledging this intersectionality makes room for conversation and understanding.

We can all better ourselves to understand one another in the best way we can. Challenging our biases, especially our way of seeing the workplace, can be uncomfortable and isn’t easy. These conversations allow us to let our guard down, smile, laugh a little more, and connect with those around us.

Throughout June 2022, Open Pride Credera (OPC), Credera’s employee resource group, partnered with the greater Omnicom Open Pride (OPMG) network to celebrate our people and reflect on the impact Credera staff can make for each other and our broader community.

Pride Month Celebrations

Credera hosted over 20 opportunities for LGBTQ+ community members and allies to connect, learn, and celebrate the LGBTQ+ community related to weekly themes throughout the month.

U.S. and UK Social Event

We kicked off the month with a joint social with the UK. We hosted a scavenger hunt followed by trivia to foster connections across the pond.

UK All-Hands Meeting

Credera’s UK monthly meeting was a huge Credera Pride celebration around all of the UK offices. After the meeting, including a cultural opener discussing Pride Month, each UK office carried on the celebrations:

Manchester: Post-meeting drinks were held in an LGBTQ+ venue down the famous ‘Canal Street’ with a drag show later in the evening.
Leeds: Post-meeting drinks and celebrations were held in an external LGBTQ+ venue hosting a cabaret show.
London/Remote: Drag bingo came to Bankside! Wonderful drag queens of the UK/remote company Queer the Norm came into the London office to deliver a fun and educational drag bingo show, including the history of queerness. By creating a celebration in a safe space, everyone in the UK London office got so involved and made it a night to remember.

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CLOUDS OR TOXIC SMOG!?!?

Opportunities to Learn & Connect

Pride Microseries

The Open Pride Credera (OPC) leadership team offered a three-event microseries that brought visibility to LGBTQ+ stories—from how we tell these stories with pronouns, to sharing stories from the OPC leadership team with our life maps, an overview of a team member’s story.

Being an Ally to LGBTQ+ Employees Event

We hosted a discussion with LGBTQ+ author Kristin Russo on being an ally to LGBTQ+ coworkers and the larger community. During the event, Kristin walked us through her personal journey and her own history working with and for LGBTQ+ communities, defined important gender terms, and then addressed questions from Credera team members on topics ranging from understanding others to relationships and gender.

Breakfast and LGBTea

Imogen Hanvey, psychological wellbeing practitioner for Oxford NHS, discussed themes of mental health and the LGBTQ+ community, as well as touching on wider areas of intersectionality such as neurodiversity within the community. This was a very interesting talk that led to a discussion on gender neutral conversations in the workplace, and how our workplace is accessible for all neurodivergent colleagues and external visitors.

Navigating Being out at Work Panel

OPC invited panelists from Credera and OPMG to discuss how they have decided to come out (or not) in their various work environments, what led them to make these decisions, and what role allies have played in this journey. They discussed what it means to ‘always be coming out’ at work and how allies can create a more supportive and inclusive work environment.

Intersectional Events & Media Discussions

OPC reached out to other employee resource groups at Credera for a joint event watching Pose. Making television history, Pose features the largest cast of transgender actors in series regular roles, as well as the largest recurring cast of LGBTQ+ actors ever for a scripted series.

OPC created a joint event with the Credera Book Club, where we reflected on the character’s journey within Gideon the Ninth by Tasmyn Muir. The book’s primary protagonist, a lesbian necromancer in space, was an interesting foray into a wider representation of fantasy characters and authors.

We watched and discussed the documentary DISCLOSURE: Trans Lives on Screen. DISCLOSURE is an unprecedented, eye-opening look at transgender depictions in film and television, revealing how Hollywood simultaneously reflects and manufactures our deepest anxieties about gender.

Local Events Around Credera

Many Credera staff met in person for service opportunities and socials in the U.S. offices of Dallas, Denver, Houston, and New York.

Home Cinema & Pride Collab: Of Love and Law

HOME Cinema Club proudly presented Of Love and Law in celebration of Pride Month. All UK offices closed Pride Month with a watch party, followed by a discussion on our thoughts after the viewing. The film, Of Love and Law, portrays married gay lawyers in Osaka as they fight everyday injustice in a delightful, deadpan documentary.

Weekly Challenges

Every week, OPC posted challenges to engage all Credera in support of the LGBTQ+ community. We had several different focuses—visibility, storytelling, representation, and community involvement. Each week highlighted one of these themes and awarded raffle prizes to the participants!

Pride Month Donation Match

Throughout the month of June, we encouraged donations to an LGBTQ+ organization of the team members’ choice. We took that donation and matched it with a donation to The Trevor Project!

Beyond Pride Month

For the queer community, the fight for equality, justice, and visibility doesn’t end after Pride Month and neither should allyship. As a result, we asked ourselves; How can corporations do more? How can we expand our support for the LGBTQ+ community beyond Pride Month? We’re excited to continue to promote our community as part of #queerallyear—an initiative to promote allyship, awareness, and inclusion of the LGBTQ+ community year-round.

If you are interested in having a conversation about any of the content you have read or if you would like to get involved in any upcoming events, please get in touch at findoutmore@credera.com.

Happy Pride Month all!

Come Grow With Us

Credera offers the experience, expertise, and geographic reach of a global organization, with a culture that values the many unique perspectives, backgrounds, and histories our employees represent.

Interested in learning more about our global, boutique firm? If you’re a servant leader looking to take the next step in your career, we encourage you to check out our open roles.