Coming Out at Work: Why Everyday Inclusion Matters

“The Most Meaningful Form of Inclusion is When it Doesn’t Feel Like a Big Deal”

A founder and a compliance officer on hiding, coming out, and finding your people

Sidd Gavirneni scaled a company while openly gay. Jill Sanfilippo let colleagues assume she was having a baby alone rather than say she had a wife. Two very different experiences that show why everyday moments matter more than company policies when it comes to inclusion.

“I’ve never forgotten what that communicated”

“One of our former leaders rolled his eyes at me when I handed him a rainbow basket at the entrance to one of our inaugural PRIDE ERG events,” says Jill Sanfilippo, Senior Assistant Compliance Officer at Munich Re America Services, Inc.

“I’ve never forgotten what that communicated.”

Jill has been with the Munich Re group since 1990 and helped start the initial Princeton, NJ-based PRIDE ERG. She’s still involved with a regional PRIDE ERG now, remotely. While having an LGBTQ+ employee resource group is something she was clearly always very passionate about, without senior allyship the most progressive structures remain empty and ineffective.

Luckily, she says, “I am very lucky to have benefitted from an incredible manager for 35 of these years, who was wildly supportive of my career growth and development as well as a solid, ethical and thoughtful mentor also in my personal life.”

Sidd co-founded Zeguro, a cybersecurity and cyber insurance company focused on small and midsize businesses, which was bought by HSB, a Munich Re company, in 2021.

For him, inclusion is all about being accepted fully, without comment or eyebrow raise: “Sometimes the most meaningful form of inclusion is when it doesn’t feel like a big deal at all.”

“There was always a calculation”

Jill and Sidd both started out hiding who they were in the workplace – at first.

Sidd grew up in India, where there “was a very real stigma around being gay, and there were very few visible examples of successful gay people that I could look at and think, ‘That could be me.’”

Even in his early US career, “there was always a calculation. Who am I talking to? Where am I? Is it safe to talk about my personal life? Will this person look at me differently?”

For Jill, the hesitancy was informed by the desire to avoid intrusive or judgmental questions: “I ‘scream straight’ and always have,” she says. “Plus, people at work had known me since I was 18, and then at 20 being married to and having children with a man.”

So when she decided to have a child with her current wife, she avoided the truth. “In hindsight it speaks volumes that I was more comfortable with letting people assume that I was having another baby on my own rather than introducing the idea that I now had a wife.”

How people reacted – the good, the bad, and the intrusive

Then again, this defensiveness makes sense in context. As Jill explains: “Once people found out Charlie would have two moms, the first comments were almost always in order – ‘well, you’ll be the baby’s real mother (as I carried the pregnancy) quickly followed by ‘how did you get pregnant?’ which astounds me to this day, that people feel so entitled to ask a such an intensely personal question.”

And that’s before we even get to the colleague who stood over Jill at her desk and told her she was going to hell: “I was not prepared for the audacity of someone saying something like that at work, and expressed that.”

Now, Jill has a rule: “Everything depends on the other person’s motivation for asking! Common curiosity or interest doesn’t bother me; someone who comes into the conversation with preconceived prejudice or sweeping generalizations do.”

In Sidd’s case, he says most of the reactions to his coming out professionally were positive.

“That doesn’t mean discrimination disappears. I’ve experienced it, including while raising money as an entrepreneur. But I also learned not to let those experiences define my career or determine how open I was going to be.”

“Instead of limiting us, it attracted people”

Yet the acceptance Sidd experienced seems to have far outweighed the negatives – and his own fears.

“Some of the positive reactions are much quieter. A colleague talking naturally about my husband. A manager not making assumptions about someone’s family. Someone asking about my life exactly as they would ask a straight colleague about theirs.”

Even more pleasantly surprising was the positive effect his being out on his business. His openness and authenticity attracted great talent, clients, and investors.

“When we were building Zeguro, we had extremely talented people who wanted to work with us partly because they believed in the kind of diverse company we were building. We also had major corporate partners who specifically valued working with diverse founders.”

He was amazed that “being open could actually create opportunities and stronger relationships… That challenged an assumption I think many LGBTQ+ people grow up with, that being out professionally is primarily a risk you have to manage.”

For Jill, she has been pleasantly surprised that her company has “not only confirmed but enhanced its DEI commitments, with actions that back up their words.”

As she puts it: “The whole world needs a strong, enforced Code of Conduct and Ethics!”

Why company policies alone aren’t enough

Yet company policies aren’t enough on their own. In these times of political headwinds against DEI, “those of us who can speak out against destructive garbage, simply must.”

Otherwise, the pressure to remain in the closet could win out because it feels safer. “Community makes a positive difference,” she adds, “and at work, that means those around you, those you interact with on the daily, and those making the decisions.”

That puts the pressure back on accountable leadership and allyship.

As Sidd puts it, “a company can have great policies, Pride events, and employee resource groups, but an individual employee may still be wondering: What happens when I tell my manager? What happens when I meet a client? Will this affect my next promotion? Will people look at me differently? And the answer isn’t necessarily the same everywhere.”

He adds: “Psychological safety is created through everyday experiences. It’s a manager talking naturally about different kinds of families. It’s colleagues not making assumptions about someone’s partner. It’s leaders being visibly supportive of LGBTQ+ employees. And it’s knowing that if something inappropriate happens, someone will speak up.”

“We’ll stand with you”

The upshot of this for Sidd is that uncertainty will always remain for LGBTQ+ people who can’t be sure of how their colleagues and managers will react to them coming out.

As well as trying to create that feeling of psychological safety, Sidd agrees with Jill on the importance of community. “StartOut helped me become comfortable being openly gay in a professional environment because suddenly I was surrounded by other LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs dealing with many of the same questions I was. It wasn’t inclusion as an abstract idea. It was people helping each other build companies, raise money, find employees, and succeed.”

He also advises any LGBTQ+ readers who remain nervous about being open to “just be yourself and start small.”

He adds: “You don’t have to walk into work one day and suddenly share everything about yourself. Take small steps. Talk about what you did over the weekend. Mention your partner or husband in conversation. Share a little more of your life in the same way your colleagues do.”

Jill agrees passionately in the need for community and psychological safety.

“Come sit near me, or someone else you feel safe around,” she says. “We’ll stand with you, by your side, in front or in back of you as needed. Together, we will survive and thrive!”