Celebrating Pride at Pendo

Each year, Pride month in June provides an opportunity for us to reflect on the historic Stonewall Riot that occurred at the end of June 1969. It’s also an opportunity to reflect and continue the work towards equal opportunity and justice for GSRM community members since that time.

GSRM is the acronym we use at Pendo and stands for Gender, Sexual, and Romantic Minorities. GSRM is a synonym for LGBTQ+ but is intended to be simpler as it does not add a letter for each individual identity. 

All year long, Pendo (alongside our GSRM affinity group) works to create a safe, inclusive, and productive workplace for GSRM employees. We do this through leading education on GSRM issues and providing support and mentorship for career and personal growth for GSRM employees and allies.

Pride Month is always a highlight for programming and awareness for our GSRM affinity group. As we reach the midpoint of June, we wanted to share some of the work we’ve done to celebrate Pride and what we have planned for the rest of the month. 

This month we changed our logo to the Progress Pride flag. This flag was designed by Daniel Quasar to better include the colors of the transgender flag and the black and brown stripes, and to be more represenative of the continued progress that needs to be made for these communities.

Here’s what else we are doing to celebrate Pride:

To kick things off this month, our GSRM affinity group had a goal of supporting LGBTQ small business owners. With this goal in mind, they partnered with a local San Francisco artist, Elliot C. Nathan, to commission this year’s Pendo Pride shirt. 

All proceeds raised by this employee-led fundraiser went directly to the The Trevor Project, a leading national organization providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to LGBTQ youth. The GSRM affinity group chose to support this organization because this year, COVID-19 has negatively impacted the mental health of LGBTQ youth and has presented them with unique challenges, including stressful living situations. Pendo was also a sponsor for this year’s Run for Love in support of Pride Raleigh and the LGBT Center of Raleigh. 

In our commitment to education and awareness, each day this month our GSRM affinity group and leaders have committed to sharing information across our company as part of a broader education campaign. In our Israel offices for Pride, we hosted an event with guest speaker Avi Soffer, who is an activist and artist. Avi also served as chairman of the LGBT association in Israel and initiated the first ever gay parade in TLV. 

For the remainder of the month, we are continuing our company-wide learning series by hosting a conversation with Mimi Lemay coordinated by the GSRM affinity group. Mimi is an international LGBTQ advocate and author of the viral essay, “A Letter to My Son Jacob on His 5th Birthday” as well as the book, “What We Will Become: A Mother, a Son, and a Journey of Transformation.” 

Looking ahead, we will continue to support equality and inclusion at Pendo this month and throughout the year. We appreciate Pendo’s GSRM co-chairs, Nichole Mattera and Phil Pinson, as well as the GSRM community and allies for their ongoing work to achieve this goal.