Todd Sears on Advocacy, Mentorship, and Fire Island Pines
Photo courtesy of Phil O’Brien
Todd Sears is the Chief Executive Officer of Out Leadership, the only global organization in the LGBTQ+ space that operates with a focus solely on business. With 98 member companies (including Amazon, American Express, Bloomberg, Citi, Coca-Cola, Comcast, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, IBM, Microsoft, Nike and Walmart), Out Leadership harnesses the power of business to drive equality. In his interview with Love to All Project, Sears discusses the “outvantage,” his dualistic approach to advocacy, and his love for Fire Island Pines.
Could you please introduce yourself?
I'm the founder and CEO of Out Leadership. I started the organization 14 years ago, with the idea that I could get businesses, companies, CEOs and leaders to advocate for LGBTQ equality from a business perspective, as well as develop LGBTQ talent and advocate for change through data and research.
Can you tell us a little bit about your career path and what led you to found Out Leadership?
I started out of college; I went to Duke. I grew up in North Carolina and went to 9 different schools before boarding school in Virginia, which was an interesting experience as an only child who knew he was gay at age 5. After Duke, I went into investment banking and did the 100 hour/week slog and I had a homophobic boss. I did what anybody in the homophobic environment would do: I went back into the closet and started looking for a new job.
The second investment bank I went to was called Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips. I was out in my interview, and that allowed me to start to connect to gay and lesbian clients and customers in the investment banking space. I started to make that connection, that there is a business opportunity in our community, but only if we're out. I then switched sides of the world to go to Merrill Lynch in private banking and wealth management.
At that time in 2001, you had to bring in a million dollars a month of net new assets to the firm, and your goal was 24 million in 24 months. I put together a business plan for how I could focus on LGBTQ+ customers and clients. I was the first openly gay financial advisor at that time in Merrill Lynch’s 92 year history. Not a single Wall Street bank had ever focused on LGBTQ+ customers at that time. I actually partnered with Lambda [Legal]. Lambda was one of my clients. I managed Lambda's endowment, built Lambda’s planned giving program, and we did domestic partner planning seminars for Lambda donors all over the country, educating them on how to protect their assets, create families, and ultimately make smart investment decisions for their future.
I brought in between 1.4 - 1.8 billion dollars over 5 years at Merrill, but did it as a business initiative, and got an old, Irish Catholic company like Merrill to support gay rights because I tied it to business. I ultimately was tasked around diversity strategy for Merrill Lynch, and then I was head of diversity and inclusion at Credit Suisse, and then I was laid off in 2010. I found myself on a sofa with a severance check, and several Hendrix Martinis thinking what's next for my career, and I thought to the Merrill days of getting in old, Irish Catholic Company to support gay rights. Fourteen years ago, companies were not speaking about LGBTQ rights as a business imperative. CEOs were not speaking out and using their platform and I wanted to create that conversation. My first summit was in March 2011. I called it “Out on the Street” originally, and it was focused just on Wall Street. I had five banks, Bank of America, Barclays, Deutsche, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley. The CEO of Deutsche Bank hosted the summit, and we grew from there. I launched in in London, in Europe 13 years ago, and Asia 12 years ago in Sydney, Australia, almost 9 years ago. When we launched in Asia, we were the first LGBTQ+ summit ever in Asia, and we've continued to grow from there.
Todd, you are doing such incredible work for our community. Could you discuss how your experience as an openly queer person influenced both your professional journey and your leadership style?
Sure. I think an important thing for me is that I do not identify as queer, I identify as gay. When I first started my career, I was the first gay person that most of the senior business leaders that I worked with had ever actually gotten to know. And I am white, cisgender, tall, and straight passing. I can talk about Duke basketball, and beer and things straight guys enjoy.
One of my mentors 20 years ago said that I was a good bridge between gay and straight, and I could make straight people comfortable with me. I've always paid attention to that, because that's given me the ability to work with over 1,200 CEOs in the last 20 years. The ability to have access to those spaces has been massively important, not just to my career, but more importantly, to my mission and the movement.
Because straight people still run the world and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. We are not the majority. If you can educate the majority on our lives and our challenges, then they can use the platforms that they have; that's always been my philosophy. I'm very much of the calling people in philosophy versus calling people out. I like to say that nobody ever changed their mind about your civil rights because you called them a bigot. Shame is one of the most powerful human emotions, and if you shame someone, they'll never forget it. My philosophy is always, “let's educate people, take them where they are, and allow them to see ourselves and see us and see who we are.” And that's why being out matters so much. That's why I called the company Out Leadership. Because you do have to be out to be a leader in our world.
My experience has been amazing. I've flown almost 2 million miles around the world the last 14 years. We've had 137 summits on 4 continents. I've convened almost 50,000 business leaders over that time. More importantly, I’ve created conversations that never would have happened had we not convened these leaders together. We've been able to educate companies and leaders on how they can use their platform. That's the exciting thing to me. Right? We have a small team, and I'm one individual. But the people that we've been able to influence have been able to influence change all over the world; from Singapore to Australia, to Indonesia, to Hong Kong to North Carolina. That's the exciting opportunity as we go forward, to continue to expand that platform.
Photo courtesy of Out Leadership
“I'm very much of the calling people in philosophy versus calling people out.”
I love that philosophy of calling people in versus calling people out. Like you're saying, making people feel accepted as opposed to being called out and shamed is much more effective at driving meaningful change. Can I ask why you choose to identify as gay instead of queer?
As with so many things, there's an interesting generational difference in our community from Gen Z to Gen Y to Gen X to Baby Boomer. I'm a Gen X. I’m 48. The world that I grew up in, queer was a derogatory term. “Smear the queer” was on the playground. Also, as an English major and a studier of language, queer means abnormal. I do not myself abnormal. I consider myself very normal, I think being gay is a natural part of humanity, and not just humanity, but of any species. Same sex attraction exists in almost every species that has been studied.
My framing is very much that I absolutely support and love that younger folks use the term queer, because that's how they feel they define. As I understand it, queer is a much more broad term that can define not just orientation, but also identity, and many other elements of the LGBTQ+ experience. In that way, it can be a useful shorthand for folks. I also appreciate the idea of queer theory, etc. Just like we respect people's pronouns, I think it's important to respect how people identify. It's also important to keep people and leaders in historical context. So, for example, Harvey Milk would never have described himself as a queer man. He was a gay man. We don't have our history in many schools, so we are always having the responsibility of maintaining our own history. I do think it is important to to name people correctly as we look back on our history.
The other thing I would say is that for my generation we didn't have role models because most of them died. The HIV/AIDS crisis decimated an entire generation of gay men. So those of us in the generation X are literally figuring it out for ourselves and have been for our entire careers. We were the first generation to actually start to come out at work. When we entered the workplace. You could still be fired, in all 50 States. People were still dying of AIDS. You couldn't be out. Marriage equality wasn't on anybody's radar. That's what's so exciting to me about the work that we do, our Out Next initiative in particular, and young leaders like yourself. The world that you're entering into is the world that so many people have fought to create, which is a world where you can't be fired for being gay. You're not going to die of AIDS; it's incredibly unlikely, and the laws of the world have changed, and not just the laws, but perspective and understanding of our community is light years ahead of where it was 25 and 30 years ago. So that's a long answer to the gay vs queer debate. I think the context around both my lived experience and also the generational difference in our community matters.
Yeah, definitely. I'm so grateful that your generation has paved the way for younger people like me. You are an amazing role model.
I appreciate that very much. There were a lot of people that paved the way for me, so I think that's incumbent on each of us to pave the way for the next generation.
I love how the queer community, the gay community, or the LGBT community, however, you want to put it, owns that mentality of paying it forward and helping other people. I think it's such a vital and beautiful part of our culture.
I agree. And it does not exist in every community. That's not a given that's something that we have always because we're still fighting for our basic humanity, unfortunately. It does take all of us paying attention and doing our part.
I'd love to shift a little bit to your role as an organizational leader. Could you share what an average day looks like for you as the CEO of Out Leadership?
Oh gosh! I don't think there is such a thing. Well, I'll give you a sort of year to date. How's that? You can make some sort of average out of that? Just this April, I was in Sydney, Australia, for meetings and several events, and then in Tokyo, as we had our 12th Asia Summit, which is now between Hong Kong and Tokyo, so we had 2 events in Tokyo. There we discussed community among senior leaders and marriage equality, as well as being out in Tokyo and greater Japan.
As for Hong Kong, we had 4 events as part of the final portion of that summit, and then we had our Europe summit. So, we went to London. We had 5 events over the course of a week and a half there. So, in the span of 5 weeks, we went all around the world for those summits, meetings, and conversations; along the way, we were working on pieces of research that we've been launching. We just launched our Hong Kong board diversity guidelines at the Milken Conference in Los Angeles 3 weeks ago. In other words, we had 14 events on 3 continents over 6 weeks.
We just completed our U.S. Summit, which was a series of 8 events here in New York, including our first-ever trans and non-binary summit. We had 96 trans and non-binary leaders from 40 companies together for the first time in history. That was the last 3 months. On Monday, we launched our 6th annual LGBTQ+ Business Climate Index, which ranks all 50 U.S. states on 22 different data points, across trans rights, LGBTQ+ rights, what the governors say. We’re working across the U.S. to educate leaders at the state level on what they need to do to protect LGBTQ+ people and why it matters to the business in town.
I met thousands of business leaders for these conversations, as well as young leaders for OutNEXT initiative, which is our global LGBTQ+ talent initiative for young leaders as well as our OutWOMEN+ initiative, which is our women's program as well as our OutQUORUM board program. We're trying to develop the LGBTQ+ talent lifecycle across all of these different dimensions.
Has mentorship impacted your own career and professional development?
I think anyone that says “no” to that question hasn't been paying attention or is not successful. How's that? I don't think you can be successful in a career without mentors and sponsors. I've been lucky enough to have so many of them, both LGBTQ+ and straight. When I started at Merrill Lynch, there were a number of guys who were in the closet who had been at the company for 10, 20, 30 years, who actually helped and came out to help me, which was really impactful and important. I've had so many straight leaders who have been supporters of me. Lloyd Blankfein, the former Chairman of Goldman Sachs, was my first board member. The Chairman of Bloomberg was my second board member. The Global Chief Executive of HSBC Noel Quinn was on my board for five years and has been a huge supporter of mine. Kathleen Sebelius, the former Governor of Kansas, has been a huge mentor of mine. I've had so many leaders, both senior and junior; I've learned so much from our OutNEXT generation leaders who ground and connect me into the world that that you all live in right, because it's obviously very different.
Sponsorship is where somebody uses their political power and political capital on your behalf or in an organization. It's a little bit different from a mentor, but you have to have both, to be successful. From an advocacy perspective, Larry Kramer, one of the founders of ACT UP, a massive activist, was a mentor of mine before he died.
I totally agree that mentorship is critical for success, especially within the LGBTQ community. Larry Kramer is also a huge inspiration to our organization.
Well, just a nugget on that, my relationship with Larry was very impactful. Our approach to activism could not be more different, which is why he was such an amazing mentor to me. Like ACT UP, die-in protests, calling people out; I think you have to have both [forms of activism] in a movement, and he was not a corporate guy at all. But he respected what I was doing, and the ability for us to sort of learn from each other was pretty cool. I don't know that I taught him anything, but he definitely taught me a lot, but he actually spoke about 6 months before he died, at my OutNEXT global summit.
I loved Larry ‘s reply when I asked him how he felt about the fact that were 200 leaders between 25 and 30 years old in the room. I said, “How do you feel with the fact that most of these young leaders probably don't know who you are and what you've done?” His answer was pretty telling as to who he was––it kind of blew me away, along with everyone else in the room. He said, “the greatest gift that we can give this generation is to absorb that trauma and not pass that trauma onto them. It’s amazing that they don't have to know who we are.” I think that's the goal for all of us in this movement. It's not about who we are. It's about what we can prevent from passing on to the next generation.
How do you approach mentoring young professionals yourself?
I have probably 50 mentees, which is kind of a lot. A lot of them have been interns of mine. A lot of them are straight. I've kind of had a philosophy as long as I've had interns, trying to have straight interns, because if I can educate them about our world, they go back into the straight world and educate the straight world just like working with straight leaders. I've had some mentees for 15, 16, 17 years. Yeah, I call them my kiddos. I'm very lucky to have really interesting, fascinating, smart, mentees all over the world, which is kind of neat.
I have an official arrangement where I say that they have to do 3 things to be a mentee of mine. Number one: they don't have to take my advice, but if they don't take my advice, I want to know what they did instead, so I can learn. If my advice was wrong or they had a better idea, I'd like to know about it. Secondly, I introduce them into my network, they have to be respectful of the network. Thank people, thank you notes; don’t burn anybody, if they don't show up for a meeting or something, then we're done. The third is that they have to pay it forward; they have to mentor somebody else at some point in their career in the future. Those are the 3 things that I require from a mentee.
What advice you would give to young LGBTQ+ individuals?
Firstly, leverage your network, whether you call it the queer mob or gay mafia. There are LGBTQ+ people at every level of every organization, nonprofit, business, group, community that you want to enter into. And you should seek them out, because we do help each other as a community. I call it an outvantage. That's a Out Leadership term; I think every one of us has an outvantage, not just because we have access to our community, but because we are the most empathetic leaders.
As LGBTQ+ individuals, we are always seeking psychological safety. We are always seeking to make people around us comfortable. We are always seeking to understand the people around us. We are extrasensory in terms of our perception of people around us, and that is not the norm. And I don't think everyone necessarily realizes that. One of the things that I love to share with young leaders is that to you need to understand that you have skills that are not found in the broader population, and that is a massive asset to you. I think for my generation and older generations, being gay was seen as a detriment, as a problem to overcome. I would say it is absolutely not that. It never was that! But now, more than ever, it is not that. It is absolutely an asset, and I would say, any young leader going into any career choice needs to understand that.
Photo courtesy of Out Leadership
"…every one of us has an outvantage, not just because we have access to our community, but because we are the most empathetic leaders.”
I love the concept of outvantage. There are so many amazing things we can accomplish as a community. How do you balance your professional responsibilities with your personal life, Todd?
I'm always seeking advice myself on how to do that. I truthfully don't do the greatest job of always balancing these things. Although, there is a term that I learned years ago from a woman who wrote a book called “Work Life Fit v. Work Life Balance.” The idea of work life fit is that at different points in your life, you're going to be working more or maybe less. But you're creating a fit for what works in that moment. The idea of balance suggests that there should be some sort of right answer; it means, if it's “out of balance,” then you're doing something wrong, and there's judgment involved. Balance also sort of implies 50/50, which is very, very rarely the case for anything.
I've been at the point where my work life fit has been very much focused on the work piece. My advocacy work is my life mission. This is what I'll be doing until I get hit by a bus. But I do really hope to make sure that Out Leadership is much more sustainable. It’s that sort of virtuous circle; if I'm taking care of myself, the organization performs better, my advocacy is better, etc. I’m constantly seeking ways to do better at that.
I do protect my time in the summer as much as I can. I try to be in Fire Island, which is my favorite place on the planet. It has been a haven for our community for the last 40 years to 70 years. There's no place like it on our planet. There is no other solely LGBTQ+ community on the planet. Fire Island Pines is historically and hopefully continues to be solely for our community, retaining the ability for us to be there and be free in one of the most beautiful places. It's the only national park in the country that you can own property on. There are no cars, there are no street lights, so at night, you see the stars. What I also love about Fire Island is that people come from all over, from every background, with every career you can imagine. CEOs, you have analysts, you have artists, you have writers, poets, I mean, you name it. Capote wrote “Breakfast at Tiffany's” out there. I mean, there's just so much creativity that has come from that place. When people are there, they can just be themselves. They go there and really let their hair down. I love being there.
Photo courtesy of Todd Sears
“There are no cars, there are no street lights, so at night, you see the stars.”
That’s awesome. Hopefully I get to see you there this summer if I visit. Lastly, what changes do you hope to see in the corporate world in the next 5 years? And how are organizations like Out Leadership leading the way?
That's a great question. I think the first change is something that I have been focused on the last 14 years, which is structural. My goal is that LGBTQ+ quality is built into global business practices, full stop. Every company should have an LGBTQ+ inclusive board policy, which we've been doing all around the world. We've helped thousands of companies change their policies to be LGBTQ+ inclusive because we wrote the first inclusive board policies for the U.S., Hong Kong, for the U.K., and Australia.
So, I want that to continue. The structures have to be inclusive for us to be counted and mattered. Secondly, I want companies to continue to invest in our community from a talent development perspective, considering recruiting and retention. Thirdly, I want companies to consider advocacy for the LGBTQ+ community as part of their mission. They can't attract and retain the best talent in the world if we are illegal. In 63 countries around the world, it is still illegal to be gay. Not to mention all the issues faced by the trans community globally.
I hope that 5 years from now, 10 years from now, companies will continue to take the role that they've done the last 15 years. If you look at every single civil rights advance we as a community have had in the last 20 years, there has been corporate support driving every single one of them. I want companies to both acknowledge that aspect and do more, so that we can continue to eradicate all the discrimination that exists across the world for the LGBTQ+ Community.