 Think Tech Hawaii, civil engagement lives here. Welcome to Out and About on the Think Tech Alive Streaming Network series. I'm your host, Winston Welch, with a pineapple of wine coming out of my head until I did that you're joining us today, where every other week we explore a variety of topics, organizations, events, and the people who fuel them in our city, state, country, and world. And joining me in the studio today, I'm especially pleased to have Sonny Montaero and Dave Stevens, all founding board members of the Hawaii Rainbow Chamber of Commerce. And we've got our lovely logo right behind us. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you. How do you love this color? I mean, it's just popping, isn't it? Yeah. Well, you know, I think, you know, in full disclosure, I'm also on the board and happy to be on the board with you. It's been such a great pleasure getting to know you. Actually, that's probably one of the amazing things about this is just getting to know you all. We have this logo that was designed that, let's address the logo in the room first. So it's a beautiful framing. It's a beautiful framing. So pineapple is a symbol of wealth. It's a symbol of welcome and it's a symbol of our lovely Aloha state. So I think we've got a really good symbolism there, even if it's frotting out of my head for this part of the show, it's going to be OK. And right down here, we see that we're an affiliate chamber of the NGLCC, the National LGBT Chambers of Commerce. So that's great. So as you know, we hear about, OK, the Hawaii Rainbow Chamber of Commerce. It's an interesting idea. So what is the Hawaii Rainbow Chamber of Commerce? Perhaps, Sonny, you could read along as we find out what it is, because I think it's a new idea for a lot of people. So if we could get that graphic up there for what we are. Sure. The Hawaii Rainbow Chamber of Commerce represents small businesses, individuals, corporations, and nonprofit associations whose members share the values of promoting equality and diversity within the workplace. We empower the LGBTQ Plus businesses to gain new skills and access, resources through education, training, and events connecting the community as well as its allies. We advocate for quality of opportunity in business and society for the LGBTQ Plus community. We work with companies, governmental agencies, and nonprofits to promote diversity, inclusion, and equality in the workplace. Most importantly, we help expand your business by connecting you with other people. OK. Thank you. You read so well. Well, you know what? Thank you. It's important to take time to read that, because it is this new concept of it's a chamber of commerce fundamentally, right? We're here to grow business for everybody, but some people might ask, why do we need an LGBTQ Plus Chamber of Commerce? I think it's representation. What do you mean by that? Well, we have the Filipino Chamber of Commerce. We have the Hawaii Chamber of Commerce. In most places we have a junior chamber of commerce, and in a lot of places we have the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and the Japanese Chamber of Commerce. Well, this is a community of people that includes a diverse range of individuals who I think are underrepresented in our communities. They could be part of the Filipino, the Japanese, or the Chinese Chambers of Commerce, but they're not represented as themselves in the LGBTQ Plus community, I think. Yeah, right. And they are members of all of those communities as well. So you have something to add to that, Sunny, as far as why we need it? I do. It's a very interesting time politically. There's a lot of political, with the new freedom of religion policies that are going out in government, it kind of makes it a head-to-head combat between equality and freedom of religion. And I think that rather than heading to the courtrooms to battle, we can just make it known where we're welcome, which are places that I would like to spend my money and diversify and grow, and hopefully there's a lot of inclusion versus separation. Yeah, it's a good point, because the lines somehow, and I think most fair-minded and true American values, we do value equality of opportunity. We value equality of opportunity, even if it doesn't always make itself absolutely realized in the real world, we at least want to enshrine this in our documents. And I think, as we see a lot of surveys, younger people, especially, this is their issue. They don't have equality for the company that they're working for, the place where they're shopping. They're out of there. That's just it. Right. And so, from a company's perspective, if you're not on board with this, your business is soon going to be dwindling. I suppose you could cater to a minority market of people that prefer something else, but I think that being on the right side of history, being on the right side of being a human and being on the right side of business is combining all together to produce this. But it is good to know where can we shop, who's going to promote our services and our goods. Bring us this to our logo. We have a sticker logo we're coming up with, we're going to give it to people to put in the window. Okay. Maybe put it on their website. Let's see the shot of the logo if we can get it up there, because it is a beautiful logo. There it is. And our pineapple and beautiful, the slogan Aloha for all served here. I've got to let people know that this is one of those places that it's inclusive, and it's not going to reject you because of your beliefs, your lifestyle. And I think that for a business, if there's a certain amount of pragmatism involved here, you don't want to exclude any business. It's all about, like you said earlier, we're talking about the almighty dollar. And if you exclude people because of their lifestyle, you're throwing money away. So why not include everybody really? And truly, I think as a business owner, when I hire people, I want people to know that they're coming into a community of inclusion and diversity, because I think all of us picked on in high school, picked on in junior high school, right? We were bullied. And if you go into a company and you see that this is an inclusive, diverse community, you know you're not going to be bullied because of your personal choices. And I think that that's a certain amount of freedom of thought that you bring into the company. And as a company owner, too, I want to have a lot of different viewpoints and a lot of ideas coming in. And I don't want to exclude any ideas, because every idea is an opportunity for more success. Yeah. And I think we were talking earlier about when you just have a monoculture, then you're really short changing yourself, your coworkers, your clients. Right. You know, what strikes me is about this as far as the workplace goes, and it's part of the offerings that we're going to have is diversity trainings and working with other organizations to raise awareness in this so that we can bring our full selves to work, because if we can't bring our full selves to work, and I say, hey, Dave, what did you do this weekend? And you said, oh, I just kind of hung around, and maybe you were hanging around, but you were with your boyfriend or your husband or your wife in your case. And you might say as a heterosexual male, well, I was with my wife and my kids, my dogs, we went to the park and played frisbee. You feel free to share. You feel free to share. You have a picture of her on your desk, and you're able to talk about that very easily. But if you're not out at work, and I say, hey, what did you do this weekend, Sonny? Yeah, you're trying to hide it. Yeah. Trying to put up a shield, put up a wall. You're not your complete self at work. And really, as an employer, when you try to empower employees to do the best that they can do, if they're not completely 100% engaged, you're not going to get all the productivity out of that employee because they're holding back because they're reserved. They think they have something to hide, and if they put themselves all the way out there, someone might find out, and then they feel like they're not going to be included in the group anymore. Well, and I feel that reserved is kind of the standard. It's very difficult to put that on at work, to be the only one, to be the first one. And what you're saying is absolutely true about getting the most from somebody. You find that world of inclusion, it feels so good and so freeing that you truly devote yourself to whatever that business is because you've experienced something that's unique and original, right? You have a place, a home where you can be yourself and be comfortable. And for a lot of people, especially in Hawaii, I think, that they don't even get that in their own house sometimes. If we look at the homeless population in Hawaii, there's a huge percentage of that population that is LGBTQ plus because they've received that rejection at home already. So to be kicked out of your house, right, is a possibility. And then to find a place where you can go to work and be yourself would completely change that structure, that database of memories that you have, that inclusion. And it's very important to have in the community. It's a really good point that you bring up because I know in surveys they found up to 40% of kids on the street are LGBTQ. So this is a real issue. And they're being shortchanged as well. And historically, of course, not historically, still in our great United States of America, you can be fired for being gay or lesbian in 28 states, I think, still. You can be fired for being trans and at least that many, not more, 30 states. 30 states, right? So I could just walk in and say, you know what? You're gay, or actually, I think you're gay. And I don't like gay people, so you're fired. Fortunately here in Hawaii, we are protected because we are a state that is diverse and values diversity. But when we still face these same problems, and I think a lot of, you know, even in Hawaii, there's still a lot of discrimination that we might face. It might be more subtle, and we may not even know it. These are exceptional challenges in these times, especially because Sonya brought up our current presidential administration. We've flip-fought on this issue at the federal level many times. For instance, when I first joined the Marine Corps, it was illegal to be gay. You could be arrested and thrown in jail if you lied that said you weren't gay, because if you said you were gay, you couldn't come in and serve your country. Then they said, don't ask, don't help. So don't ask, don't tell. Several years, like a couple decades, and then we've changed the policy again, and then we went back again. And so people don't want to come out because they think, oh, I'm safe now, but in a couple of years, a new administration comes in, new president, new rules, and I might not be safe, I'll be kicked out. And we're doing that now to people who are serving the country. So I think at our level, we have to make sure we're consistent. That's a really good point. Consistency and inclusion, and Hawaii is pretty good at that. We've still got to chip away at some of the edges. We're hard around the edges, though, but I think we're doing better than a lot of other states. But we have to be consistent. If we flip-fought, we've buried ourselves again. We won't be able to get that traction. Well, and I think it bears out that the business world is ahead of it. It gets it. We're reading here the Fortune 500 companies. It's something like 95% of them have inclusive policies for LGBTQ people, because they realize they have to. I mean, it's not just the right thing to do, but it's the right thing to do for the almighty dollar. And while our government might go back and forth, and up and down, or we might have some, call them cults, bot, that may or may not be supportive, that we do need to be consistent. We need to be a place that supports and values people for who they are, and especially in this area, where people, sorry, you're just, you're gay, or you want to be gay. It doesn't really matter if you are identifying in this group. And we have the LGBTQ plus or other alphabet letters that we couldn't include. But the allies is a really critical point here. And I think that we don't get anywhere without allies and friends. And so this is, I think, a key part of our organization, and I think it's reflected in our board of directors that it has a diversity of orientation on it. Well, you don't have to be part of that community to support that community. That's right. Right? I support it because, me personally, I grew up along with the military family. I mean, we've gone all the way back to the Revolutionary War. We always stood up, wore the uniform, for rights in America. If you're a United States citizen, you get all the rights everyone else does, period. Doesn't matter if you're black, you're white, you're from another culture, another religion, you're Muslim. Doesn't matter. You get the rights. And I truly believe that this group of people has been alienated and ostracized for their way of life. And they're not getting the full experience that all Americans should get. And that's why I'm an ally. And it's a well put. And we applaud all of our allies because it's like we're stretching for the higher ideal of America and our own humanity. And we're doing it through business because business is sort of the great equalizer in our country. We're not communists here. So we understand how all of this works. Sunny, have you experienced any discrimination in the workplace for anything? You know, I've been pretty fortunate. I haven't had a lot of workplace discrimination. But I have always been in management and different roles. And I know how easily it would be to get away with things like that. You don't need to necessarily make it so black and white where you literally seclude one person so obviously. But in the background, I think that it's definitely something that happens and occurs. And with the chamber, we're not aiming for exclusion. And I think that that's really important on the conversation of allies is that there's no exclusion. We're not trying to exclude anybody. The whole point is inclusion. And if you support equality in any way, you're welcome to join the chamber. And that's what you're saying with the allies is a very important point. All money is green and spends the same. And at the same time, I don't want to have all of my money going to places that don't equally support me or wouldn't hire me. It's a good point. It's not something that I would like to spend my dollars. When people invest in a company, when you purchase stock or you buy into a company, if that company supports things like this, I think it's easier for people to invest in it. Now, we've always seen people in the public sphere, they're serving publicly, and gun rights advocates who invest in rifle companies and ammunition companies, they're being ostracized by their own supporters because they have portfolios that include companies that sell weapons and ammunition. So if you invest even in a diverse portfolio, you could be singled out of somebody who doesn't support the right side of history. And in this case, if you're part of this group, you're actually adding to your bottom line when it comes to an investment portfolio. People are going to buy into this. And it's a good point that we'll take up right after the break. Because we do, it's a good point, Sonny. We're supporting equality and diversity in the workplace. That doesn't require a label. It requires just a will and good will. So I'm Winston Welch, and this is out and about on Think Tech Live streaming network series. And I am here today, delighted to be talking with Sonny Monteiro and Dave Stevens, founding board members of the Hawaii Rainbow Chamber of Commerce. And we'll be back in a minute. Do you like my pineapple? So stay tuned for more of the story. Hawaii, you can watch my show every other Tuesday at 2 p.m. We will bring you entertainment, educational, and also we'll tell you what is happening right here within our community. Think Tech, Hawaii, Aloha. Hello, everyone. I'm DeSoto Brown, the co-host of Human Humane Architecture, which is seen on Think Tech, Hawaii every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. And with the show's host, Martin Despeng, we discuss architecture here in the Hawaiian Islands and how it not only affects the way we live, but other aspects of our life, not only here in Hawaii, but internationally as well. So join us for Human Humane Architecture every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. on Think Tech, Hawaii. Won't you buy me? Hi, we're back for a ride. I'm Winston Welch with the pineapple coming out of my head. I'm gonna sit to the side so you can see this. I'm on Think Tech live streaming network series talking with Sunny Monteiro and Dave Stevens, a couple of the amazing founding board members of the Hawaii Rainbow Chamber of Commerce. So welcome back. Thank you. I do love our logo. I'm proud of our logo. It's cheerful and happy. It sure is. So we are actually having a launch next week on Monday, June 25th. Can you tell us a little bit about that and where, when, why, how we get into that? Yes, so it is a Meet the Chamber event. We're very excited to host it. Anybody that thinks that they wanna be a member that is a member, board members, inclusionists, all welcome, all are welcome here, as is our theme. It's gonna be a Gordon Biersch. That's gonna be on Monday, June 25th from 5.30 to 7 p.m. We'll have Pupus available. Please come, please be a friend. Do make sure that you RSVP online. That would be very helpful. But we can't wait to see that. Gotta have enough food. Gotta have enough food. Gotta have a good chill. Gotta have enough food. We ought to tell our mainland people, if you're coming out here for a visit and you just happen to be here on June 25th, please come by, free food, but please response. We have enough to feed you. And it happens at the famous Aloha Tower. Yeah, it's a great location. And we're gonna be having some pretty exciting announcements there. I think we can probably preview some of them. One is that we're offering some specials of membership. Huge. That's huge. So what are a couple things that we're gonna be doing there? So we're gonna be upgrading memberships from our base level, our bronze level. Anybody that getting any level. So from bronze, you'll be upgraded to silver, silver to gold, gold to platinum, et cetera. So it's a great opportunity. It literally doubles the value of your chamber. The membership levels have huge events. There are some available at a lower level if it's not something that is super foreseeable for you right now. But there's no better time to join. Along with the free upgrade, you also come in as a founding member, which is a title that you will always keep. It says that you were there from the beginning and we're there to help through the whole line. So it's a great time to come in right at the beginning. Okay, and we're gonna extend memberships through the end of December for people that join now as well next year so that you'll get a little bit value. Thank you for joining early. And as we're learning how to tailor some of our offerings to you. So I think there's a, we're also gonna have some really great announcements, which I can probably preview as University of Phoenix is going to be offering a Toastmasters group for the Hawaii Rainbow Chamber of Commerce to have us develop our speaking and public, yeah, public speaking skills. So who can help from that so we don't trip over our words? And that's already on the calendar website. If they look at our calendar on the hawaiirainbowchamber.org website, that's already there. It is already there, but we have been piggybacking thus far onto the another group. So after that, we will have our own group and University of Phoenix is a great founding member of the chamber as well. We're gonna be having an exciting announcement actually from the Small Business Administration as well. So I'm looking forward to that. We'll be meeting other new members of the chamber and all the members of the board there too. So we'll be open there from about five o'clock onwards to welcome people. And like you said, heavy poopoos and a no host bar and it should be a great time. So please do come out and meet the chamber. You'll meet these lovely folks and others as well. So- And we're all fun. Yeah, we are all fun. Sure. It's fun to hang out with us. Pineapple's coming out of our head. This is our shortage of a lot. Woo. Our shortage of a lot. So as long as it's up here, we can see we're part of the NGLCC. So this is a national organization and it's one of our benefits of membership, which is that we can get certified as diversity suppliers, minority diversity suppliers. So what does that mean of it's that fair-minded governments and corporations have literally hundreds of billions of dollars that they allocate towards minority diversity spend. And you gotta be certified to get this. So we are the sole certifier here in Hawaii but as benefit of membership, you get that waived. And it's just one of the many benefits of membership that we have that maybe we can touch on a few of them under that colorful graphic that we had there. But that's one and there's a wonderful meeting that happens this year in Philadelphia. So if you're able to join the chamber and come out to Philadelphia, there's a, I think this year, Martha Stewart's gonna be a speaker and Adam Rapone's gonna be a speaker. But it's just a love fest of about 1,000, 1,200 people from all around the world that come in and they're just there to build better chambers for networking, you know, personal development. And they're just super nice people as well. So the other benefits of membership that we have here, I think we might be able to touch on some of these. What do we call those? The benefits of membership. Benefits of membership. It's tricky wording. It's tricky wording. We're still working that out. So networking is, maybe if you can find the other one in there, Ray, so we got networking. So one of our networking events, that's perfect. Is that starting off next week on the 25th. So if people wanna find out about this, they can go to our website or our Facebook page. Yes, absolutely. Facebook is at Facebook, LinkedIn, Hawaii Rainbow Chamber. You can find us on any of those things that all the invitations are there with a link to the evite, which you are more than welcome to RSVP for. It is a free event. And it's gonna be a heck of a good time. And we've also got it on event bright. So people could search by event bright, they could search by evite. You could put in Hawaii Rainbow Chamber. You could probably just put in Rainbow and search from there and it'll pop up. We've got a member directory listing. So what's the purpose of the member directory? Well, if you wanna reach out to other companies that also feel the same way as you do, they have an inclusive nature and they wanna be part of this community. They're listed there. If they're members of our community, go out and use their services. If you really wanna know how to go and find a business that is part of the LGBTQ community or supporters, you could find them in their directory. I guess that's a real great benefit of membership is whatever you can do to increase your bottom line, but also to let the community know when we walk in and they say, oh, my wife and I, whether you're a woman or a man, you're gonna be treated equally with respect and they're just gonna say, oh, okay, yeah, this is, what's our situation? Rather than, oh, I'm not, right. Right, it's absolutely huge. Anybody that's part of the community knows that there's always a stumble on words when you introduce your same-sex partner. And the point is to go without explanation and even more so to go without being discriminated against. So if you walk into a place, you're not gonna have to wonder whether or not they're gonna bake your cake or not. You don't need to go through the whole process. You don't need to fall in love with a product or a service that you're absolutely in love with and then get to the end and then they say, you know what, we don't serve your kind here. So I think that's the main point is that we don't need to juggle through these things. If you are a business that is in the directory, all the LGBTQ plus community knows that their business, their money, their services, their everything is welcome there and that is absolutely huge. And if you're part of the community, you know that that is a tremendous advantage. It just saves a lot of shame, a lot of heartache, a lot of pain. We can jump right to that rather than having to get to the bottom line and then find out that we're not welcome. Yeah. Now this can add to the bottom line of 70% of our business here in the state, I think is tourism based. So if people come here from other states and other countries and they are part of the LGBTQ plus community, they can go to our directory and they can find businesses that support what they wanna do. And so the more members we get, the more people that are in our business directory, the easier it is for people to come and just have a good time without having to hunt down a business that supports them. We don't ever wanna exclude anyone that comes to our place of aloha. Yeah, I think I mean a lot of that, you hear anecdotally that a lot of straight women love to go to gay bars because they can feel comfortable and relaxed. And but I think that's true in general that fair-minded people wanna support businesses that if all things are equal and you have a choice of joining a company that's supported or buying a product or service and like Dave, you were saying, if it's local and it's in your price range, you're gonna buy the local here, especially in Hawaii. You wanna support your community. You wanna support the things that you value as well. So I think that's, it's a key and I should get out our website too, which is highrainbowchamber, hirainbowchamber.org, where people can find a whole bunch of information and we're rolling out stuff all the time. But you can look that up in Google and it always comes up. Hawaii Rainbow Chamber always comes up with the right website. We're at the top. We're at the top. Okay, so we're gonna be having a lot of business builder workshops. For example, our own Dave is going to be teaching someone cybersecurity and scaring them with Jesus' hand. Right, so... Copy technology, you know, that's what we do. We scare the crap out of people, that's what we're supposed to do. But these workshops are about how to set up your business in a safe and secure way. So you don't fall victim to some of the malware that's out there and some of the attacks that are going on. So we'll be offering some of those workshops to help people set up their networks and their Wi-Fi routers and their point of sale systems because you can't always afford to bring in a big company to do these massive upgrades and put all these secure features in. Sometimes you have to do it on your own and so we're there to help. And so password 123 is... Yeah, always use that. Yeah, always try. Like SpaceBoss? Yeah, yeah. So we've also got a lot of other things here as we're quickly running out of time but we're gonna have great speaker events, lots of educational workshops. We're gonna have regular networking things too. That will take place throughout the day. Morning, afternoon, evening, as we develop and we find out what our members have. And we listened to our members and other people and we took a huge survey of people at the Pride event. I remember we said, give us your ideas. Right, yeah. So we're listening to our community to say here's what we want in this chamber. And I think that's part of what we have is we're listening, we wanna do right by the members and we also wanna be a voice in the community so that people, whether it's politicians or corporations or whatever, can come to us and say, yeah, I need some help in this. I know anybody. Right, I don't understand this issue. Right, can you help us out? And so that's exactly what we're looking to do. And I think one of the neatest things about this is that the meaningful connections that we're able to make out of this. I got to get to know the two of you really well and that's been a real joy for me and in this world where we're so cyber connected, when we sit down and we work on an issue that's important to us, it's a different way that we can connect with others and I think we, especially now we long for connection that's meaningful indeed. That's very sure. And working on something that's towards the common good so that's for me I think one of the, I love the community aspect of it but fundamentally we're a chamber of commerce so we're all of this stuff and pineapple's coming out of our head. All part of it. So we do welcome people to come next Monday, June 25th, Gordon Bearsh, 5.30 at Aloha Tower Marketplace and also if you park in the University of Phoenix garage at Topa Tower they will validate your parking. And that's right across the street. It is, which is another thing for our friends at University of Phoenix for that as well as all of our early supporters and members and for those of you out there who are thinking about it come by and see what we're like and meet us and we'll talk story and see that you are indeed welcome and we will help you and support you in every way that we can. So with that I have been delighted to have you guys on the show and I really appreciate you coming here. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. Yes and we will obviously come back again and do this more. We'll have a debrief afterwards and we'll talk about what we've learned and all of that. Okay. Okay, sounds good. That sounds great. I feel like I should come share it. You want to be in this pineapple? There's a pineapple coming out of your head. Anyway, I really appreciate you guys. And we will have a lot of fun next week but for right now we are out of time and have to wrap it up. So I am Winston Wilson. This is out and about on Think Tech Live streaming network series. We have been talking with Sonny Monteiro and Dave Stevens, two of our amazing founding board members of the Hawaii Rainbow Chamber of Commerce. You can find out more information at highrainbowchamber.org or on the Facebook page or on the LinkedIn page. We welcome your feedback. Thanks for tuning in and Aloha.