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'In the last few years we've seen that the climate for GLBT folks has improved," says Kim Mills, education director at Human Rights Campaign (www. hrc.org), the gay rights lobbying and action group. Those gains have spread and solidified throughout many corporations in the U.S., she notes. "We hear that people are more comfortable at work, and more companies are providing domestic partner benefits, non-discrimination policies and support for employee resource groups."
A caution against complacency
Rochelle Diamond, chair of the National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals (NOGLSTP, www.noglstp.org), has a different opinion. She agrees that considerable gains in workplace acceptance have been made in recent years. But she cautions against complacency.
"The climate of the election and the legislative maelstroms over marriage have dampened spirits quite a bit," she says. "Anything that looks like a spousal benefit might be taken away if these amendments pass. We feel the sword of Damocles has been hung over us."
She fears that the current political climate can chill GLBT professionals' willingness to be out at work, diminishing the drive for equity.
By the time this article appears in print, the election will be over and the future may be more clear. But there's no doubt that many progressive companies and organizations are currently GLBT-friendly, and have been for years.
Most observers agree that the technical professions are at the forefront in providing welcoming environments and comparable benefits for GLBT folks. Here's the climate that techies are enjoying at a variety of forward-looking workplaces.
LANL supports openness
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL, www.lanl.gov, Los Alamos, NM) is a nuclear weapons laboratory operated by the University of California for the Department of Energy (DOE). Like UC itself, LANL has offered domestic partner benefits for years. In July 2003 it added survivor retirement benefits to the GLBT-friendly roster.
Three years ago LANL's Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Intersex (LGBTI) diversity working group decided to publish the names of its active members on the lab's website. Some members dropped off the active list before they could be outed, but there were no repercussions. In fact, the lab supported some highly visible Gay Pride events this past June.
The celebration provoked private letters of disapproval to lab director G. Peter Nanos. Nanos chose to address them in a talk to the entire lab, ensuring that each employee understood the lab's strong support for workplace diversity and openness.
Kathy Elsberry of Los Alamos: making people aware
Kathy Elsberry, a tech staff member of LANL's tritium science and engineering group, has been a member of the LGBTI diversity group since 1999, and is currently its chair. She says she would have been glad to see the group raise its profile even sooner.
The gay invisibility mindset has troubled Elsberry throughout her career. After she received her BSChE from the University of New Mexico in 1979 she worked in copper production in Utah. There was no way she could be open about her sexual orientation.
"I began my career when there were very few women engineers at all, let alone lesbians. They were probably already calling me a dyke behind my back. I wasn't comfortable even being a female in some of those places."
After three years Elsberry moved into technical consulting. When she joined LANL in 1988, UC's non-discrimination policy, also in effect at LANL, was a big factor in her decision.
Sure, she's heard stories about pockets of intolerance at LANL, but in her experience the lab has been making steady, if sometimes slow, progress in awareness and sensitivity.
Recently the lab had to deny a request for travel reimbursement for a domestic partner as part of covered moving expenses, although spouses do get reimbursed. Setback? Perhaps, but Elsberry actually thinks of it as a sign of modest progress.
"The lab challenged the policy all the way up to DOE. It speaks really well for LANL that they pushed it that far," she notes.
She sees the LGBTI diversity group's primary mission as maintaining visibility and continually educating management and staff. Even though equitable benefits have been granted, the work isn't fully done.
For example, LANL employees are eligible for up to twelve weeks a year of leave to care for seriously ill spouses or domestic partners, but not all managers realize the domestic partner part.
"People need to be made aware," Elsberry declares. "The simple existence of benefits is not enough. We need to keep educating employees."
Richard Beatty is part of "the rich diversity at JPL"
Richard Beatty is a senior member of tech staff at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL, Pasadena, CA). JPL is managed by the California Institute of Technology, and the university's liberal benefits offerings extend to JPL employees, he notes.
He feels that the lab took a big step forward a couple of years ago when it transferred Lambda, the GLBT working group at JPL, out of the employee assistance program. Employee assistance, he notes, sponsors things like groups for parents with special needs children, and Alcoholics and Co-dependents Anonymous.
"We are no longer considered a "condition' to be fixed or dealt with, but part of the rich diversity of JPL," he remarks.
Beatty began working at the lab the summer after high school in 1973, and continued working summers while he completed his BS in general engineering at Caltech. He's been at the lab for his entire career.
Now he's working on a wide variety of things including the Terrestrial Planet Finder, a super-exciting project. "In ten or fifteen years we expect to launch satellites to detect Earth-like planets around other stars that might be hospitable to life, and perhaps study their atmospheres," he says.
On the whole, Beatty has found JPL gay-friendly, but of course there are always exceptions. A few years ago he transferred to a new department when his open, affirming manager was replaced with "someone at the other end of the scale."
Beatty didn't bother to address the matter with the HR department. "The guy was sixty-five years old. He
wasn't going to change," he explains.
To avoid problems, Beatty has made it a habit to bring up his orientation when he's discussing transfers within JPL. "I bring it up with the supervisors in order to gauge their reactions. Often people are flattered that you bring them into your confidence that way. But there are some sour apples and I'd rather know that ahead of time," he says.
JPL's Rodney Hoffman: witness to progress
Software engineer Rodney Hoffman was a founder of the GLBT employee group at Xerox, and was an advisor to the JPL GLBT group before coming to JPL himself in 1992. He say JPL's location near Los Angeles, CA means that "acceptance is appropriately taken for granted."
At the moment there are no particular issues on the table for JPL's GLBT group, since the major goals, domestic partner benefits and family leave, have been achieved, Hoffman explains.
He finds that most younger employees at JPL don't remember the early days of overt workplace discrimination and may take for granted the achievements of older gays and lesbians. "They have no idea what it was like in the early days, but that's okay with me," he says. "I'm just happy that it's easier for them."
Dr Nancy Laurie: the Lambda Network at Kodak
Ergonomist Dr Nancy Laurie had no shortage of offers after receiving her PhD from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in 2000. It was the very active Lambda Network at Kodak (Rochester, NY) that tipped the scales toward the photographic company.
"Lambda does a lot of cutting-edge stuff and it was definitely one of the factors in my decision," she says. "When I was offered the job I had to come out and explore the benefits to make sure that it would really be a welcoming environment."
To be sure the welcome was genuine, she told the HR reps that her partner would be moving along with her. "They didn't say, 'What do you mean, your partner?' They began using inclusive language right away," she says.
She joined Lambda a year after starting with Kodak and has been a member of the network's board of directors for the past two years. Lambda has about 100 active members and is considered a leader among the eight employee resource groups at Kodak. The group won an "Outie Award" at the Out and Equal national conference in Tempe, AZ this past September.
One sign of Lambda's forward thinking is its marketing strategy group, which has been researching diversity marketing at other companies. The group wants "to build a better case for Kodak managers about niche marketing," Laurie says. "We can give them numbers and examples of how other companies are doing it."
Laurie has heard stories of harassment over the years, but has seen the opposite: an increase in Kodak employees' comfort level with gay issues. "People aren't as afraid as they once were to come up to folks from Lambda and ask for information," she notes.
Bryan Greiner is comfortable at Verizon
Bryan Greiner is an engineer with the Marlboro, MA network engineering center at Verizon Communications (New York, NY) and an officer with the New England Fiberoptic Council. After he received his 1989 bachelors degree in engineering physics from Stevens Institute of Technology, Greiner worked for the countermeasures division of Lockheed Sanders (Merrimak, NH) and Schott Fiber Optics (Southbridge, MA).
Some of his colleagues on those jobs knew he was gay, but he didn't feel comfortable being fully open until he got to Verizon. When he saw the breadth of activities of Verizon's Globe group for GLBT employees and their allies, he finally felt free to be himself.
"It's refreshing to have people know who I am," he says. "The group's support lets me communicate better with my peers and releases a mental burden."
Jon Fleck: everything he needs at SBC Communications
Jon Fleck, a senior technical architect at SBC Communications, was born and raised in North Dakota. He studied music at Minot State College (Minot, ND) and received his BA in 1979.
He knew a good deal about computers from composing digital music, and it helped him get his first job. When he joined a college friend in Washington State, he easily found work as an entry-level computer operator in the data processing division of the City of Seattle's credit union.
Fleck's professional path has taken him deep into software design for inventory and control systems. He managed the implementation and conversion of the credit union's computer system, then moved on to Crydom (San Diego, CA), where he worked on Mapics manufacturing controls software. Then his knowledge of Mapics took him to McCormick Spice's Schilling division (Salinas, CA) and Teledyne Aerospace (Los Angeles, CA), both in need of Mapics implementation.
In 1991 Fleck met his partner Randy, an SBC employee, at a rodeo. The job at Teledyne was winding down, so he joined Randy at SBC where he's been a senior technical architect ever since.
Fleck has never found his sexual orientation to be an issue at any point in his career. He sees SBC's domestic partner benefits and adoption policy as evidence that the company is not only gay friendly but "a corporation that
really celebrates diversity.
"I take a step back every now and then and see what benefits I have as a gay male and registered domestic partner. I don't know if there's anything else I could ask for. I have everything I need," he says.
Danna Zeller: at home at SBC Communications
"In San Francisco, I've had a harder time being Jewish than being queer," says SBC's Danna Zeller. "No matter how many times I tell people that I don't celebrate Christmas, they still don't get it."
She notes that, arriving as "a queer, transgender person," she found SBC to be a welcoming place. She thinks that some of that has to do with its location in the liberal San Francisco Bay area.
A 1994 graduate of Princeton University with a degree in English literature, Zeller found little acceptance on the East Coast. "I'm butch, so it was food service or bust there, but I've never had a problem getting a job in San Francisco," she says.
She took a temporary job at Pacific Bell there in 1995 and felt so at home that she decided to stay on. A few years later she did some coursework in Cobol, so technically "I'm kind of stuck in the 50's," she says with a smile.
"I have no intention of transitioning physically, but I often pass for a male," Zeller notes. "There will always be people who are intolerant, but here everybody knows me. We are a range of backgrounds and ages, and we do our best to be respectful of each other."
Zeller has been a billing analyst at SBC for four years. She acquired most of her software skills on the job, including DB2 and SAS.
"I just really like the nitty-gritty of programming," she says.
Rachael Parker enjoys workplace equality at Intel
Rachael Parker graduated from Northeastern University (Boston, MA) with a BS in EE and computer engineering in 1991, and got her MSEE from the University of Arizona in 1994. After a brief stint at analog semi maker Burr Brown, she joined Intel (Santa Clara, CA) in 1995. She's now a principal engineer in the advanced design group for logic technology, working on mixed signal and analog circuit design.
In 2001 Parker underwent gender transition, which she disclosed indirectly to co-workers with an e-mail announcing the legal change of her name. "I was surprised at how many people were flabbergasted. I expected them to say, 'We knew that a long time ago,'" she says.
For a while, "People were afraid to offend me by asking questions, so I didn't have a chance to explain things and I didn't feel comfortable bringing it up. It was a very vulnerable position to be in," she says. "I withdrew from people and even reduced my own peer group during the transition."
Parker is still married to the woman she was married to when a male, and now she has a new dilemma at work. "I have to decide whether to come out as a lesbian, transgendered or bisexual person. I have to decide how much to tell people. Sometimes I try to educate everyone about what it's like to be me, and sometimes I just try to be another woman at work."
She has always felt safe at Intel as she is evaluated on the work she does. "Nothing in my career has been negatively impacted by my transition and that's really what workplace equality is all about.
"Sometimes, though, I'm on a business trip or a vacation and I realize how nice it is to be around people who have no idea that I'm transgendered. I suppose I could go to a different department or group to start over. But I like where I am and I have a lot of friends here. I have a lot of equity built into this group," she says.
Michele Rubenstein feels comfortable at Booz Allen
Michele Rubenstein, senior security specialist with technology consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton (McLean, VA), got into IT on a dare. Back in 1977 the Bank of Virginia (Norfolk, VA, now Bank of America) was reputed to have the toughest qualifying exam for programmers, and a colleague bet that she couldn't pass it. In fact, she did so well that she was asked to retake the exam in case she had somehow cheated.
After she passed again, Rubenstein was placed in a new field: electronic fund transfer and point of sale. The bank was the East Coast test site for IBM's verification software.
She began taking programming classes, and eventually entered a masters program at George Mason University (Fairfax, VA) that's now 25 percent complete.
Meanwhile she'd moved on to a job as data center manager for the U.S. Marine Corps in Quantico, VA. From there she worked for the U.S. Air Force at the Pentagon. Her next stop was the Treasury Department. In 2001 she joined Booz Allen's security engineering team.
Judging by recent legislation, Virginia is not a particularly GLBT-friendly state. But Rubenstein finds Booz Allen to be an enlightened company. "Its diversity policy is more far-reaching than any organization I've worked for," she says. "This is the first time I've felt safe and comfortable enough to put my partner's picture on my desk.".
D/C
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