The Workers Lab Recognizes Pride

As we close out Pride month, The Workers Lab celebrates our LGBTQ+ innovators and team members, and acknowledges the challenges faced by LGBTQ+ workers.

Happy Pride Month! It's a month of celebrating the bravery, resilience, and triumphs made by our LGBTQ+ community. Pride month is also a celebration of the progress achieved in the pursuit of LGBTQ+ equality and equity, and an opportunity to spotlight on the work that has yet to be done. 50 percent of LGBTQ workers are still closeted for fear of being pushed out or not being offered equal opportunities. 25% of LGBTQ people report experiencing discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in the past year—half of whom said it negatively impacted their work environment. The fact is, in several environments, including the workplace, being LGBTQ+ still leaves many being discriminated against and excluded. 

Here at The Workers Lab we have a vision for a society where  ALL workers are safe, healthy, secure, and free regardless of identity, status, or ability. As we see major corporations and businesses jump at the opportunity to commoditize Pride and create inspiring campaigns and messaging to match, we look forward to also seeing their own employee programming and worker systems follow suit. Beyond integrating colorful marketing tactics, we encourage that same attention to detail to be focused on providing a safe, welcoming, and equitable work environment and employee systems for LGBTQ+ team members. 

At The Workers Lab, our lived experiences as a BIPOC, queer, first-generation team informs solutions that address every worker. We invite you to get to know our team better by clicking here. Representing, and collaborating with, historically marginalized groups enables us to understand the issues and identify viable solutions against discrimation and injustice.

Check out just a few of our LGBTQ+ innovators whose breakthrough ideas are creating impact for fellow workers and for those to follow:

• Camille Kerr heads Upside Down Consulting, a firm dedicated to creating worker-owned businesses in an effort to create a more fair, human centric economy. Camille is also a co-founder of ChiFresh Kitchen, a Black-owned worker cooperative business in Chicago. ChiFresh is owned and governed by formerly incarcerated women of color, many of whom identify as queer, who have rebounded from the system.  
• Lani Todd is Director of Strategic Initiatives at Carina.org, a nonprofit tech organization that provides a bilingual, secure, scalable, accessible, and accountable care matching platform that finds families needing care and matches them with unionized family child and home care providers. Carina believes that communities are stronger when all people, regardless of income, can easily and safely access quality care and care providers receive competitive wages and steady work.

Humbly, we continue our commitment to improve the lives of workers by investing in and learning from innovative new ideas. We’re proud to spotlight the innovators we partner with this Pride month and every day.