Ant Babajee is a Stonewall Change Maker of the Year

Ant Babajee — Middlesex University CRM Manager and LGBT+ Network Co-Chair — has been awarded Change Maker of the Year in the 2023 Stonewall Workplace Equality Index. On International Workers’ Day, read the full version of Ant Babajee’s interview for Stonewall.

Ant Babajee | he/him

Published in

Middlesex University LGBT+ Network

6 min readMay 1, 2023

Ant Babajee with Liz Ward, Stonewall Director of Programmes, and Sarah Fennell from Macquarie — photos: Chris Jepson and Daniel Lewis

What are you most proud of as a Change Maker?

First and foremost, I am proud of myself for bringing all of the parts of my identity to work. I have not always felt able to be so open at work, but I am so glad to have got to a place in my own journey where I can be unashamedly and unapologetically myself. As a mixed-race gay man openly living with HIV, I have an intersecting identity. By being my authentic self in the workplace I know I create opportunities for learning and understanding among my colleagues.

I have grown to understand the most effective equality, diversity and inclusion work looks after people within communities who are on the margins. In our workplaces this translates to looking after all our colleagues, especially those who define as LGBT+. If we work to include the most marginalised people in our communities, everyone thrives.

I am proud of the role I play in making connections between people and communities. A lot of my HIV and LGBT+ advocacy and activism coincides with each other — sometimes it’s difficult for me to untangle where my LGBT+ advocacy begins and where my HIV advocacy begins.

A lot of what I do as a Change Maker happens outside of my workplace, and I am incredibly thankful to Middlesex for supporting all of my LGBT+ and HIV advocacy and activism.

Having graduated from Middlesex University with a Postgraduate Diploma in Applied Public Health in 2021, which highlighted to me the role that social and health inequalities have in shaping the quality of our lives, last year I started a number of new volunteering roles.

I joined the NHS England LGBTI+ Sounding Board, and the London HIV Clinical Forum as a community representative. For National AIDS Trust I became a member of their London Activist Network and Community Advisory Board. I also became a member of the community advisory group for Fast-Track Cities London and contributed an interview to the beautiful BEAU magazine for and about queer men living with HIV.

I’m always so keen with my activism and advocacy work to emphasise just how much HIV has changed — I continue to be shocked by how few people, even in our LGBT+ community, know about U=U and PrEP.

I was proud to be one of the faces of National AIDS Trust’s World AIDS Day campaign, and I used that as an opportunity to link up via the LGBT+ Network of Networks in Higher Education with around half a dozen universities across the UK to give talks to their staff and students. This was an amazing platform to reach new audiences with the U=U [Undetectable equals Untransmittable] message, which means as someone on effective HIV treatment I can’t pass the virus on, and PrEP [pre-exposure prophylaxis], which is a pill you can take that is extremely effective at preventing HIV.

Last but by no means least I became a member of the London chapter of the Impulse Group, which aims to engage, support and connect queer men globally to community health initiatives. I am proud of the contributions I made to our THIRSTY? summer party — where I linked us up with LGBT+ community groups such as Gaymers iNC. — as well as our Bless This Brunch to commemorate and celebrate World AIDS Day.

What advice would you give to individuals and groups that want to make a change in their workplace?

Creating lasting cultural change in our organisations can be hard. Something I have learned from the coaching professional apprenticeship I am currently studying at Middlesex is that the journey you can take people on is perhaps more important than the ultimate destination. Start small.

Think laterally and find your allies — the people who will lift you up rather than drag you down. Sometimes your best allies won’t be in the most obvious places. Are there other staff networks you could link up and work with? We work closely with our Anti-Racism and Disability Networks and have organised numerous joint events together.

Pick your battles: you can’t fight every battle that might need to be fought straight away, so concentrate your efforts first on those battles you think you can win.

What help or support did you receive towards your inclusive work?

When I joined Middlesex in 2016, I was so heartened that there was an active and thriving LGBT+ Network for staff, which had been set up by two colleagues: John Soper — our Director of Inclusion and Wellbeing — and David Williams — our former Director of Corporate Engagement, who has gone on to create a thriving staff network at the University of Bedfordshire.

In my subsequent four years as co-chair of the LGBT+ Network, I have been overwhelmed by the support I have received from colleagues — right from the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor and throughout the University.

We have grown and shaped our understanding of what we need to do as a network and in our University inclusion work more generally. We need to continue to highlight and stand alongside the more marginalised members of our community, both inside and outside Middlesex University in London as well as around the world.

I am incredibly fortunate to have had supportive managers in my time at MDX — they have recognised the importance of my contributions and have allowed me the time and space to work on LGBT+ inclusion work for the University as a whole.

It might take one person to stand up and start change, but ultimately all of my colleagues who have been supportive have played their part. Thank you so much for your support.

Stonewall LGBTQ+ Inclusive Employer Change Maker Award 2023

HIV facts:

HIV [Human Immunodeficiency Virus] attacks the immune system and weakens the body’s ability to fight diseases.
Antiretroviral medication — also called ARVs, combination therapy, or HIV treatment — lowers the amount of the virus in the blood to undetectable levels, which stops it from damaging the immune system, and means it cannot be passed on to other people.
HIV treatment is now extremely effective and easier to take than ever before. Many people take just one or a few pills once a day.
A person with HIV should live just as long as an HIV-negative person — especially if they are diagnosed early and begin treatment.
There is still a great deal of stigma about HIV. Stigma is damaging as it prevents people from getting tested, from accessing treatment and from living a happy and healthy life.
Aids [Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome] can develop when HIV damages the immune system to such an extent that it can no longer fight off a range of often rare infections it would normally be able to cope with. In the UK, the term ‘late-stage HIV’ is now generally used as it is much less stigmatising. HIV treatment stops the virus from damaging a person’s immune system.
HIV cannot be passed on through casual or day-to-day contact. It cannot be transmitted through kissing, spitting, or sharing a cup, plate or toilet seat.