UCLA Anderson’s 2022 LGBTQ+ Awareness Week brought the Anderson community together to discuss the ever-evolving essence of LGBTQ+ identities, with an eye toward the future. What will the future of our community — of LGBTQ+ identities — look like as we move through the coming years and beyond?
This theme was motivated by contradictory data from last year. A 2021 poll by Gallup indicated that LGBTQ+ identification reached a record high of 7.1%. However, 2021 also marked the worst year for anti-LGBTQ+ state legislation in U.S history, a trend that has further spilled into 2022 with Florida’s highly controversial “Don’t Say Gay” bill. On one hand, individuals are feeling increasingly comfortable sharing their unique identities with the world, but on the other, the proliferation of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation demonstrates that, in many places, LGBTQ+ identities remain under attack. Out@Anderson chose the theme of “Identity” to celebrate what makes each of our stories and intersectionalities unique and powerful, as well as to demonstrate how we can each serve as an agent of change in building the future of the LGBTQ+ community, whether in the workplace or beyond.
Awareness Week brought together panelists from diverse backgrounds to discuss a wide range of topics, including housing discrimination in LGBTQ+ communities, authentic LGBTQ+ storytelling in film and TV, inclusive product design in technology products and being openly queer at work. The week was capped off with Out@Anderson’s first-ever Amateur Drag Show and fundraiser during an evening that celebrated queerness and allyship, identity and belonging, and, most importantly, the community that forms when identities can be shared openly and authentically.
On behalf of Out@Anderson, we would like to thank everyone who attended Awareness Week!
Housing Impact on the LGBTQ+ Community
Out@Anderson co-hosted a session with Association for Real Estate at Anderson to invite Christy Mallory (J.D. ’08) to speak on housing discrimination as it relates to the LGBTQ+ community. Mallory earned her J.D. from the UCLA School of Law and has been working at the Williams Institute since graduating in 2008. Her current work focuses on state and local laws and policies that impact the LGBT community, including the impact of discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community in housing and real estate.
During the hour-long session, Mallory shared illuminating data on the struggles the LGBT community faces in securing housing, coming out of poverty, and navigating housing and food insecurity. Mallory prefaced her session by stating, “I only have housing data on the LGBT population because when it comes to the ‘Q+,’ that data is not currently collected.” Per Mallory, more than 20% of LGBT adults in America live in poverty, as compared to 16% of non-LGBT adults, and particular groups within the community face higher levels of concentrated economic insecurity, like cis-bisexual women and transgender people. Mallory also shared that homeless transgender people are turned away from shelters nearly 33% of the time due to their identity.
All of the attendees joined Mallory after her talk for a networking session out on South Terrace. There, Mallory shared more about her personal work in improving survey questions and data analysis to specifically support the LGBTQ+ community in becoming more accurately and equitably represented in census data and in the real estate market. “Speaking from data and from personal experience, when it comes to LGBT individuals purchasing a home, the best way to make the process smoother is to work with people who have the same values as you. And this includes roofers, real estate agents, gardeners, painters. Otherwise, a difficult process just becomes more difficult,” she shared.
I Want My Queer TV!: Telling Authentic LGBTQ+ Stories to the World
The I Want My Queer TV! panel explored LGBTQ+ storytelling in the modern entertainment industry through four unique perspectives. The panelists — Chris Rodriguez, co-founder and chief business officer of Revry, an LGBTQ+-focused streaming service; Chris Bright, director of public training at The Trevor Project and consultant for TV and film projects to ensure authentic LGBTQ+ representation; Jared Frieder, writer and director of the film “Three Months,” released on Paramount+ in 2022; and moderator Jordan Barillas (’21), VP of strategy and business development at MarVista Entertainment and former president of Out@Anderson — shared their unique viewpoints on the state of queer content today, including the challenges of moving queer stories from development to production, the weight that is placed on queer storytellers to represent an entire community and the desire for more stories to portray queer joy as opposed to hardship.
Rodriguez discussed the motivations behind starting Revry, which was founded in 2015 by a diverse team that is 50% women of color and 75% queer. Revry was created in response to the frustration of getting queer content made in Hollywood, a frustration that was echoed by Frieder, whose “Three Months” project took over 10 years to make. Rodriguez sees Revry as platform to tell queer stories that are less mainstream; he cited one Revry project that explores the ballroom culture in Mexico City, which was a partnership with Gilead (the maker of PrEP, an HIV-prevention medication). Rodriguez’s advice for business students? “Now is the time to embrace your diversity and let it inform how you do business,” he said. Only 2% of startup funding goes to minority-founded businesses, but they perform 40% better than non-minority-founded businesses.
Bright discussed the need for more queer stories onscreen. Because the depictions of queerness are limited in entertainment more broadly, the queer content that does get made is expected to represent the entire queer experience. This creates undue pressure on queer storytellers to tell stories that resonate with the entire LGBTQ+ community. These stories can become further watered down if actors are cast that do not share any of the identities of those that they are portraying (e.g., casting non-queer actors in queer roles). In addition, Bright described that much of today’s queer content is too focused on the hardship of queerness, which doesn’t leave any room for queer joy. This is especially important for queer youth, who are four times as likely to commit suicide. “Queer joy is worth celebrating, not just during the month of June, but year round. And the more that we get, the better off we will be as a society,” she said.
Frieder shared his experience getting “Three Months” through “development hell,” a process which lasted nearly 10 years. He explained that the issue lies largely with the corporate structure of Hollywood studios; the individuals who pick up projects for development are more receptive to queer stories, but these projects often hit roadblocks when higher-up executives determine which projects get funded for production. Studios like to say they have queer projects in development to highlight their commitment to diversity, but moving from development to production can be a major challenge for queer projects across the industry.
All three panelists shared that their ideal future for queer storytelling in Hollywood includes making queerness an integral part of entertainment, but not always the focal point. Queer characters can exist without their queerness defining them. This will increase the volume of queer stories being told and take the pressure off of queer storytellers to represent an entire community. In the words of Bright, “We don’t want to hang everything on these identities because if we do, queer storytelling will fail.”
Inclusive Design Workshop
Tuesday evening’s Inclusive Design Workshop was led by Liz Bohinc (FEMBA ’22), AnderTech’s VP of EDI, and Bertrand Saint-Preux, a product manager for Snap Inc.’s inclusive camera. Bohinc opened the session by grounding the attendees in the reality of the lack of inclusive design in tech. “It’s really hard to imagine what industry may not have technology somehow involved with it, so we really do need to include everyone when we’re building these products for the future, and often, unfortunately, inclusion is an afterthought,” she said.
She led Bertrand in a conversational Q&A session, where he shared his experience designing Snap’s inclusive camera to more accurately recognize darker-skinned faces and more positively capture their faces in photos and videos. In his experience, Bertrand has witnessed teams seeking to make products for everybody but ending up with ones that cater most toward those who were in the room at the time of the design phase. It is the marginalized communities that experience the technical bugs and, as a result, believe that they are the bug in the product.
After the thoughtful discussion, attendees had the opportunity to move into four- to five-person breakout rooms to discuss how popular tech companies, ranging from Zoom to Headspace, could improve their products to be more inclusive. Shared ideas included broader adoption of live transcripts across platforms, improving the accuracy of those transcripts and introducing more language options.
How does all this relate to the LGBTQ+ community? “When looking at building products for the LGBTQ+ community,” Bertrand stated, “you must build them into the process. If you’re not in the community, you can try to empathize with them, but ultimately, you’re not going to know what they want. If you think the product will help them, ask them. You’re bringing [the community] into the room because you understand that their lived experience will help you make a better product.”
Building LGBTQ+ Futures: A Conversation on Queer Identities and Rights in the Workplace and Beyond
In Out@Anderson’s sole hybrid session of the week, Courtney Cheng (’22) moderated a panel discussion with Anderson alumni Raudy Perez (’11) and Jennifer Abbondanza (’06) as well as recent Michigan Ross alumnus Justin Woods. The dialogue focused on how identifying as LGBTQ+ has transformed over the years, specifically how each of the speakers identifies personally, how this has changed over the years and what role businesses should play in supporting LGBTQ+ employees and the community at large.
It was clear that each of the speakers, having graduated from their respective MBA programs in different decades during the 2000s, came to the conversation with distinctly different perspectives. Abbondanza and Perez both shared how they came out slightly later in their professional lives. Abbondanza recalled how she intentionally used her time at Anderson to come out and explore her identity as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, which included serving as one of the co-presidents of Out@Anderson, before it was called Out@Anderson. Perez shared a story of how, after completing his MBA, one of the managers at work told him, “You need to be all of yourself, every day.” In contrast, Woods shared how they were intentional about showing up to their program at Michigan Ross as their full, queer self — pierced nose and all. “I want to show up authentically, people to ask questions and [to] disrupt the binary,” they said.
During the conversation, the recent controversy surrounding Disney’s silence on Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill came up. The speakers — all of whom share a background in equity, diversity and inclusion work — were thoughtful in discussing the ways companies and leaders might experience internal pressure to toe a fine line on these topics, despite public pressure. The speakers also debated whether public companies should even carry this much weight on social issues like LGBTQ+ rights and representation.
The panelists wrapped the session with great perspective and insight, each reflecting on their identities and how they hope to see the LGBTQ+ community grow in the coming years.
“As queer people, it’s important to look in our community and look at ways in which we’ve replicated systems of oppressions in society. We hold privileged identities as well.”
— Justin Woods
“I leaned into my queerness, I leaned into my brownness, I leaned into being the kid that raised livestock — and made them my superpowers. We need those gifts to be better together.”
— Raudy Perez
“Being visible — and all of us living in this world and being out — helps the people around us because it chips away at the biases.”
— Jennifer Abbondanza
Ask a Queer
Four current MBA students participated in a reprisal of the “Ask a Gay” event from Out@Anderson’s 2016 Awareness Week, now contemporarily rebranded as “Ask a Queer.” Assistant Dean of Student Affairs Jessica Luchenta moderated the panel featuring FTMBAs from the class of 2022 — Courtney Cheng and Lincoln Sedlacek — and the class of 2023 — Yannan Collins and Nikith Kumar. The four students reflected on their coming out stories, how they have grown into their respective identities and what their queer identity means to them. They also shared their favorite LGBTQ+ media as well as their hopes for progress in the LGBTQ+ community.
Cheng spoke in detail about her experience leading Out@Anderson as one of the co-presidents over the past academic year. “I lead in the LGBTQ+ community by example. When I mess up, I will call myself out on it. I will admit [that] I am still learning, and when I do something wrong, I will do better in the future. If I do this, maybe it will encourage others to do the same.”
Sedlacek reflected on his coming out story and expressed his hopes for future LGBTQ+ representation. “If you’re ever in a position in the entertainment industry and making decisions on what stories to tell, be thoughtful and aware of what stories already exist. Why exactly are we telling this story right now? Is it an inspiring and uplifting story?”
Collins shared their perspective on how their current generation in the LGBTQ+ community can change the trajectory for future generations. “We have to be aware that we are in the generation that is taking up all the harm from the generation before, but we have a responsibility to not bring any harm to the next generation.”
Kumar offered many anecdotes about his experience working in India prior to Anderson and the struggles that came with being in a country where being LGBTQ+ was not as accepted as it is in the U.S. “Not necessarily in the U.S., but in other countries, you can be severely disadvantaged if you are out, so being in a community that celebrates you is very impactful.”
Dean Luchenta led a brief Q&A with anonymously submitted audience questions and some live questions before seeking to close the panel on a high note: What is something powerful that can be taken away from the LGBTQ+ community?
Cheng jumped in, first reflecting on how the queer community has learned to build so much of their identities as being fluid, something that constantly changes and transforms over time, without necessarily knowing where the end point is going to be. “This is something that I think people who aren’t in the LGBTQ+ community can also learn from,” she said. “There is so much power in being able to recognize that your identity is fluid, and there is a lot of beauty in being able to own that sense of ambiguity in your future.”
Amateur Drag Night
Out@Anderson’s first Amateur Drag Night, which took place at Sorry Not Sorry, was wildly successful! The event featured nine student performers across the full-time, fully employed and executive MBA programs, and there were over 100 attendees from those programs. In addition, three professional queens joined for the evening; all performed and one served as emcee, informing attendees of drag show norms before kicking off the show.
Attendees filled the back patio, which eventually became standing room only; some even opted to stand on the provided benches for a better view. The vibes and mood remained high for the entire evening, and the drinks and tips kept flowing. Afterward, two of the student performers were offered the opportunity to return to Sorry Not Sorry in June to reprise their performances at a professional drag show in honor of Pride Month.
Out@Anderson organized the evening as a fundraiser for the Point Foundation, a scholarship fund that provides financial aid for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer college-aspiring individuals in the United States. In total, the students were able to raise over $825 for the organization.