Zander Keig  is a social worker, emotional wellness and personal growth webinar facilitator, mental fitness coach, and social care clinical consultant based in Central Florida.  He is an advocate for mental wellbeing, LGBT veterans, and trans social care, and was named NASW National Social Worker of the Year in 2020 and NASW California Social Worker of the Year in 2018. 

Chas Manning describes himself as being passionate about people and data. He obtained a degree in manufacturing engineering from Boston University, and has held a series of engineering and operating roles with some twists and turns in between. He lives with his husband Will and two dogs in the Oak Park area outside Chicago and we are in fact, neighbors.

Brison Scholar Lee Downing, also known as Dr. Scholar Lee, is an inspirational speaker, spiritual life coach, transformational leader and a leadership consultant based in the Atlanta, Georgia area. As a Black Man of Trans experience, he has unique insights into the challenges of transition and cloaks his guidance in a deep spirituality.

Joanne Monck OBE is director of global education and equality, diversity and inclusion at the Believe Foundation. She’s an advocate for transgender awareness as well as domestic abuse. She was awarded an OBE for services to Transgender  Equality as a Global LGBT Advocate and Independent Advisor in the 2021 New Year Honours List.
 

Leo Caldwell is an inclusion educator and consultant at Empathy by Design, and an assistant lecturer at Ball State University School of Journalism, where he teaches visual communication courses in the Journalism Department. He also teaches podcasting and strategic social media communication in the graduate program at Drexel University.

We are delighted to bring you our second Pride Special, in which we celebrate the career journeys of LGBTQ+ professionals around the world.   In this year’s series we speak with a surgeon in training committed to raising awareness of the LBGTQ+ community, a finance industry COO who was once a teenage rebel, a recent recipient of an OBE award for services to the diversity an inclusion, a fixed income fund manager, a data junkie, a social worker and many more. 

Ozzie Gromada Meza is Director of Membership and Talent Intelligence at the Latino Corporate Directors Association and has spent 11 + years in the executive recruiting space. He is an advocate for LGBT and Latino causes, and is currently based in Reno, Nevada, and holds a number of committee and volunteer roles.

A poignant reminder of the intersectionality we all live with, how sometimes inclusion at work can be less complicated than inclusion at home as well as a thoughtful discussion on Latino and also LGBT representation at the highest levels.

Georgy Egorov is Chief Financial Officer of Vaccitech, a firm that develops vaccines and T cell immunotherapies to treat and prevent cancer and infectious diseases. It was one of the firms behind the recently launched Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine. He has held a series of executive roles in fintech and biotech firms, and prior to that worked in finance both at the EBRD and investment banking.

An inspiring story of coming out in Russia in the 1990s, the changing experience of LGBT inclusion in investment banking and why the flat structure of biotech offers such a different set of opportunities not just for professional growth but also for inclusion.

David Mooney is a former asset manager and commodities specialist, having spent close to 30 years in the financial services industry. He has managed derivatives and commodities desks at investment banks and hedge funds, and ran a fund of commodities funds for close to 10 years, which is when we met

An entertaining jaunt through a career in finance, a reminder of retaining the power of surprise and that not so long ago diversity and inclusion felt a lot different.