Thermo Fisher Scientific's Pauline Dutertre on embracing Pride

Interviews

Paulin Dutertre, Customer Service Supervisor at Thermo Fisher Scientific spoke to myGwork about why Pride is still a significant date, including for organizations. Please introduce yourself and tell us about your role in your organization.

I’m Pauline Dutertre, my pronouns are she/her, I’m 35 years old, I’m married, and I have three cats!

I have been working for 10 years in Customer Service; I joined Thermo Fisher Scientific in 2019 as a Customer Service Supervisor for the Quotes team for the France, Italy and Switzerland markets. I am also a member of Pride + ThermoFisher Scientific business resource group since 2022. What does celebrating Pride mean to you?

For me, pride and Pride Month are a celebration of people coming together in love and diversity, but also a commemoration of people who fought for us and continue to fight for our rights, talking as far as Stonewall events but more recently for marriage equality.

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In your opinion, why is Pride significant, and what impact does it have?

Pride is still, for me, important as there is still a huge work to be done all over the world, and people from the LGBTQA+ community are still being stigmatized. Pride is also for me, literally being visible and, most of all, really being proud of who I love. Can you tell us about your first Pride attendance and the progress that has been made for the LGBTQ+ community since then? My first Pride attendance was at London in 2010, it was huge and I was amazed with organization, the amount of people marching and category of people represented (from police to firefighters to bikers). In France, we had marriage equality since 2013, and access for all women to reproductive rights.

Looking ahead to next year, what do you hope will be accomplished in relation to LGBTQ+ rights and acceptance? The three topics that I found urgent is access to gestational surrogacy, rights for transgender people to basic medical assistance and facilitate legal change of gender, and gender self-determination rights.

How can we ensure that Pride is inclusive for everyone within the LGBTQ+ community? For me it is make sure that I/we acknowledge every identity, sexual orientation or gender identity. In that manner pride needs to be accessible to everyone and a safe place where everyone can express themselves.

Do you believe it is important for organizations to celebrate Pride, and if so, why? It gives a real meaning to being inclusive as an organization and real sense of belonging, a workplace where you feel welcomed , included and celebrated. It gives a voice of employees that are often invisible and silenced, in that manner it allows role models that it is possible!