Whether you are LGBTQ+, an ally or just part of the Anderson community, bring your questions, expand your knowledge and join the discussion about creating more inclusive communities. This year, we’re focusing on the intersections of our social identities — sexuality, gender, race and many more. How do they better define us? How do they bring our communities together?
With Awareness Week 2020, we want to celebrate these intersections. In an effort to provide our community with numerous opportunities for authentic leadership development, we hope you can take part in this celebration and join us for all of the great guest speakers and panels we have in store for the week.
#InvestingInProgress #Intersections
1:15 – 3:15 p.m. | 8288 SANTA MONICA BOULEVARD
End your weekend on a high note and get into the Awareness Week spirit with a drag brunch you won’t soon forget!
REGISTER
Got Questions? Contact Pat Toland.
11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m. | D-301
Mike Henry, Industry Director for Financial Services at Google, will discuss and answer questions about his life and experience as an LGBTQ+ person in the tech industry. Mike is also deeply involved in D&I initiatives at Google and will speak about what Google is doing to support LGBTQ+ inclusiveness and D&I more broadly.
Mike Henry, Industry Director for Financial Services at Google, oversees Google’s customer-facing teams that help the world’s leading companies get the most out of the web. Over twelve years at Google, Mike has led sales, marketing, and operations teams in both the US and Europe, always with a passion for marrying powerful technology with great marketing ideas to build brands and drive profitable growth. Mike earned his MBA from Stanford and his AB from Dartmouth. He is a leader in Google’s work to foster diversity, equity, and inclusion within the company and across the tech industry.
REGISTER
Got Questions? Contact Kevin Cleland.
11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m. | D-301
Join us as Professor Jane Ward, an expert on gender and sexuality, challenges societal views on heterosexuality versus queerness and draws on queer subcultural materials and interviews to illuminate queer intersection with feminism and race, while introducing a new take on the ally relationship.
Jane Ward is a professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at University of California Riverside, where she teaches courses in feminist, queer, and heterosexuality studies. Her new book, titled The Tragedy of Heterosexuality, is forthcoming in Summer 2020 with NYU Press. She is also the author of Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men (New York University Press, 2015), which has been featured by Newsweek, New York Magazine, Forbes, The Guardian, BBC, Washington Post, USA Today, Huffington Post, Salon, Vice, and Slate. Her first book, Respectably Queer: Diversity Culture in LGBT Activist Organizations, was named by The Progressive magazine as a best book of 2008 and has been featured on NPR. Jane Ward is also a baker, an urban gardener, and a parent to one human child, one potbelly pig, nine chickens, and one cat.
Learn more about Jane Ward.
REGISTER
Got Questions? Contact Haitham Haddad.
11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m. | D-301
Please join Luis Vasquez, the Daniel H. Renberg Law Fellow at the Williams Institute, as he discusses the current state of LGBTQ+ rights in the United States, including what the outcome of the Title VII cases pending before the Supreme Court and the Equality Act pending before the U.S. Senate could do to impact the lives and well-being of LGBTQ+ people across the nation.
Luis Vasquez is the Daniel H. Renberg Fellow at the Williams Institute. Luis was raised in Las Vegas, Nevada and is a first-generation Mexican American. Prior to law school, he worked as a paralegal for six years while earning his Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. While at UCLA Law, Luis served as the President of the Student Bar Association and Editor-in-Chief of the Dukeminier Awards Journal of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Law, among a number of other roles. One of his primary efforts was to help improve conditions for LGBT+ students on campus, including drafting the petition that ultimately led the law school to build the UCLA campus’s first multi-stall gender-inclusive restroom this past spring. Luis received the annual law student scholarships awarded by the Mexican American Legal Defense Education Fund, the LGBT Bar Association of Los Angeles, the Beverly Hills Bar Foundation, and the Mexican American Bar Foundation for his commitment to public service and the civil rights of marginalized communities.
REGISTER
Got Questions? Contact Chris Razzano.
9:00 p.m. - 2:00 a.m.
Join us for the Office Hours of the year at The Abbey in West Hollywood! See the Anderson community in a new light as we unwind at our weekly Wednesday night gathering, this time at one of L.A.’s most popular gay bars.
The Abbey
692 North Robertson Boulevard
West Hollywood, CA 90069
11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m. | D-301
A diverse panel of speakers from Anderson's many affinity groups will share stories and foster conversation on the intersection of sexuality, race and gender aimed at educating the wider Anderson community and building strong ally relations.
REGISTER
Got Questions? Contact Haitham Haddad.
4:45 – 7:00 p.m. | North Terrace
Head to Anderson’s backyard for a drink and bite to eat at the final event of Awareness Week, Anderson Afternoons. One of our most beloved traditions, this weekly happening will be livened up with celebrations of the week’s events amid a sea of rainbows.
5:30 a.m. – 6:30 p.m. | D-301
Join us for an engaging panel with Andy Cofino, the Director of the UCLA LGBT Center, and Anderson student panelists for stories and discussion about the experience of transgender and non-binary students, staff and faculty at UCLA. We will also discuss best practices for allyship, what proactive work is currently being done at UCLA, and what we can do at Anderson as students, staff and faculty to better support trans and non-binary people in the Anderson community and network.
REGISTER
Got Questions? Contact Kevin Cleland.