2022 Out & Equal Workplace Summit Presentation

I’m very pleased to announce that I spoke with a team representing Accenture and CVS Health at the 2022 Out & Equal Workplace Summit in October 2022. Our discussion, accepted as one of a very limited number of Featured Sessions, was entitled You Say You Want an Evolution: Partnering & Accelerating for LGBTQ+ Impact. At the previous Out & Equal session in 2021, we discussed our LGBTQ+ Health Equity Speaker Series, including behind-the-scenes operations of how we build and launch each public intercompany LGBTQ+ panel event. However, I learned that folks were interested in how we imagined the idea for the series from the beginning. In this year’s session, we briefly provided an update on the series status and then took the audience through the design thinking process that originally built the program and that we continue to use today. As promotion of our 2022 session, we built the following abstract:

We all want to change the world. And you can in big ways with intercompany partnerships. How can companies partner to use their collective knowledge and influence to accelerate equitable corporate and industry practices? Through employee resource groups (ERGs), as they evolve to impact business strategy. Accenture and CVS Health’s LGBTQ+ Health Equity Speaker Series partnership changed leadership perception about ERG ability to influence public awareness and human experience. This groundbreaking series provides deep insights and resources on topics like transgender health and mental wellbeing while featuring prominent guests like HHS Assistant Secretary Admiral Rachel Levine.

This interactive session will review the evolution of ERGs and Accenture and CVS Health’s partnership. Then, audience members will join a design thinking exercise on finding intercompany partnerships–the same process that sparked Accenture and CVS Health. Attendees will leave with a toolkit to jump start discussions and partnerships for their own organizations.

This new Out & Equal Featured Session follows last year’s session but continues to build on the 2020 Out & Equal speaking engagement entitled Ask Me Almost Anything: Reddit-Inspired AMAs for Resource Groups. Each session has been full. This year’s session had a full room in Las Vegas as well as numerous folks joining live. At least 1000 individuals joined the session.

After this smashing success in 2022, I’m excited to see where this program goes next. Time will tell the story of our next evolution!

Note: The opinions expressed in this post and in any corresponding comments are the personal opinions of the original authors, not those of CVS Health.