Pride: More than Sunshine and Rainbows
Being supported at work matters. A lot.
mer⋅a⋅ki noun [Greek]: something done with soul, creativity, or love.
Sometimes the simplest questions are the most difficult to answer. While participating in a recent panel on LGBTQ+ inclusion in the workplace, I was asked, “What does Pride mean to you?”
No one had asked me this before, so I had to consider it. My struggle: how to wrap the entirety of what it means to celebrate “Pride” — and how personal it all feels, especially in a workplace setting — into a simple response.
Pride means many things to many people, and these often include a sense of self-love, self-worth, and the expression of authenticity. For me, Pride is also a privilege. By the time someone asks you how you feel about Pride, you’re already at the zenith of Maslow’s hierarchy, exploring the luxury of self-actualization. There are so many assumptions layered into the question: you’ve identified your queerness, you’ve accepted it, and now you’re advocating on behalf of it. You’ve taken care of basic needs, shelter, and belonging, and can move on to the philosophical (and literal) hearts of matters.
But acceptance isn’t a right enjoyed by everyone nor is it even, perhaps, the natural impulse of humankind. Many who identify as LGBTQ+ don’t feel like they can bring their whole selves to work, and because of this, their work doesn’t get 100% of their soul, creativity, or love. There is always something held back, and as a result, there is less “meraki” in the air. So Pride month — celebrated in June in the United States — is also an opportunity for a conversation, an exploration of the nature of simple questions.
For example, the question, “Do you love where you work?” is not so dissimilar from “Do you know who you love?” To answer both, you need the same ingredients: recognizing how you feel and expressing it honestly, knowing what attracts you and why, and having at least a vague inkling of the direction in which you want your life to grow.
The anxiety and fear of rejection triggered by coming out to someone you love isn’t entirely foreign from the anxiety and fear of customer rejection we faced recently, when we decided to temporarily place our Meraki Pride logo in our dashboard — visible to literally every one of our 420K+ customers across the world — to show our support for the LBGTQ+ community. Am I equating these? No, of course not — coming out is a permanent decision and utterly life-changing. But the bigger point I’m trying to make is that we can all come out, in our own way, to support what we stand for. In an age where corporations have a larger and larger say in how our lives are organized, informed, kept healthy, connected, and legislated, it is ever more important to know where they stand.
When we speak of corporations and LGBTQ+ inclusion, we must inevitably ask whether Pride is now for sale (“pinkwashing”), as more firms — especially San Francisco-based ones — step up to sponsor Pride parades and slap a coat of rainbow paint on their logos for a month. With this, organizations can simply swoop in for a few weeks’ worth of publicity and then retreat to business-as-usual, inclusivity put on the back-burner, until June rolls around a year later. Is this Pride? Is this allyship? What if companies only change their facades (i.e., websites and logos), while nothing much changes indoors, where people actually live out their careers?
This brings us back to privilege: is your company a place of acceptance and support when there’s not a spotlight shining? Do you love where you work?
I’m privileged to answer “yes” on both accounts. We do have a Pride logo on our website. But when people ask what Meraki has done for the LGBTQ+ community beyond Pride month, I can point to our donation of a full stack of networking equipment to the Castro Theatre, which has helped keep the historic icon technologically relevant for today’s performers and guests — and by extension, allowed us to invest in the Castro neighborhood itself. I can point to our sponsorship of the Lesbians Who Tech Summit, both financially and through providing free guest Wi-Fi for their capstone San Francisco event. I can mention the all-gender shower rooms that exist in our office. Or talk about the massive clothing drive we ran earlier in the year to benefit Out of the Closet, a non-profit thrift store whose sales benefit the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. Or tell about that time we threw open our doors to the public for an in-house, private screening of The Campaign (a documentary about the battle to defend same-sex marriage state-wide). Or point to the large Pride and Transgender flags that hang year-round from walls on every floor, giving visible support to the LGBTQ+ community at Meraki.
I could also mention the many Merakians who poured so much care into making gorgeous Pride decorations that adorn our office — including permanently painting a wall in our cafeteria in large rainbow stripes. I could showcase the generous Meraki allies who are spending hours each day overseeing the design of Cisco’s Pride float and handcrafting the paper flowers that will adorn it, because they care about equality and the statement we want to make as we march. And I could mention the Merakians who will march — nearly 100 of us — on Sunday the 30th of June, in celebration of Pride and equality and everything that these two words mean. These people and their support don’t vanish once the month has passed.
But perhaps my favorite Meraki story is the most personal: two days after the death of Edie Windsor (a woman whose landmark Supreme Court case helped pave the way for federally recognized gay marriage across America), I received an email from our current Chief of Staff (then the Director of HR), Denise Thomas. We were finalizing renovations on a newly-acquired floor in our office building; all the new conference rooms had been named after different San Francisco landmarks and neighborhoods. The nameplates were already in production. But in the email, I learned there was to be a last-minute change, that a new nameplate had been requested.
“I thought you might appreciate this. It’s a little subversive, but hopefully people will look her up,” Denise wrote in her email. I glanced through the text below and saw what she was referring to: a room permanently named after Edie Windsor in our office space. This simple gift of allyship is one of the greatest I’ve ever received and one of the most touching. It was a quiet gesture of support — and a permanent one.
So the meaning of “Pride” for me is ultimately as layered as the flag itself. It encompasses acceptance, self-respect, love, and support — and the privilege inherent in having these in both the personal and professional spheres of my life. It stands for all the allies who give their time and effort to ensure Meraki is a safe and welcoming place for everyone. And it means hope, because if everyone had more “Pride” in their lives, if everyone could fully channel their creativity and love both at home and at work, how much better a world would that be? That may be the simplest question of all.
