Real Life Stories: Being Openly LGBTQ+ at Work

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With Geff Parsons                

Geff shares his journey to being openly LGBTQ+ and thriving at work.

In this short video Geff Parsons shares his journey of acknowledging his sexuality, the toxic working environments of his early career, how having LGBTQ+ role models in the workplace enabled him to feel psychologically safe to come out at work and it’s positive impact on his wellbeing and career.

More from Geff Parsons: Everyday Inclusion At Work and Guide To Inclusive Language. 

About Geff Parsons:

Geff Parsons (he/him) is now CEO of The Inclusion Imperative, a DE&I consultancy business, through which he uses his experience, knowledge and skills to help improve the standards of DE&I, and especially LGBTQ+ inclusion, in other organisations, through speaking, training, coaching and mentoring engagements.

Prior to his retirement from the world of financial services at the end of February 2022, Geff, who identifies as a cis gay man, was a Managing Director at Macquarie Group (based in London, covering all of EMEA), where he also chaired or co-chaired the LGBTQ+ network, Pride, for 8 years.

Under Geff’s stewardship Macquarie has gone from being ranked >300 in Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index, to 1st place in 2022, and is now officially the UK’s most LGBTQ+ friendly workplace. He has also received many personal accolades including; winning the award for ‘LGBT+ Inspirational Leader’ at the British LGBT Awards in May 2019; being ranked in the top quartile of the list of the Top 100 LGBTQ+ Executives globally (sponsored by the Financial Times and Yahoo Finance) in each of 2018, 2019 and 2021; and being shortlisted for the award of ‘Business Role Model’ at the PinkNews Awards in October 2018.