Delivering A LGBTQIA+ Awareness Session at Personio
THE CHANCE
Holly Smith, Diversity and Inclusion Officer at Personio, and I met on a Slack Community for People Professionals.
She was looking for a workshop facilitator to host an awareness session around the LGBTQIA+ history and community.
I reached out to her and shared that I would be happy to share my expertise and lived experience as a queer human with the team at Personio.
She was excited about my proposal and we decided to work together on a joint presentation for the team.
THE EXPERIENCE
Holly’s goal was to provide education and awareness around the experience of the LGBTQIA+ community.
She had an amazing presentation draft highlighting key definitions of the LGBTQIA+ community.
I suggested to add an overview of:
The history of the Pride and how the gay and queer movement started.
A reminder of Pride being primarily a political movement, and not just a party.
An brief and digestible definitions of key concepts such as power, heteronormativity, homophobia, privilege and systems of oppression — so people could understand the bigger picture of why this topic matters.
A short carousel of ways to be more inclusive with our LGBTQIA+ colleagues on a day-to-day level.
THE RESULT
Holly moderated and I facilitated a 60-minute session with 100+ Personio team members.
Although we hosted it online, the session was highly engaging. We received many questions and comments in the chat and people were excited to go through this topic together.
Holly and I were happy to co-host the awareness session, and she said: