 I wneud y llunio'r llunio'r llunio bwysig yw'r llunio'r llunio'r llunio'r llunio'r llunio'r llunio'r llunio'r hwyl yn y blynedd yn y golygu. Mae'n meddwl i'r bwysig o'r enthysydd ddod, o bobl yn credu'r cyfnodau sy'n holl yma ymgyrchau'r ffordd. Rydych chi'n golygu ar y cyfrifio? Mae mwynhau, ydw i'n gweld ychydig hwylion. If you just rely on policies, that's not going to change anything. Thank you so much for being here. This is certainly one of my favorite moments here being at Davos, having a conversation with this lovely woman. Thank you for sharing this space and sharing this moment to be here and certainly in a conversation that I certainly believe that there's much needed conversation. Again, thank you. My name is Gina Rosero. I'm a model, I'm a producer, I'm an out-and-proud transgender woman in the world, which is interesting that for so long, and certainly we will be talking about more of that story, about what had happened to me, my journey in coming out and what I'm doing now, but I am joined here with this incredible woman, Jill Aether. She's the chairwoman of Egon Zender. I want to frame this first, I think, in the context of what is happening now globally, especially as companies deal with so many different, as a multinational company, you deal with different contexts when it comes to LGBTI rights, how does it work if a company is very progressive in Western contexts and then they work in local contexts where countries does not fully support LGBTI rights. So we're really going to break those down. And I think there is a study that says that more than half of employees at this moment still, as much as we're having conversations about LGBTI rights, we see it more in culture, still more than half of employees chooses not to fully express their sexual orientation and gender identity at work. There is a 2017 UN AIDS study that basically says it will cost company $100 billion a year for companies that doesn't fully support. These are the costs when you don't support LGBTI rights. Also, I think it's important to have the context. Most of the time when people talk about global LGBTI rights, they usually talk about in many spaces just talking about that there's more than 70 countries all over the world that criminalizes homosexuality. But also, as a proud trans woman myself, I think what usually tends to get lost is a conversation of what happens when we don't talk about transgender rights as well. In many countries all over the world, trans people are not even allowed to exist, meaning most places all over the world there are no policies that could simply change a trans person's name and gender marker under legal documents. So these are the frameworks that we will be talking about. I want to first ask you, Jill, as a leader, as a chairwoman of what are, in your position as a leader, what are some of those moments in your journey that have created change especially when it comes to advocating for LGBTI rights? In Egon Centre we deal with leadership, so it's finding leaders and developing leaders in their teams. So clearly the topics of conversation have generally been about gender diversity. We all talk about more women on boards than in the workplace. And I think this is now becoming a conversation, but in many corporates the conversation has been about gender diversity or ethnic diversity. So I think what we're trying to do is help organisations have the right conversations. So what I would say is if you think about global organisations today, they know that when they're doing the spec for the role that they have, they might say gender. Very, very occasionally they say ethnicity. I have never, in all the time I've been, 23 years in this industry, never had a client say to me, please bring transgender LGBTI to the table. And part of that is difficult, and it's difficult in our industry because LGBTI can be open and very obvious, but actually many times it's invisible, even if they have come out. And so it's quite difficult for us and in the industry you cannot record someone's sexuality and gender mock-up on computers. So you're stuck, you can't search for it. So it's quite a complicated thing for our industry to deal with, but I remember back firmly to my very first year with Egon Zender and the partner who mentored me was a senior partner in New York and he was openly gay and he was probably the best mentor I've ever had. And during that first year I hired two LGBT candidates and to me it was just, well, that's pretty normal. But if I think of the conversations that I've had subsequently, I think a lot of leaders really struggle to know how to have the conversation. They get confused by the terminology, they get embarrassed that they don't know enough and many leaders love to know everything, which is not a recipe for success today. But when they don't, it brings a barrier between. So I think there's a complicated issue for leadership. I like what you said about having the initial partner that you've had and what that meant for you. For me personally, when I moved to New York City, I was born and raised in the Philippines. When I moved to New York City in 2005 I wanted to pursue a modeling career and context is everything. I made the decision in 2005 to go big or go home. You move to New York City if you want to be a fashion model. But at that time there was not an out-trans fashion model. It was not allowed. So you could imagine what that presented for me. Yes, I had a dream. I was born and raised in the Philippines. I had this big thought like I'm going to make it in New York City. I made the decision to actually not share to my model agent that I'm trans. So for about seven years I was a fashion model and my model agent did not know I was trans. Yes, it was amazing that I was working. I was living my dream. I grew up in a tiny little alley in the Philippines. Here I am in New York City in covers of my family. I live in New York City in covers of magazine. But you could imagine the implications of almost always trying to limit myself and fully expressing myself. I'm working in fashion. This is an industry that is the most visual. It's an industry that's all about the power of visibility but I was not being seen. I had that deep understanding that and always questioning when am I going to be allowed to come out because it was not allowed the fashion models, the transgender fashion models that came out. The ones who basically paved the way for me when they got outed their careers disappeared. So certainly there's progress that have happened, right? But still in many places around the world working environments and multinational companies, many challenges. I want to ask you what are some of the challenges that you face in implementing whether it's in the local context in the environments that you work at especially when it comes to implementing policies advocating for LGBTI rights? Yes. Well, I think many companies are going down the road of having the right policies. In fact, I was speaking to one CEO yesterday who's got 100 on the index. He's really proud of it. But he said it feels a little bit insincere because all we have are the right policies there in 80-something countries. But having the policies alone is not enough. So I think really what we need is to be able to have the language for people to tell stories for people to feel safe to be their whole selves when they come to work. And you really only get that by creating a safe, engaging environment where there's curiosity about everybody and there's empathy and more a deep humanistic view of the world. If you just rely on policies, that's not going to change anything. You might get a tick in the box and that looks good but that really doesn't. I think it could really just go so far. And it's funny you're saying that because personally when I decided to finally tell my story to the world when that emotional toll that I was feeling of loneliness that I felt that thinking that is this it for me? Is it really it for me? I decided to tell my story to the world. I gave a TED talk in 2014, a talk that changed my life. I knew that I wanted to make this bigger. And you're saying about policy because I knew that growing up in the Philippines a lot of places all over the world there are no policies that would support trans rights specifically. And then for the next two years I worked with the United Nations. I was lucky enough to have worked with President Obama's State Department, USAID. The big global bodies that are working on these issues. But most of the time I would find myself in a room about big policy decisions that concerns LGBT. I rights globally and I'm usually the only trans person in the room. Anybody that's been felt a third, I'm sure we've all gone to those moments where we're like yes this may be great but also at the same time what's lacking is those new ones. Like nothing like a statistic is great to have statistics and reports but I think what usually gets lost are those stories. And you point that out because there are people behind those statistics. When we talk about how many percent of people being discriminated I think what's really truly important is to go deep into those nuances and those stories. And I wonder if you could share some of those stories that some employees that you've worked with that have shared their stories or maybe even some progress that when you all have implemented LGBTI rights in your company what are some of those stories I think that was so critical that you've learned from? At Econzando we have several transgender LGBT leaders in the firm and that's fantastic because it means we've got role models and if you don't have role models it's really difficult so we would love to help more people, leaders that we deal with around the world to be able to tell their story. Because if you're living a life where a lot of your energy is being consumed by pretending not to be anything other than what's expected of you that is so draining it's not good for mental or physical health. So the moment we're on a journey to interview 50 leaders around the world who are out and proud of it and help them tell their stories so that more people feel that they can do it. So yes we're helping on policies but more than that we think it's about storytelling which is what you've said. One of those stories and he's very happy for me to mention him is Dolph who is CEO of Staple Solutions. He came out after school then he got a job and realised he was ambitious and decided that he was not going to do that anymore and so really sort of hid it from the wild until one night working late one of his colleagues came up to him and said what are you going to tell us Dolph about who you really are? Because that's who we want to see. You can only be authentic as a leader if we know who you are. Subsequently he said he went back into the closet is how he described it and then came back out and led a turnaround a business that was about to fail and he says now that if he hadn't been his whole self there's no way that he would have come through that journey because you haven't got the energy and the time to pretend to be anything other than who you are and it creates empathy and this is one of the reasons that he goes on and on while we think if you're looking for courageous leaders if you're looking for leaders who can really engage at an emotional level and be empathetic and purus about other people this is a brilliant talent pool and why would we not go for that? Certainly and it's almost alluding to the fact that there's literally an economic cost if you don't allow employees to be fully themselves and the empathy that you mentioned is critical and it's kind of also covering this notion of representation it's so critical I have a production company I produce stories about LGBT people transgender youth, people of color for me at a moment in time when for so long I was not allowed to be myself and the moment I came out and all of a sudden there was this big shift on my mindset that all of a sudden I want to do everything I could do everything right and that one simple mind shift of because I'm not allowed to be fully myself and the work that I do having a production company it is so critical for me that when I'm producing a story as a producer is that the people or the stories that I'm telling also represents the people behind the scene and what you've mentioned about having more people tell their story it's just so powerful and I travel the world speaking about obviously LGBTI rights, trans rights and people always tell me why do you want to continue telling this story why do you want to continue telling your story what kind of challenges that you face if people don't agree with you I always tell them I'm telling my lived experience my personal story how could you deny a person of their personal story you're really quite an evil human being if you're denying the person of a personal story so it's a great equalizer in that sense but certainly the realities in many places is still not allowed and I want to get to that point currently we live in a very global environment as we've talked about earlier global LGBT rights are in conversations we see it more and more what happens especially in your case in some of the initiatives that you've supported what happens let's say for example a company that works in western context let's say in the US based company and having maybe like 100% in their equality index but they operate in a country that doesn't support LGBTI rights there is that conflict it's a big conflict so for you what are some of those HR policies and resources that you would implement or some of projects that you've implemented through that well if you're a company and you have the right policies but you're operating in a company where actually it's illegal or even death penalty it's hard to imagine your policies will not protect those employees but being in an organisation that you know has the right policies and is international also gives you the opportunity to move elsewhere and sadly to say I think that is more of what happens because those policies are not enough to protect if a country's law is so abusive and it's almost in a way finding that perfect balance because you want to create that safe space in your places I was having a conversation with being here you're engaging in whether you're in a whole way having the deeper conversations about policies or storytelling I remember having this conversation with someone about okay I'm a transgender woman I now live in the United States but I was born and raised in the Philippines in the Philippines trans people you still can't change name and gender marker in your legal documents Philippines is dominant in outsourcing business and I always ask that question how does that apply for a trans person that's an employee let's say a multinational company that supports LGBTI rights but then she's working in the Philippines and then her ID she can't change her name and ID how is she going to be addressed this is a question that's positing to everybody there's not an easy solution I understand that but it's always that perfect balance and the person I was speaking to basically said alluding to what you said you have to find that perfect balance because yes at the work environment you want to create that safe space for people to be who they are but the moment they leave work it's a sad reality and it's a sad moment that one could only hope that we should continue this fight because in a global context we're talking about the livelihood of people we're talking about how it's connected to the economic output of a country and here we are at Davos I'm sure we're all having this incredible conversation I want to hear from you what are some of those conversations that you're hearing here about LGBTI rights or especially within the global context I mean firstly I think it's great that the WEF is having this panel and I think there's a second one this week and that's pretty new here and I would applaud the WEF for doing that but these are conversations we have to have if we were at the women's dinner last night up on the mountain it was beautiful and some of us were talking about the illusion of inclusion and I thought that was a wonderful term because you can have all the policies in the world so I would still advocate going for the policies don't get me wrong but don't think it's done when you've got the policies and that illusion of inclusion I think is really a good concept hold on to and I think the leaders that we work with we're just trying to get them to have a higher sense of consciousness in the world whether that's about what we're doing for the planet what we're doing about LGBTI about gender diversity, ethnic diversity but inequalities in the world so we need leaders who have that capacity that sensibility to have any of these conversations and to want to make a difference and we've had people coming on our programmes a CEO programme so we've had some LGBT participants which has been fantastic but we've also seen that you can change leaders in quite a short period of time if you break down all of the barriers that we've all built up over years of being leaders and sort of shed all of that to say no, we're all humans here we have to have compassion and empathy and curiosity about each other and we have to be willing to build the engagement engagement and inclusion go hand in hand in organisation so that's the journey we're on with leaders that's a really great point I'm going to start using that the illusion of inclusion thank you and then we do want to have those conversations how are we going to do it you know there is a report that they read that the World Economic Forum released that it would take 257 years in this current state to achieve gender parity and I look at that obviously thinking about wow and I would love to firmly believe that this is why conversations about LGBTI rights about gender fluidity about gender spectrum because I think at the core of that study of I believe 257 years of gender parity and usually within that context we're talking about gender parity from a gender binary standpoint and what also comes with that is this gender binary a woman is expected to be a certain way having conversations can a woman be president we shouldn't really be having that conversation but it's within its couch and again I would like to pause it, argue my position said this is why we need to continue the conversations about gender fluidity to truly understand that gender is truly within the spectrum I mean for so long we've been led to believe that gender is just this you're only supposed to be that you're only supposed to be this way and it's held us back why we have that 257 years and they just want to continue that conversation and if you have a wish for next year or if you could do one thing here we have the power, you're too powerful women you're having a conversation one thing that you would do oh just get more people to tell their stories and if it's people, leaders in senior positions all the better because then it goes to other people who want to be that whole sound the role models and the permission to do that and to show that gender fluidity and be proud of it so the more storytelling the more people who can then feel comfortable to come out would be fantastic you're a role model and an inspiration thank you well I think we should definitely continue this conversation and if we will continue the conversation we could answer more questions but I think the close out is thank you for being here I love having a sit down conversation before we entered here and we just felt like for a moment oh we're just going to be a little in a little couch connected here but I love this conversation and I think what you said about how much it truly means both not just in corporate environments, not just in policy it's like the need for those stories each one of us have those and we're looking for that nuance and yes we cover policies but it's the story that matter and we want to thank you all for joining here really truly appreciate that and we will continue the conversation thank you so much thank you all