Case study: A global initiative to convene LGBTQ+ leaders across sectors and industries
Building the infrastructure and network to bring an ambitious project to life.
Over the past several decades, the global movement for LGBTQ+ equality and wellbeing has made enormous strides. Today there are more openly queer and trans people of influence, creativity, and resources than at any other time in history. At the same time, an emboldened conservative backlash is threatening to slow or reverse that progress. Two ambitious founders saw an opportunity in that tension: a vision for a new kind of global convening platform that could build connection and solidarity among leaders from activism, academia, culture, business, and politics.
Over six months, I led the effort to move the project from a compelling idea to an operational reality. The work spanned rapid landscape research to identify comparable programs and operating models; defining the project's brand and positioning, and drafting the core communications and marketing materials that aligned founders and early stakeholders around a shared vision; standing up the organization's operating infrastructure, including coordinating legal and financial advisors to establish a Model C fiscal sponsorship; and researching and vetting potential partners and participants across the globe. That groundwork helped translate interest into resources, landing the project's first investments to fund its launch and inaugural convening. I also helped the team write a grant proposal that led to an invitation to host a stakeholder convening at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center. From there, the project had the credibility, resources, and support to pull off its inaugural convening — bringing together more than 70 influential leaders in Paris for a multi-day program.
The organization, still operating today, continues to foster a sense of reciprocal obligation and shared purpose, build a clearer common understanding of the challenges LGBTQ+ people face globally, and unlock new ideas, strategies, and resources at a moment of uneven progress and growing backlash in many countries.