ERGs and their work all year round

Speakers:

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  Chloë Davies

  Founder & CEO
  It Takes A Village Collective

  Chloe Davies is an award winning founder, creative, a passionate social impact consultant, chef, and entrepreneur who has dedicated much of her 20+ year career campaigning for inclusion and equality in all spaces, whether in-house at agency level, corporate organisations or through wider community engagement. With over 15 years of experience in retail, artist management, and PR, Chloe has honed her expertise in leadership, social impact and inclusive representation. Her work centres around authentic storytelling, creating spaces of belonging, mental health & well-being, self-empowerment, culture change and workplace advocacy. Simply put, she is trying to change the world for the better. In April 2023 she founded ‘It Takes A Village’ - a global collective for Black women in advertising, media, marketing and comms who's mission is to celebrate & champion them, for their talents to be seen, heard & amplified and together shape the collective industries into a space where Black women can have agency and succeed.

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  Georgie Court

  Global Inclusion Manager
  Clifford Chance

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  Annie Newman

  Senior digital content editor
  GSK

  Being able to make a difference to LGBT+ inclusion in the health & life sciences sector is of upmost importance to me. Having grown up identifying as gay, I like many in the LGBT community have had to deal with the challenges that that can bring but as an adult I am out and proud and passionate about doing what I can to help others. As the first female lead of GSK’s award-winning LGBT+ employee network group Spectrum, I feel privileged to be able to influence GSK’s LGBT+ agenda and to be in a position to support and be the voice for those within the organisation. During my involvement with Spectrum we have grown from strength to strength and I believe one of my biggest contributions to be enabling the community to connect better than ever before. I also see that through my day job as Senior digital content editor for GSK's internal and external corporate channels, I have been able to utilise my passion for bringing to life the diversity of employees across the company. As Company Director and Engagement lead for the Proud Science Alliance, a ground-breaking cross-company collaboration. I'm responsible for engagement across our member communities. To bring such a large and diverse group of LGBT+ employee groups together with one mission takes a robust strategy and great story-telling. It’s an honour to bring their stories to life and also to work across the organisations to ensure best practice is shared. I recently was named Role Model of the Year 2020 by Pink News. Over the past few years I have placed in the 2019 and 2020 OUTstanding LGBT+ Role Model list, LGBT+ future leader category and was a finalist in DIVA's Rainbow Honours LGBT Champion category.

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  Cheryl Lander

  Sr. Director, Release Management
  Oracle

  Cheryl Lander, San Jose, CA, is the Sr. Director, Oracle CX Industries Release Management, responsible for ensuring quality and compliance of industry-specific SaaS releases. During her career, she has managed nearly all aspects of product development including documentation, training and enablement, QA, release engineering, program/release management, and human factors. At Oracle, she also is Board Co-Chair of the Oracle Pride Employee Network (OPEN) – LGBTQ+ and Allies, a global Oracle employee resource group, and an executive sponsor for her local Oracle Women’s Network (OWL) group. She represents Oracle on the Silicon Valley/San Francisco Alliance of LGBTQ+ ERGs; has represented Oracle at Lesbians Who Tech, Out & Equal Executive Forum, and Out & Equal Workplace Summit; and is a charter member of the Silicon Valley Rainbow Rotary. She also is a facilitator with the South Bay Pachamama Alliance team, a group that promotes an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, and socially just human presence on our planet. She and her wife enjoy travel, photography, and volunteer with a handful of non-profits, including C.A.R.E. (a dog rescue organization from whom they adopted their two Carnoodles, Salt and Pepper), Stage One Theatre (local community theater), and Silicon Valley Child Advocates (advocate for foster children).

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  Jack Murray

  Talent & Development Lead
  Budweiser Brewing Group UK&I

  I'm passionate about inclusion in the workplace and how we can better develop our LGBT+ agenda in particular. Happy to share my experiences of being openly LGBT+ in the workplace, developing an integrated D&I agenda and working with our PROUD business resource group.

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  Arlene McDermott

  Portfolio Director
  LSEG (London Stock Exchange Group)

  Recently becoming Co-chair of London Stock Exchange Group’s (LSEG) Proud LGBT+ network has made me realise that we all still have more to do to fully smash the corporate closet and show support for our community in the workplace. When I first came out, being out at work didn’t feel safe and was full of uncertainty. But now I have been out at work for many years because I assume that my management and my colleagues simply won’t care. And as far as I’m aware I’ve been right so far. But I’ve realised that’s not necessarily the case for everyone. I talk to people across the city who feel that LGBT+ issues may not be supported by senior executives. I also meet people who are unsure of how they would be received if they come out at work and are therefore filtering out a huge part of themselves. With enormous support, through our network I am committed to demonstrating the power of being out in the workplace. Being out at work is not only good for the individual, it’s good for teams, departments and whole companies. It’s good for productivity and it’s good for the bottom line. So I encourage anyone who may be afraid of being out at work to reach out to your network or to trusted colleagues and take a small risk for a huge reward.

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  Deena Fidas

  Managing Director - Chief Program & Partnerships Officer
  Out & Equal

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