Written by Joel Engardio for Out & Equal CEO Selisse Berry
Published in the New York Times
To the Editor:
While you are correct that there is a dearth of openly gay chief executives (“Where Are the Gay Chief Executives?,” Sunday Review, May 18), it won’t always be that way.
Just as Hillary Rodham Clinton famously put “18 million cracks in the glass ceiling” for women in high office, so there are a number of corporate executives who are doing the same for the lavender ceiling faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees. It’s just a matter of time before they are promoted to the top job.
Out and Equal Workplace Advocates has spent nearly 20 years convincing Fortune 500 companies that it’s good business to have welcoming workplaces for L.G.B.T. employees. When it feels safe to come out of the closet at work, it’s only natural that the most qualified of them will make it to the corner office.
Many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender executives from companies as diverse as Disney, Clorox, Hewlett-Packard, Xerox and Intuit shared their stories in the anthology “Out and Equal at Work: From Closet to Corner Office.” They are the future leaders of their companies.
SELISSE BERRY
Founder and Chief Executive
Out and Equal Workplace Advocates
San Francisco, May 20, 2014