Beth Brooke-Marciniak's decision to publicly come out as lesbian in 2011 made her one of the most senior out executives in the world at the time. But for Brooke-Marciniak, EY's ( formerly Ernst and Young ) global vice chair of public policy and the company's global sponsor of diversity and inclusiveness efforts, the decision wasn't about getting publicity. For her, it was simply about being honest. Brooke-Marciniak—a former Purdue University basketball player, who was awarded the NCAA's 2017 Theodore Roosevelt Award and has been named on Forbes's list of "The World's 100 Most Powerful Women" nine times—told her story to an audience at the Hyatt Regency Chicago on May 24, part of the 2017 Great Place to Work conference.
It happened on a plane, she said. Brooke-Marciniak ( at the time, just Brooke ) began with EY in 1981, and in 1990 became the company's first female partner in Indiana. Now, in 2011, EY's inclusiveness director had invited Brooke-Marciniak to offer the closing remarks in a video the company was making to support the "It Gets Better" campaign by The Trevor Project, the national suicide prevention organization for LGBTQ youth.
On her plane ride, as Brooke-Marciniak read over the speech her team had prepared for her—presented from the perspective of a straight executive—she thought to herself, "That's just not what I would say if I was being honest." So, she wrote her own script for the video, not only acknowledging her sexuality, but passing on the message to LGBTQ teenagers that they needed to feel valuable "because of their difference, not in spite of it."
The video resulted, in part, in a Wall Street Journal article featuring Brooke-Marciniak's story about coming out. ( The article focused on stigma that out LGBTQ chief executives face throughout the corporate world. ) "So I became about as out as you could possibly be," she said. But, she added, after thousands of emails and conversations, "I can tell you that at age 52, in that one act of coming out, I made more of a difference for so many people around the world than anything else I've ever done in my career or my life."
And then, she said, "much to my surprise, I was embraced and seemingly handed an entirely new platform to make more of a difference than I ever could have imagined."
"Those who understand the platform that they have can make a bigger difference, to be a role model, to be visible and to use their voice to drive change," said Brooke-Marciniak, noting a difference between "senior out role models" and "executives who are just simply out and doing their job."
Speaking to Windy City Times after the Wednesday session ended, Brooke-Marciniak said that when she was hiding her sexuality, she couldn't bring her full perspective to the table professionally—something she didn't realize "until I got to the other side."
It's important for straight allies to "come out," too, she said. She noted that many Americans go back into the closet once they graduate school and begin jobs, due to uncertainty of how their employers will react. ( A 2014 study from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation found that 53 percent of LGBT employees nationwide were closeted on the job. ) Even if a company publicly supports LGBTQ people, she said, employees will stay in the closet until they know they can trust their immediate supervisors, who must demonstrate to their employees that they support LGBTQ people.
"People have to know you're an ally," said Brooke-Marciniak. "I need to know that you are safe, and unless you do things visibly, I'm not going to know it."
Great Place to Work
Great Place to Work evaluates and certifies companies based on factors such as employee trust and company culture, resulting in such rankings as Fortune's "100 Best Companies to Work For." Great Place to Work-Certified companies include Google, Dropbox, and Chicago-based Hyatt Hotels Corporation, among others. This year's conference, held at Hyatt Regency Chicago May 23-25, was themed "For ALL," in part aiming to highlight the value of diversity and inclusion within companies.
"In this very uncertain time," Brooke-Marciniak told attendees, "when technology is displacing jobs, security concerns are real, and people are trending toward nationalism against the inevitable pull of globalization, there has never been a more important time" for multinational workplaces to use their platforms.
"We have platforms that can be such great agents for change," she said. ( And she told Windy City Times that "everybody has a platform"—whether they are an executive or not—but each person must figure out what their platform is. ) "Our multinational workplaces can be safe spaces for dialogue about difference. They can be innovative environments where differences are celebrated and great results accomplished because of differences, not in spite of them."
"We can't control a country's laws or a country's culture," said Brooke-Marciniak, "but we can control what goes on within the four walls of our workplaces."
