 Welcome to this panel on good for business, the power of being out. Welcome to all our guests and especially to our panelists, a distinguished group of people who can contribute in lots of different ways. And I'd just like to step into the topic, jump into the topic with a quick look on how the situation looks like we are talking about. So in the first place we have still 77 countries criminalizing homosexuality, according to the United Nations and seven of those implementing the death penalty even. And so looking at this question we're going to be debating today from an economic point of view. There is of course a moral case, there is of course an ethical case, but also an economic case for anti-discrimination policies. And the figures we can take into account, they differ but still interesting, the cost of homophobia ranges from about 0.1% to 1.7% of GDP. That's what some studies about the situation say worldwide. And we could be losing a total of up to 190 billion of GDP according to a UN study. So that's quite enough of a reason to discuss this topic today. I would just like to shortly introduce myself. My name is Miriam Mechel, I'm the chief editor of Wiltschaftswoche, that's the German weekly business magazine. And I'm going to be introducing our panel with starting first question to everybody so that we can be right jumping into the debate. And whenever one of our guests has a question or would like to contribute, please feel free to do so because then the discussion gets much more lively. So let's start with you, Sander. Sander van Nordende is groove-cheap executive products at Accenture. You have been out at work since the beginning of your career, if I may put it like that, since 1987. You've been voted among the top 10 outstanding financial times LGBT leaders many times. LGBT will be our phrase to address today. It's including everything, you could also say LGBTQI, but I just want to keep it short. And so my first question to you, Sander, is the importance of being out at work. Can you describe it from a personal perspective what your experience is and how you can encourage other people to follow your example? Well, I always say if you want to bring the best of you to work, I mean, you should not have anything to hide. I think that's sort of in one sentence says it all. And I would always encourage people to come out at work and in their personal environment because ultimately you can be more of yourself, you can bring more of yourself and you can focus, as I always say, you can focus on the work at hand and not on something else and it is hiding your personal life or playing a game because you will miss out on the focus of working, getting the best out of you and basically doing a good job. I can amplify that actually because I wasn't as brave as Sander. I was in the closet for 18 years of my career and then decided that I just couldn't be there anymore and I can tell you firsthand that it takes a lot of energy to hide and that's energy that we can be devoting to our work and my work and my career frankly accelerated significantly because I became much more creative, much more open and the results have been incredible both personally and professionally. So I reiterate everything you say. Lisa Sherman, president and CEO of the Advertising Council. Would you go as far as to say being in the closet reduces productivity in a measurable way? I think it has to. It certainly did for me personally because you're telling half your story. I sort of mastered the black art of pronoun puppetry. I traded he and he for she and I for we because I was afraid of the implications. I read the tea leaves within the company where I was that it wasn't going to be safe and so I wasn't fully myself. So that energy that the amount of brain power it takes to sort of compartmentalize your life has to take away from productivity. There's another question we all accept and understand that mental health issues render significant impact on companies and we all know the importance of that. The impact on individuals of compartmentalizing their lives in such a way that they have to do this, that they have to hide who they are actually contributes to isolation, mental health issues, substance abuse, addiction issues all of which we understand are bad for business. So it makes sense whether in business or government that we do everything we can to enable people to be open and honest about who they are. When you think of it and how often I mean I got married in Canada in 2007 when we passed same sex marriage legislation in 2005 we have twin daughters now who are three years old in February. One of the things I found is once you become married once you as you have children everyone at work talks about their spouses or they talk about their children and I never realized that until I was a headchild and now I go around with my iPhone showing people pictures and things of that all the time but the point is there are certain connections between people that are denied to people who feel compelled to be closeted and that's bad for them but it's bad for their employers and that obviously represents a cost to business. Scott Bryson, Treasury Board President Canada you're the first openly gay minister federal cabinet minister in the Canadian government but Canada has a lot of members of parliament being openly out so Canada is doing something right. What is Canada doing right? Well I think the legal framework first of all and you mentioned that the number of countries in which homosexuality is still a criminal. So in Canada it was 1968 when then Prime Minister Trudeau decriminalized homosexuality back in 1968. I was born in 1967 so I spent the first year of my life as a criminal. I was, it was terrible. Then the Charter of Rights in 1982 which again took minority rights out of the hands of majority rules and put in place a legal framework. That led to same-sex pension benefits in the 1990s within companies, within governments and ultimately a same-sex marriage in 2005. But there are still barriers. I mean I was the first openly gay cabinet minister in Canada in 2004. We were then, we lost the 2006 election. We're in opposition for almost 10 years and I became Canada's second openly gay cabinet minister in 2015 because well there allegedly were gay members of the previous government's cabinet allegedly. There's only one way you can know for sure and I didn't do that. But the point is that there are still barriers in certain employer groups to being out. And the fact, you know I used to, and look if I may, I used to say to some of my colleagues in other parties in some cases who were closeted but you know why don't you come out and they would say well I am out and I said well you're not really out and I said well everyone knows I'm out but I said you've never said you're out. And being out is when a 14 year old kid who's contemplating suicide because he or she is being bullied in their school doesn't follow through with that because they know there are people in leadership positions, in business, in government, in academia who are like them. And that's being out and I think there's a responsibility as well as making your life better you're gonna make a big difference for other people. Let me get back to one point. Does it mean that governments need to take the first step to open the path by regulation for companies and organizations to follow up? I think governments always ought to try to lead in areas of social progress. I think governments always ought to do that. But I think companies should too. Our Canadian companies, our Canadian banks are incredibly progressive. You go to a gay pride parade in Toronto or Montreal and I don't think there are any of the Canadian banks who don't have floats in them. And I mean they're doing it in part because they know the benefit of having in their workplaces open and creative environments within which people can be themselves. Talk to a millennial and ask them where they wanna work. Do they wanna work in a place where there's no diversity? Do bright talent, and regardless of their sexual orientation, millennials wanna work in a place where they're surrounded by people who are different, who are diverse and bring to the workplace that experience and... Who inspire? Yeah, that's right. By being different. The other thing, I mean in terms of diversity in general, our cabinet is the first Canadian cabinet in our country's history to be gender balanced. And a lot of people say to me, well that's really good for women. I know this is often, but in terms of it's actually, that's the wrong argument. I would make the same argument in terms of diversity, in terms of sexual orientation. It's better because you have people of different perspectives making decisions. And those people, those groups that are more diverse will make better decisions because they have different experiences. Can I just say one thing on governments? I mean governments should always lead, but they hardly ever do. When it comes to these kinds of issues, I mean we've seen it in the US, it took Obama four years to sort of elegantly make the turn halfway. And it's logical, so I'm not saying it shouldn't be like that, but the fact of the matter is governments are also following what's happening in society. And that's why what companies do, what NGOs, organizations do, organizations like Human Rights Campaign, I mean that is so important to persuade governments to also jump on the bandwagon and do the right thing. Let's get Eric Villain into the discussion. You're the director of the Center for Gender-Based Biology and Human Genetics at the UCLA. And I'm not sure whether I put it right, but you're saying that your research shows that sexual orientation is based on genetics. It's not just a decision for a specific kind of lifestyle. That's true? Right, it is true. I'm a pediatrician and a geneticist, as you said, working at UCLA, and I've been researching and caring for individuals who have gender variations or sexual variations from intersex to kids with gender nonconformity or gender dysphoria who don't feel well in the body that they were born with. But part of my research has been on what determines sexual orientation. It's quite controversial research because there are different opinions of whether this research should be done at all. And we can discuss that. However, I mean there is ample evidence after, I would say a couple decades of research that sexual orientation is a trait that one is born with rather than the consequence of the environment or a so-called lifestyle choice. In the U.S., and the arguments for this are multiple from genetic studies of families with more than one gay man. So there is a genetic effect in a number of families and one could trace this to several chromosomes such as DX chromosome or chromosome eight. There is also differences in brain structure that are undeniable and that are added arguments that there is some biological underpinning to sexual orientation. Now in the U.S., this kind of research has a lot of implications. First of all, it's only recent that Americans think that one is born gay rather than made gay. It's a razor thin majority of 51% of people who think that. In the 80s, it was about 15% of people who thought that. So, and it's a consequence of times changing and more millennials, et cetera, but also science has made progress. Now this kind of research also has quite a bit of legal and political implications, especially in the United States where the concept of immutability has been an important tenet to bring people to the social table. That was the case for civil rights cases for African-Americans, say, well, you cannot change the color of your skin. Therefore, we must, in a sense, bring you to the societal table. And for gay rights and equal marriage, it has been an argument in the proceedings of Proposition Eight in California and, of course, the Supreme Court decision recently. Of course, I was born in Paris and in Europe, there is a different vision of this research that's more feared in the sense that there are possible misuse of the research such as selective abortion for gay people, et cetera. So it's a complex topic. As a scientist, I think that we should know more about who we are as humans, and that's my primary goal. Let's open up this idea to the panel. Does it mean that we still have too few debates about what it means to be gay and how to include diversity in those ideas in those ways you've been pointing out in our corporate world? Just on Eric's research and the research with the clear genetic link for sexual orientation, my view as an individual, and I guess as a policymaker, is that I like evidence-based decision-making, and I like to know the science. And so I think the arguments that some have against what the work you're doing, I personally would be, is the arguments are wrong-headed. We should have the knowledge and the scientific understanding. Building the legal framework around that, and the ethics around that, is a separate question. And if there are concerns about how that can be used, then we ought to be thinking of that from a legal and public policy perspective. But I think we should delineate, in my opinion, between the two. Let's know the facts, the science, and then let's build a legal framework around the ethics of that that is consistent with our values. I think that makes sense, in my perspective. I also think that we've seen in the United States that it's the folks that disagree with the research that are creating legislation on that basis to discriminate against LGBT people. And of late, it's the business community who has stood up quite strongly to say, we don't buy it. And by the way, we're going to use our economic power to really push against that legislation to ensure it doesn't exist. I mean, there was anti-gay legislation in North Carolina and Ohio and Indiana and a guy like Mark Benioff from Salesforce basically said, we're pulling out. To the tune of millions and tens of millions of dollars, the NCAA, the NFL, the NBA, these are all institutions who are saying, not here. If you guys aren't going to be inclusive of everybody, we're pulling out. And that is where it hurts states and that is where you get their attention. And if I may, going in the same direction, it's not just in the U.S., and we can tell you, and everyone knows the story of what's been happening in Uganda where President Mussolini signed in 2014 an anti-gay law that basically would condemn same-sex sexual activity to life in prison. And he did that, but before he signed, there was such an international uproar that he decided, he said, well, if scientists convince me that this is not a lifestyle's choice, I will not sign the law. So he appointed a group of experts all chosen by his Minister of Health from Uganda, a group of Ugandan experts who, to my knowledge, have never published anything on the topic. And they all unanimously concluded that this was a complete choice, a deliberate choice of sexual activity that could be, if it was done by choice, it could be undone easily. So then the President signed the law. In response to this, I was engaged with a few other researchers. In response to President Mussolini that he may never have read, but it was a 50-page scholarly review in a psychological journal and it was called Psychology for the Public Interest, really sort of dismantling every single argument from the panel from Uganda. And it had some impact, but I would say a minimal impact. The real impact came when businesses started to say, we're pulling out of Uganda. Richard Branson from Virgin said, we're not gonna do any more business with Uganda. And then suddenly there were some declarations from President Mussolini saying, well, maybe we should rethink those entire laws. And it's just, you know, so it's very interesting. It's pushed from different directions. The businesses have probably more power than the science, but I think we're all pushing this in direction. That's a good thing. That's an interesting, I mean, it's a great story. But is the whole notion of, okay, the genetics, is it genetic or not? What is the business case? You know, I mean, I'm willing to make the argument if that sort of serves the good cause, but I mean, it's a bit disappointing in a way that we need those arguments because it is about individual people who have the same rights as all the other individual people. I couldn't agree more with that. So, and but if those are not, let's say those values are not shared everywhere and we need to bring in some of the, you know, the business case arguments, I mean, we should absolutely be doing that if it helps. But it is disappointing that it's needed. Yeah, but that's, in a way, it's an inclusive approach as well to bring in the business argument, to really produce an impact on the business world. Just to stick with the Ugandan case because there's one more aspect, the World Bank had a loan of 19 million dollars at stake and the first time they decided, it was the first time they decided not to give the loan because of this Ugandan legislation. The question now is, why don't they do it on a regular basis? Like the World Bank thought corruption 20 years ago systematically, why don't they do it with LGBT rights? Any answer to that? I guess you should ask the World Bank. Any comment on that? Oh, I would love them to do that. And I think it was probably already a brave move because you should not underestimate sending one signal, every signal how big or small it is helps. So first of all, I appreciate what the World Bank has done. Should we push them a little bit more to maybe make it a policy and apply it a bit more broadly? Absolutely yes, but we should also recognize progress goes in steps and not in all at once. Yeah, and I think it's that progress and being, I don't want to use the term or the word patient, but there is sometimes, if you look at certain countries, if you look at the religious realities in some countries and the roles of churches, the strengths of certain churches in those communities, helping them build their economies, helping them move their people forward. Economic engagement ultimately can lead to an opportunity to engage socially and on issues like this. So I always, it's very easy to say, well, we ought not to support anything economically or trade with a country like that. Well, maybe if you actually engage them economically over a period of time, you can change them socially or give them an opportunity because the degree to which our citizenry are connected in companies, our companies are connected. Globalization actually, if you look at a positive force of globalization is the connectivity of people who live in regressive environments, interacting with people who live in progressive environments and at some point demanding the same rights. So whether it's the globalized economies or simply the connectivity of people through technology, the sharing of experiences will lead to them demanding more rights from their respective government. So I would not argue in favor of blanket that we should not be supporting or investing in any of these countries. I think we have to be a little careful about that. Yeah, and maybe I think there is another role that business can play and is playing and that is leading by example and that is making sure the values that you have in the company are shared throughout the business in the case of extension in the 45 countries we operate in and giving the message to the people in all those countries that being gay is okay and it is okay to come together and set up an employee resource group and LGBT network and support each other and say that the values are negotiable within the company. We always need to deal with the outside world. But I think the impact and actually there was also, there was a specific question from Vice President Joe Biden when we had a session with him last year here during the World Economic Forum. He said, don't underestimate what business can do in that respect. It was much more than you think and all the international businesses and we had a good discussion this morning with companies such as E&Y, Microsoft, Dow, they're all committed to do this in the right way and it makes a tremendous impact. Can you embellish a bit on what you exactly do at Accenture? You said an LGBT network? Well, we do a number of things. It starts very simple with the policy and the policies and the values. That's sort of I would say almost table stakes. Then we stimulate our LGBT people in the countries to set up LGBT networks because what works really well is people getting together, sharing their experiences and bringing the level of comfort of themselves and of the rest of the organization sort of to the next level. So stimulating that and giving money and supporting that is really important. The other thing that we're doing is when it's back to the policies, we're doing benchmarking across all our countries. You know, of course our policies are global but do we have same-sex benefits in all of our countries? Not yet, sometimes because it's impossible, sometimes because we didn't care or we didn't look at it. So we're just sort of pushing the agenda across the board and then last but not least, we have dialogues with our leaders in the countries because it's not always the case that our leaders and it's true for other multinational companies are the most enlightened people there are. And that is okay because that's how the world works but having a dialogue with them and say, you know, this is what we want to do in Accenture and we want you to support that agenda and we want you to help your local people to make that happen. I mean, that is a very important part of the game because if the local, I mean, I can say to the people in India you can do this but if our chairwoman in India is not supportive of that, I mean, you know it's not gonna happen. So it's those elements of policies that we all bring to the table. Lisa, you did something very interesting. You helped launch and lead Logo TV which is an advertiser supported commercial TV channel geared towards the LGBT community. Can you give us some insight how that worked and how this might also be an example for leading by example? Sure, you know, I really believe in the power of the media and to change culture. I think Logo as a business, as a cable business was launched in part because we had shows like Will and Grace who brought in the imagination of people and told real stories that I think created a level of acceptance that made way for us to launch our channel back in 2005. Very different environment than we were in today. I remember going around trying to secure advertisers for our business and we had three very brave advertisers who were with us at launch and now there are over 300 advertisers who have joined because they see the business case for it. It's good for business. They understand the buying power of this audience. They understand the LGBT community are early adopters of technology and they go to the movies more on opening weekend than anybody and set the trends for movies. And so we were able to make a real business case and create a real business reaching out to this community. But as important philosophically talking about values we felt like we had an opportunity to and one of our values was that we weren't going to perpetuate stereotypes. And if you think about it the gay characters 10, 15, 20 years ago were quite stereotyped, right? It was sort of the effeminate gay guy or the psychopathic crazy gay guy the very butch athletic woman and they go on and on. We wanted to tell real stories about real people so that we could all see ourselves on television. And I think that the media in general has played an important role in the broader acceptance that we are now seeing in culture. And I think we can do even more through our advertising that we do through the television shows and the characters that we create in TV and movies. And I think that that's an area that I think will help continue to accelerate progress. But you think of a TV series like Transparent for example what difference does it make in your opinion? I think it's extraordinary. I think that if you sort of trace some of the larger television shows over time like a Will and Grace was a very different show than a modern family. But this narrative has evolved over time. So now we're talking about Transparent where the lead character is questioning what body he was born in and now going through a transition. That show though is not just about that. That show is about I think a dysfunctional Jewish family, classically. And one of the characters just happens to be questioning their sex, sort of what gender they should be. That's real. That's real life. We are all multifaceted people. One aspect of who we are is that we are gay. And so I think when we can start to tell real stories about that and dimensionalize these characters I think it helps broaden the way everybody thinks about us. I think that that impact of popular culture has been so significant and continues to be. For instance, in families where there's a teen dealing, struggling with these issues. For that family, the only gay person that they experience may be one of those shows. And what that means in terms of creating a more comfortable environment within which their teen can potentially deal with this. The family can actually deal. I think it has a really very significant and positive impact. At the very launch, our positioning was be yourself, see yourself, be yourself. If you can see yourself on television in an accurate reflection of who you are, you can be more of who you are, which is the point you made about being your authentic self. And so I think it contributes in a very meaningful way. Some of the tourism campaigns have been brilliant. For instance, Israel, Israel and Tel Aviv have done the most magnificent and clever advertising campaigns. And in Canada, there are cities like Toronto with tourism strategies towards the LGTB community. In Canada, we say the LGTB Q2 community because indigenous Canadians, their spiritual belief is that gay or lesbian, it's two-spirited. So we actually add the two. It's like an alphabet soup. I think we should come up with a better word to sort of... It sounds bureaucratic. It becomes too complicated. I just remember when we were just gay. Right. So you know if you go on Facebook and you choose your gender, you have more than 50 choices. It's a menu and it's quite remarkable. And I think it's a reflection of the newer millennial generation who just doesn't want to be boxed in anything. So you can be agender, pen-gender, gender-neutral, asexual, pan-sexual. It's quite fascinating, I think. I find it confusing sometimes with... No, but even heterosexuals confuse me now. This whole metrosexual thing. I mean, I'm glad I'm not single anymore. I would get into some terrible situations now, but... I think that could be like here, a badge, where you explain your sexual orientation in a... When you have these... It used to be that straight men weren't that clever in terms of how they dressed. That's right, but Europeans wrote it. You know, there used to be this website, Gay or Euro Trash. You remember that? You had pictures and you had to decide whether this person was gay or European. Okay, so I feel very un... I feel very un-sophisticated now. So just talking about millennials and LGBT, a colleague said to me last week, because I was talking about this panel and thinking about it, and she said, well, you know, millennials are really driving a lot of this change. She said, well, my son, who happens to be 14, he said, I think LGBT stands for, let's be gay together. That's a good one. It's a question of how you grow up with the experiences. Again, leading by example, friends of mine have two daughters, and they're very proud. Each time at school, they ask, where's your father? They say, I don't have a father, but I have two mothers. And that's something positively differentiating towards other children. It might turn around one day when they grow older and have their years of difficult self-reinvention, but still, at the moment, it's like that. I would like to, yeah, please. Please get back to the, because we were joking a little bit about it, and I think we have to be careful in doing that, because we're doing the same thing as other people were doing to us 20 years ago. And that's why I say it would be nice if we would have a better word, because that would simplify things. But sort of, there are still many issues around transgenders. People get harassed, difficult to find a home. Even, that's just, I mean, that's one group, and then there's other groups. So I think we should be thoughtful and mindful about how we talk about it, how we think about it, how we internalize it, because it is sometimes new, and we also need to learn about it. And the sensitivities, and I speak from experience, I'm the board member of Out & Equal, and I was doing a little speech at the Gala evening, and I think I used the word sexual orientation, and that's actually a word to avoid, because you should use sexual identity. So, and that might even be to some people. And so it's becoming a bit complicated, but I think being thoughtful about it and trying to do our best I think is an important thing. I'm totally with you, but let me nevertheless challenge you in that, because in the situation where we start to really get nervous about each and every phrase we use, then the impression we set up by that is something very, very tense, and not very lively. No, I think there is a risk of the whole political correctness, so to speak, and nobody dares to say anything anymore. I think also people should not take themselves too seriously, including gay people, so we can make a joke every now and then, that's fine. It depends a little bit in what context and what the joke actually is, of course, but I think it's, you're right. It's finding the right balance between trying to serve everybody all times versus not making it too complicated. Well, one thing on that, and I've worked in investment banking and politics and government needs, and there aren't necessarily in the past, we're not necessarily the most gay friendly places, and I guess it's a habit, perhaps it was a survival mechanism of humor, and it actually, I have found over my life in terms of the colleagues with whom I work, it actually has helped significantly in put them at ease and actually create, it has certainly helped me, and I was elected last election in my riding with 72% of the popular vote in a rural and small town riding, and which people typically, and I wanna, sometimes we create, there's a cultural condescension, for instance, among urbanites, and we look at a group of people, for instance, ruralites, so we believe them to be less progressive than ourselves. My experience has been, and I've been elected seven times, and is that when you give people the opportunity to be open and progressive, when you believe in their better angels, more often than not, they will rise to the occasion, and by the same token, if leaders, business or government, choose to do the opposite and appeal to people's dark side, they might just do that too, but I think there's a leadership role. Just a funny story in 2007, when we got married and on our property in a little community of less than 200 people in Cheveree, Hans County, Nova Scotia, on the Bay of Fundy, there's tourism promotion right there. The national media descended on our little community to try to find people who would say negative things, and they went to a little house, a little tiny house at the end of my road, and they went into the fellow, knocked on the door, and they said, this is exactly, this fellow will have something negative to say, and they said, what do you think of Scott Bryson marrying this man this weekend here? And the fellow said it, he was quoted in the newspapers. It ain't no big deal, it's just two fellows getting married. And so the point is, let us really believe in the ability of all kinds of people, in all kinds of communities, in all kinds of industries. We have this idea too that some industries are gonna be less friendly than others. Well, let's push that a little bit. I think the millennials are going to be a force of remarkable change and power. And I think employers who have regressive policies or who fail to embrace diversity are not going to be successful in attracting what is the best and brightest generation in our history. So I think that that is something that is gonna be really important. It's becoming a part of employer branding to be diverse and to offer the best to each and everybody. Well, it's branding, I wouldn't call it branding. It is showing the company that you wanna be and that you are. And when you apply for a job, you go on the website, and if you only see one type of people and not being your type, if you only see men and your woman, if you only see white folks and you are a person of color, you're not gonna apply. I do think being an inclusive company is a good idea. It goes beyond branding. It's a hiring and retention strategy that is critical as we look at millennials who really are being very discerning about who they work for. And this issue of equality is incredibly important to them. Let's open up to the floor, to the audience, and take your questions. And please introduce yourself shortly so that we know whom we're listening to. Any questions to this panel? Asking questions, also a way of coming out differently, but still, this just fits to this occasion. No questions, that's interesting. We either answered everything so comprehensively or we bored them to death. I don't know. Then let's stick to the millennial. I think you have a question. Thank you so much. I'm gonna have a question. I just have a comment. That's fine as well. Diane Baker from the Washington, DC area. And I just wanna thank all the panelists for being here and thank the World Economic Forum for creating this opportunity. Absolutely. I'm here from the non-profit sector. And we are trying to make LGBT a presence on our board and kind of echoing something that was said earlier about leading by example. And so I feel I'm here naively just trying to look at all the resources in this amazing place here at Davos and I just thank you. I've been writing down quotes and references to publications and resources, so thank you. I've already gotten a lot out of this. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, I'm Randall Peterson. I'm a professor at London Business School and I run our leadership institute, research institute. We've been doing research on boards from a variety of NGOs, not-for-profits and big corporates. And we asked them about diversity and they said yes, yes, yes. What's your priority in terms of diversity in the genders top of the list? Then there's something about race and culture. I mean, you asked them how many prioritize LGBT and the answer is less than 1%. How can we change that? I think very practically every big company and I would say most small companies have LGBTQ2 members working for them. They do and they have for a long time. So the question is do you want to maximize, if you want to do it from a very business focused as a business school when you're talking to those companies, do they want to maximize the full capacity and the productivity of those people? Do they want to do everything they can to reduce mental health issues and prevent isolation and all the impacts of that? So there's a very practical reason why they need to embrace diversity. Do they want to attract millennials? I mean, so there's part of what, I mean in business schools I would think that teaching this and the companies with whom you interact and ought to understand the basic why it's good for business from a human resource perspective and from a productivity perspective, you don't want to create spaces that aren't diverse. I mean, you- Yeah, and maybe because I think your question was also how can we get more LGBT folks on boards? Yeah, that's specifically what I was interested in. They may have very progressive policies about employment, but they're not looking for anything on the board level. So I would say, I think, I mean, you're just giving me sort of my next mission, maybe not that we have this panel. I'm looking for something new. I think there is a lot more education probably to be done whether it's with the Institute of Directors or with similar organizations in the various countries. Obviously the average age of boards is probably, well, definitely 50 plus and in some countries 60 plus. So I- 60 plus most likely. Right, yeah, well, so there is work to be done and I think it is a matter of people like us here in the panel and friends and family organizations such as Art & Equal starting to target more boards and say, we think this is important. You ought to think about it. I'm meeting with the chairman of one of the big recruiting firms later today, so I might make the point to him. So I think we have to create a bit of a groundswell because they're not gonna come up with the idea by themselves. Exactly, and there is actually an organization in the States called Quorum, just came together. Are you familiar with them? Focused on identifying great LGBT candidates for boards as a way to start to push in that direction. So that's the kind of initiatives we should take. Absolutely, yeah. There's another question over there. So hi, my name is George, I'm from Hungary and we have a business called Helpers and my question would be, how do you convince businesses to stick to the standards if the government suddenly started to go backwards and kind of threatens businesses unspokenly but like actively, if they keep diversity then they lose business? Yeah, I mean, this is a very tough question and it's not a tough question for me as a leader in the multinational company because we could easily say, well, business in, let's say Kenya, we don't care so much about it anymore but if you're a small or medium-sized business and you get explicit or implicit threats or you get these laws that exclude certain businesses from dealing with the government, I mean, that is a, because then it's all of a sudden threatening your livelihood. So I guess the only thing that you can, I mean, you can stick with your values but beyond a business, I guess you, ultimately it will be a matter of pragmatic navigation and maybe this is, let's say, whilst redirecting your business in another way, I mean, still do some business with it, but so, I mean, try to find a way out by redirecting the business, that's what I would do but this is a very tough question. And it's also, again, what you, Scott, were talking about earlier on that sometimes it's a measure of doing it step by step because if you cut off all the trade relations or the businesses in the respective country then the development and the exchange on those topics even doesn't take place anymore and that's probably detrimental again so it's a really, really tough question. If progressive companies pull out of places like that then you only leave the less progressive company so the question is the importance of economic engagement but at the same time not forgetting about the importance of leadership. It's very easy to say we're gonna stay there because we're, you know, but if you're gonna do that use that opportunity as part of an economy to effect change and citizenry and again when you talk about the importance of millennials and the connectivity of millennials across borders and globally and this is something that I think will drive, is driving and will drive change in terms of markets in terms of consumer demand and in terms of citizens and what they demand from their governments. I think it will drive change. Eric, are you advising governments or corporations on the respective results of your research and how to deal with issues? I try not to. Why is that? Well, because I think scientists should remain neutral and it's the same data can be interpreted completely differently by different types of governments and some of my colleagues in sociology study these kinds of things. If you start advising a government, you're just part of the political process which I don't wanna be because I think the data should speak for themselves. So it's, but I do advise legal firms when they defend LGBT individuals, whether, so I was for instance a, on the trial stand as an expert witness for an entire day for a case of transgender individuals who wanted to get married in the state of Kansas, Leavenworth, very, very conservative city and who had been basically accused of lying in a marriage license application. This was pre-Supreme Four decision and I'd like to say we won because eventually the case was dismissed but so I do those things for individuals or for legal firms but not for governments. Any other questions from the audience? I have one back here. So my name is Jim Federline. I'm the president, chief operating officer at Dow Chemical and I'm out at work openly and I wanna ask a question to Sandra but it can also involve everybody. The power of the employee resource group in exposing larger groups of people to gay and lesbian, bisexual, transgender employees at work I think has made a huge difference in how we deal with this at work but it also provides a benefit to the non-LGBT employee at work. Say the manager who is dealing with an employee who wants to come out and has no idea how to deal with this or the manager who's dealing with a family member who has a son or a daughter who's coming out and has no idea how to deal with this. Many cases they go to that resource group. Can you just share some of your experience at Accenture with what the employee resource group does for the greater population, not just the LGBT employee? I think that's a very good point. Well, I think they put the LGBT subject on the agenda for the company at large and they also build, I mean they're very active in building a network of allies because allies, we haven't actually talked about that yet but allies are really, really important. I think they help us and also senior leadership because not everybody is 100% comfortable the first time when the subject of LGBT comes on the table. And then the employee resource groups give, they talk to their local leaders, they share the issues they run into and I think in terms of the awareness of the local leadership, wherever that is, I think the LGBT ERGs play a very important role. We are almost approaching the end of our session. I would like to do a last round with two questions and beg you for pretty short answers. Sounds a little dangerous. Well, no, no, not at all. What is in your opinion still the most important barrier to the inclusion of LGBT people and what is the most promising measure to change the situation towards more inclusion? Scott? I think that the legal and constitutional frameworks in countries are really important. In Canada, I go back to the Charter of Rights which has forced governments in some cases to deal with those, it's really important. In terms of the way to, how do you change or progress? I think, I speak quite a bit about the millennials, the degree to which we engage millennials in decision making in our organizations, in our businesses, in our governments will have a huge impact on this because even during the same-sex marriage debate, my colleagues, some of them who voted against same-sex marriage, their children, they gave them hell when they went home and it really does have an impact on everybody. When you're a child, when you're the young people in your family look down on you because of your position on an issue like that, that's a vehicle for change. Thanks, Sander. The most important barrier, I think it's three-fold, it's fear of the unknown, it's those who spread the fear and maybe worst of all, those who exploit that. That's the biggest barriers. In terms of the best measures of progress, we have a professor in the Netherlands which is my original home country, I would say, and he's been keeping track of the legal frameworks in all countries around the world and he has a sort of a visualization of how progress has been made in all the countries through the years and it's quite phenomenal if you look back 50 years and where we are now, the progress that has been made and the progress is not going like this, it goes also a little bit like this and I think so those legal frameworks and what's happening because they reflect where the countries are at at that particular point in time, so that's the measure I would look at in terms of how the world makes progress. Okay. I agree with Sander, I think fear is number one and I think a lack of understanding, I think there's some data that says when somebody knows another gay person, it changes the way they think about the subject and so I think we could take some lessons about how to continue this progress from our gay marriage fight in the United States. I think it came down to two things, authentic and honest storytelling about real people and people coming out, so that's personal coming out, it's culture and media and then I think the second is the economic power that we as businesses can exert and governments to really make it hurt if you don't buy in. What a big barrier for me is living in a post-truth world as I call it where nothing matters anymore in terms of facts, I mean in the United States it's becoming quite a poignant and the measure of progress to me the big challenge and the big measure of progress will be the inclusion of the T in LGBT. This is still a major challenge, there are 16 states only in the United States and the District of Columbia that ban employment discrimination based on gender identity. There is high levels of poverty, HIV rates, mental health problems, it's really problematic in the workplace and in society in general and we should really make a big effort on this and big corporations should think about it. Now that we've passed the gain lesbian hurdle, this one is a big one. So we've talked about some very important issues, we talked about regulation and the power of regulation to raise awareness and change things, we talked about the power of businesses, with drawing business from a state like North Carolina for example, you gave that example Lisa, we talked about the difficult balancing of quick progress we all would like to see on the one hand side and doing it step by step to not cut off for example communities from this progress with drawing in economic and business relations on a very broad scale and we put quite a hope load on the millennial generation to change things which doesn't mean that we all couldn't still participate in the progress and could do more by fifth point leading by example and trying to be role models for other people who are still afraid of coming out and bringing the whole identity to the table be it in business or be it in society in general. Thanks to a great panel and thanks to the audience. Have a great day. Thank you.