Out Leadership: Driving Return on Equality with Rufus Gifford, Chief of Protocol of the United States (Nominee).
Moderated by Todd Sears, Chief Executive Officer, Out Leadership.
MODERATOR
SPEAKER
Rufus Gifford
62nd United States Ambassador to Denmark (2013-2017)
Todd Sears
Founder & Principal
Out Leadership
TIMESTAMPS
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Rufus Gifford: (00:00)
Good day Todd.
Todd Sears: (00:08)
How are you?
Rufus Gifford: (00:09)
I'm good. I'm good.
Todd Sears: (00:09)
You hear the one about the former gay banker and the former gay ambassador I just spoke in the SALT Conference?
Rufus Gifford: (00:14)
How did that one turn out?
Todd Sears: (00:15)
I guess we'll see. Well, I want to thank Joe and Anthony and the whole team at SALT for having us today. Really, really excited to be here. This is the third time I've gotten to speak at SALT Conference and I dragged my buddy Rufus here.
Rufus Gifford: (00:27)
My first.
Todd Sears: (00:29)
Hopefully not your last.
Rufus Gifford: (00:30)
Hopefully not my last. And certainly the first time I've been in a room full of so many people in 20 months now. So it feels pretty damn good to be honest with you. So thanks for having us.
Todd Sears: (00:40)
Little social distancing, though.
Rufus Gifford: (00:41)
Indeed, indeed, indeed.
Todd Sears: (00:43)
So we figured we'd just start with a little bit of a level set in terms of the world of LGBT equality in business.
Todd Sears: (00:49)
Even 90% of them were financial. So I thought, "Well, why is the financial services institution, wouldn't we service this really opportunity market." And so I put together a plan and we brought in almost $2 billion in the first four years. And that was exciting because I got to keep my job, but I also got Merril to support the gay community because I proved it was a business opportunity.
Todd Sears: (01:07)
And so fast forward, when I started Out Leadership 10 and a half years ago, you did not see CEOs using their economic platform to advocate for equality. You did not see companies signing on to any of these bills or these collective actions. And so I wanted to start that platform. I looked at Davos World Economic Forum, saw Milken and I thought, "Could I create that for LGBTQ equality?" And so we did. So we're now the first and only global LGBT business organization. We have about 700 CEOs, some of whom are here today, Dan Loeb and others, who have spoken at our summits and supported our work in New York, London, Hong Kong, Paris, Sydney. We have 91 companies that are members, and using that collective action we've been able to convene investor statements in places like North Carolina or Indonesia on LGBT equality as a business imperative.
Todd Sears: (01:51)
And so from a Rufus perspective, we had the pleasure of meeting many years ago when he was ambassador in Europe, and so I want to flip it to you. I think we jokingly say that we're accidental activists in the sense of we've taken a business platform or a political platform and use it to advocate for equality. As one of the first openly gay ambassadors, give us your take on that slash growing up.
Rufus Gifford: (02:10)
Yeah, I think the personal journey is so connected, you used the term accidental activist, which is what I think both of us are. And I still don't consider myself an activist, I just consider myself to be honestly grounded. I never lie about who I am. And I think one of the things we forget about if you are an LGBT person in the workplace, and you know all this data, and we'll get into that in a second, but so many of us were closeted. And, despite the fact that I was closeted in my twenties in the workplace, in the latter stages of my career I've always been very open, and I've had very public facing jobs. And what I think you realize is that it really makes a difference.
Rufus Gifford: (02:54)
So I'm going to talk about this in two different ways, I think. So my dad when I was a kid, I came out at 18, and my dad at the time was a CEO of a bank in Boston, it was a Bank Boston at the time and fleet after that, and I grew up in a fairly conservative and somewhat homophobic household, not religious, but just didn't really understand what this meant when their son came out of the closet. This led my parents to go on this really intense journey personally, but also as a business leader, and I think that that was really interesting, both as a family, as his son. My dad back in the nineties was going to his board of directors as CEO of Bank Boston and asking for support for the board for domestic partnerships, and if you all know a domestic partnership, this would feel like a draconian idea now, this was just about providing health insurance to same-sex partners of your employees, and actually got voted down initially, meaning the board of directors was like, "There's no way in hell that we're doing that."
Rufus Gifford: (03:56)
And this is not that long ago. This is 25 years ago, something like that. But I think if you asked my father, did this make a difference in his life and for his bank, for the corporate culture that existed afterwards after that advocacy for equality, which only had to do with the fact that his son, not only, I mean this is obviously part of the value set that was somewhere inside, but it was because of the honesty, it was because of that sharing of stories that allowed for this larger conversation to take place culturally. And I like to tell that story because I do think it really matters.
Rufus Gifford: (04:35)
And then separately from that, I think as I grew, and I was nominated by president Obama to serve as the US ambassador to Denmark in 2013, the same sort of thing happened. I think when you all think Denmark, you think progressive, you think their internal journey or domestic journey as it relates to LGBT equality is sort of over. But the truth of the matter is the fact that an American representative would be public facing about his marriage to his husband actually mattered there, mattered culturally. It was something that they were very curious about.
Rufus Gifford: (05:14)
And I think that when you are in a position of leadership, like so many people in this room are, you're leaders in whatever industry that you're here representing, for you to take an active leadership role really does matter, and people listen, and I think that's what is always underestimated. And we could tell a million stories about how that came to be, but it's been very, very meaningful and I never thought that I would be considered to be an LGBT activist in any way. I've just tried to do my job like you have, and then you realize just there's so much work to be done.
Todd Sears: (05:54)
I want to key on a couple of things you said. First of all, it's being out and visible, the fact that people are out as leaders, as ambassadors, as bankers, as lawyers, as people in humanity, matters significantly. And yet I think if we took a poll in the audience, you would probably think that most people would assume that with marriage equality passing that all the issues are gone, that there are no issues for LGBTQ people in the United States or around the world, and that's patently false, and we can talk a little bit about that. But the second thing was just your father, and I've had the pleasure of meeting your parents several times. And something that Rufus didn't mention was his parents actually wrote an op-ed in one of the Boston newspapers around marriage equality supporting it and marched in the Gay Pride Parade.
Todd Sears: (06:32)
And I had the opportunity to interview them at an event in Boston many years ago. And there were so many employees who were from Bank Boston and Bank of America, and literally came to that event specifically to thank Chad for being a leader and an ally, and said exactly what Rufus said in a different way, that his dad's allyship mattered for their career, for their life, for their ability to feel like they could be out at work.
Todd Sears: (06:54)
And if you think about being out, or covering, we like to talk about the idea that you hide aspects of who you are in an environment, I know there was a panel on diversity and talent a little bit ago, people don't bring their whole selves, whatever that is. It's not just LGBTQ people. And if you can't bring your whole self, then you're losing, and your company's losing.
Rufus Gifford: (07:10)
And I was just going to follow up on that to Todd. So you have such incredible data. I mentioned that my father's board of directors voted down domestic partnerships 25 years ago. And I think a lot of us think that the actual equality, this conversation was called The Return On Equality, don't LGBT people have full equality right now? And I think lots of people think that that is in fact true after we have marriage. But talk about some of the data that actually exists, especially inside the workplace, that your organization Out Leadership has really been driving so much of this research and data.
Todd Sears: (07:51)
Well, just take a very simple one, what percentage of employees are still in the closet in the workplace in the United States today? 52%. How many companies have a 100% on the HRC Human Rights Campaign, Corporate Equality Index? Over 680. So there's this Delta there's difference between policy and culture. So it's not just about having the policies inside your company, but at a state level, there are 181 anti LGBTQ bills in 31 state legislatures currently. Some state legislatures have more than one bill under consideration. The Texas one for a good example would actually make parents guilty of child neglect if they support gender affirming surgery for their trans or gender non-conforming kid, and their kid could be taken away from them.
Todd Sears: (08:32)
There are massive challenges that still exist all across the United States. In 67 countries around the world, it is still illegal to be LGBTQ in one way, shape or form. And in about a quarter of those countries, you can be imprisoned or killed. And from my framework, in all of those countries we do business. So if you can leverage the economic power that you have by walking into a room in Singapore, where by the way it is still illegal to be gay, 377A is still on the books, if you can leverage your economic power to say to the minister of family, or the monetary authority of Singapore, or any other business organization, that gay people should actually be allowed to enter the country with their legally married partner because that matters to your business, that's how you can drive change.
Todd Sears: (09:09)
In a US perspective, you mentioned the boards, just one quick win that we've had recently. Hopefully everyone here saw the NASDAQ win for the SEC and the requirement of board diversity. Out Leadership worked with NASDAQ over the last year using our quorum data, which is an LGBTQ board program we have, to actually make sure that the NASDAQ's proposal to the SEC included LGBTQ people in the definition of board diversity. There are only 17 companies in the entire fortune 500 that include LGBTQ people in that definition of diversity. And by our very, very scientific count because it's not disclosed, so we basically just have to sort of hunt and peck and figure it out, there are 29 out board members out of 5,670, which is about 0.02%. Now it's not about a percentage, but I would make the case that if between 10 and 30% of the US population identifies as LGBT, we should have more out board members at that point.
Todd Sears: (10:00)
So there's a lot that's happening. And from a government perspective, I think I would argue that business often leads government.
Rufus Gifford: (10:08)
I think without a doubt on issue after issue, I obviously won't make this conversation political, none of us have any interest in that, but obviously regardless of the political trends that exist, and obviously we're in a rocky political time domestically, the private sector really has been driving progress here. And my work has been on the political side, on the government side, but when you see the evolution of where the business community has gone here, it is truly remarkable. And I will say though, that is connected to, I think that allowing people to tell their stories and be publicly out, does very much help drive that progress. And obviously allowing us to have this conversation with corporate leaders here and asking you to be allies alongside us really does matter too.
Rufus Gifford: (11:08)
When I was ambassador, I think one of the things that's very interesting is that although I served with a number of other openly gay ambassadors, the vast majority of the other openly gay ambassadors would leave their same-sex spouses at home at official events. There were a number of different reasons why, very often it was because their countries didn't recognize their relationship as legal, or some other reason, it could just be because they didn't feel comfortable.
Rufus Gifford: (11:37)
Frankly, I could never have left my husband at home to go meet the queen, I would have gotten divorced, like probably many of your spouses would feel the same way. So I always brought him with me, and that action, which is like the most normal thing in the world, became something that allowed young gay kids in the rural countryside of Denmark, where there is actually still homophobia, write me messages on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook, or write the letters being like, "Thank you." Or parents writing me letters saying, "Thank you for telling your story. Thank you for just being a simple role model and making us understand that this world can be safe and happy and positive and successful for young LGBT people."
Rufus Gifford: (12:20)
And I think both from an LGBT perspective, from openly gay people, but also from an allies' standpoint, all that stuff really, really does matter.
Todd Sears: (12:30)
So let's talk about allies for a second, because I think a lot of companies now have ally programs that are tied to their LGBTQ or diversity inclusion initiatives. And in my work with a lot of CEOs around the world, I kind of get the, "Okay, just give me the five things I need to know. I've got 10 minutes to talk about the gay thing, then I'm going to go back to work."
Rufus Gifford: (12:46)
Give me the shorthand.
Todd Sears: (12:47)
And so Out Leadership have actually published some ally research this last year called Ally Up. And we surveyed 5,000 respondents from 11 countries, really distilled down what LGBTQ people need from their allies and what allies think they're supposed to be doing. And there's this disconnect there. And the number one thing that I say to allies is that they have to come out as well. So people always ask, "When did you come out? So Rufus when did you come out? First time.
Rufus Gifford: (13:12)
1993, I was 18 years old, and I'm 47 now. Been out for almost 30 years.
Todd Sears: (13:18)
We both came out at 18. I'm significantly younger than Rufus is.
Rufus Gifford: (13:21)
Not really.
Todd Sears: (13:24)
But coming out is a constant process, every time I travel, I have to decide, do I come out? Every time I go into a conference room in accompany, I have to decide, do I come out? And your LGBTQ colleagues and friends and neighbors, et cetera, have to do the exact same thing. Coming out is a constant process for gay people. There is never one time. And you have to make that decision. And that actually makes us incredibly great empathetic leaders because we read a room, we walk into a room and have to read it for psychological safety, are these people going to be okay if they find out I'm gay? And so from an ally perspective, when I say allies have to come out, you have to tell us that you were an ally, otherwise, unfortunately, there's this psychological term called the Assumption of Negative Intent, which means that gay people will think that you are not an ally unless you tell us otherwise.
Todd Sears: (14:06)
And there are great reasons for that, including the laws that I just mentioned earlier. There is a lot of discrimination that still exists against LGBTQ people, primarily religious based issues. And so you do have to come out as an ally and you have to come out constantly.
Rufus Gifford: (14:20)
Without a doubt. And I think about this everyday, you mentioned this, I'm very comfortable in my own skin, here we are sitting at SALT Conference talking about the fact that we're gay, but I still have that internal dialogue when I walk into a new room. And that's the anxiety of the 16 year old, who was very, very ashamed of who he was, continues to come out. And so I go through that in every new situation that I'm in. And frankly, you mentioned sort of countries around the world where the same sex relationships are still criminalized, and hopefully in my next chapter will have a global job, and I will be protected by the US government in every way, but this will still be in the back of my mind every single time I am engaging with world leaders who come from a country where LGBT equality is not where it is in this country or in Western Europe.
Rufus Gifford: (15:18)
Because we have to understand that, that is, and you all should know that, that is what your employees, your LGBT employees, are thinking about when they go into these various scenarios where, whether it's true or not, feel unsafe, might be unsafe. And that that's why we actually have to work together, which is to your point on allyship to achieve equality.
Todd Sears: (15:41)
And leveraging the assets that you have as a company. One of my favorite stories when I had my first Out Leadership Asia Summit in Hong Kong, almost nine years ago, which was the first gay summit ever in Asia, the then CEO of HSBC, Stuart Gulliver hosted the summit, I actually was a co-host, with the CEO of Barclays at the time Anthony Jenkins, and Stuart Gulliver, were co-hosting the first gay summit in Asia, as two straight white CEOs, which was pretty awesome. And at the end of the dinner, there were two screens kind of like these, I guess, and they showed the HSBC Building in Hong Kong. And if you've been to Hong Kong, you know the HSBC Building, it's on the currency, it's like the Empire State Building here in New York.
Todd Sears: (16:15)
And in 37 years, they had never changed the colors of that building from red and white, and the CEO said, "We've got a surprise for you. We think this is important. We want to send a message," and they start playing Rihanna's song, All Of The Lights. And I'm like, "Oh, gay summit. We're going to play Rihanna. Cool." And they showed the screens, and the lights of the building go off, and three seconds later it comes back up in a giant rainbow. And they rewired the entire HSBC Building in the middle of Hong Kong into a giant rainbow and left it up for four nights.
Todd Sears: (16:42)
We later found out it was the single largest precedent HSBC had anywhere in the world that entire year. Well, fast forward, every year they light it for the Out Leadership Summit, and now all their competition do as well. So Hong Kong is a wash with rainbows once a year. And if anybody has Apple TV and the flyover screensaver, if you ever see the Hong Kong at night, it's taken during the Out Leadership Conference, because it's all the rainbows. And if you think about that, that's a simple message. That's a simple symbol, but going back to my Singapore example, the next day, Stuart Gulliver flew to Singapore because he was chair of the monetary authority of Singapore. He had just hosted a gay summit, and now he's in Singapore in closed door meetings with the monetary authority in a country where gay people still are criminalized.
Todd Sears: (17:20)
So the opportunity for you to leverage that soft power that you have is something I would encourage all of you to do. We have a ton of resources from an Out Leadership perspective, our CEO briefs, et cetera, that I would encourage you to take a look at.
Rufus Gifford: (17:30)
And just reiterating what Todd said that the impact that you can have for maybe an employee that is in the closet, that hasn't had the confidence to actually come out, may be out in his private or her private life, but not out in his professional life, that allied leaders, CEOs, not even just CEOs, but any sort of manager, the impacts real.
Todd Sears: (17:54)
I want to do something a little bit different Ruf, we've got just a few minutes left, I want to do a quick little audience participation moment here. I feel like people are maybe on their phones, or maybe not even a fully there. So we've been talking about LGBT rights and equality and, oh, there we go, thanks, Joe. And so I want to do a little bit of a survey. How many of you would say if I came to work at your company, it would totally be okay to be gay or it's totally okay to be gay right here on the room? Just show of hands. How many would you say? Okay, that's pretty good. How many of you say, you know what give it a little bit of time, maybe it's not so cool because we've got folks in Kansas or Tennessee, or all these other places, maybe give it a year? How much do you give like middle of the road? No hands. Okay. So then I'm guessing, but let's still ask, how many of you would say totally don't do it, not cool, can't come out here? Nobody. All right.
Todd Sears: (18:49)
Well, so I want to stress test that a little bit, I want to actually talk to a couple of gay people in the audience and see if that's true for them. So I'm not going to ask for volunteers, Rufus can back me up on this, gay people have this thing we call gaydar. Have you guys heard of gaydar? So it's the ability for gay people to find him point out other gay people. It's just this ability to find gay people through the eyesight. So I'm just going to point out a couple of gay people here in the audience, and I'm just going to ask them. I've got a little... And I'm not going to do that. But I want you to think about if you had any fear in the pit of your stomach, "If he pointed at me, would I be embarrassed? Would I be shamed? Would it be different for me the next day I went back to work.?"
Todd Sears: (19:39)
That's the feeling gay people have every single day when they're in the closet. So as you're going out today, and you're thinking about going back to your office, or going back to your workplace, or going back to your ambassadorship, or going back to the federal government-
Rufus Gifford: (19:50)
And I ended tonight too, because I actually love, first of all, I love that everyone raises their hands when they think that their businesses are a welcoming place for LGBT workers. But. what's the data? Because we didn't actually talk about that.
Todd Sears: (20:05)
Well, technically they're really not. The number one thing that LGBTQ people need allies to do is to actually stand up and say something in a room, in a situation, in a company, et cetera. The number one thing allies think they're supposed to do in a company is go to the gay cocktail. You've got an employee resource group show up and have a drink versus using the platform. That's why this conference matters so much, that's why I'm so grateful that Joe and Anthony invite us to this conference, because I don't know how many times you hear about LGBTQ issues in business conferences, but I bet it's pretty slim. I get to come to a number of which is wonderful, but this isn't a diversity conference, this is a leadership conference, and leadership matters. So I would say making sure that you are coming out as allies, that you are actually making sure that if work for a hedge fund, you have a diversity investment mandate. Do the companies you invest in have diversity on their boards? Bet they do, but I bet they don't have LGBTQ in that definition.
Todd Sears: (20:58)
You've got tons of assets to deploy in the marketplace, use that economic power that you have to make sure that LGBTQ people are represented, that you're not investing in states, for example, where LGBTQ people are marginalized. We have a climate index that Out Leadership has built that we update every single year, and we rank US states on how LGBTQ friendly they are. And there are some really terrible states. And we actually know data-wise that LGBTQ people will leave an LGBTQ unfriendly state to move to more friendly state, and they're willing to give up a third of their compensation to do so. So from an economic argument perspective, you have a massive opportunity to create change.
Todd Sears: (21:35)
BlackRock, for example, just joined Out Leadership. We've had a number of hedge funds, a number of private equity firms. Lloyd Blankfein was our first board member for God's sake. We have a lot of leaders who have used their platforms to help us advocate for this. And I think that would be the ask for both Rufus and I, following this conference, I'd really love for a number of companies that have never been involved to be involved, join Out Leadership, join the coalition of companies that we are creating around the world to advocate for this change and this equality, because it is a business issue.
Rufus Gifford: (22:02)
And I would say in closing, I would say this, for all the progress we have made, and we've made remarkable progress because the board conversation that I referenced in the nineties it's would be unsinkable in the United States these days, maybe not unthinkable, but very unlikely in the United States, certainly at a high level, but the fact is that we are sliding backwards in a number of different ways, not only in certain states in the United States, but also globally. And so there is work to be done. This Fight For Equality, as this panel is called, it can never be over, because the moment you stop fighting for equality is the moment you start losing, as far as I'm concerned.
Todd Sears: (22:42)
So with that, we want to thank you for inviting us. Thank you for listening. Thank you for the participation. Hopefully that was actually stressful a little bit. And Joe and Anthony, thank you for having us.
Rufus Gifford: (22:52)
Thank you.
Todd Sears: (22:52)
Thanks.