In this episode of The Inclusive Growth Show I was joined by Christopher Owen who talked to me about his work with Manchester Pride, how inclusion works intersectionally and how business can have a huge impact on the lived experience of LGBTQ+ individuals in today's society.
If you're enjoying this episode and looking to boost equity, inclusion, and diversity in your organisation, my team and I are here to help. Our team specialises in crafting data-driven strategies, developing inclusive leaders, designing fair recruitment processes, and enhancing disability confidence. With a blend of professional expertise and lived experience, we're ready to support you on your journey. Reach out to us through our website.
If you want to build a more inclusive workplace that you can be proud of please visit our website to learn more.
In this episode of The Inclusive Growth Show I was joined by Christopher Owen who talked to me about his work with Manchester Pride, how inclusion works intersectionally and how business can have a huge impact on the lived experience of LGBTQ+ individuals in today's society.
If you're enjoying this episode and looking to boost equity, inclusion, and diversity in your organisation, my team and I are here to help. Our team specialises in crafting data-driven strategies, developing inclusive leaders, designing fair recruitment processes, and enhancing disability confidence. With a blend of professional expertise and lived experience, we're ready to support you on your journey. Reach out to us through our website.
If you want to build a more inclusive workplace that you can be proud of please visit our website to learn more.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Inclusive Growth Show with Toby Mildon, future-proofing your business by creating a diverse workplace.
Toby Mildon: Hey there. Thank you ever so much for tuning into this episode of the Inclusive Growth Podcast. I am Toby Mildon and today I'm joined by Christopher Owen. Now, Christopher and I met online through an introduction and Christopher works for Manchester Pride and a lot of the work that he does is complimentary to the inclusivity work that we do with our clients and we focus on the broad spectrum of diversity and inclusion. And Christopher, as you will learn, focuses on LGBT matters, but of course, a lot of the work that we do with our clients does focus on LGBT as well. So it's really great to sit down with an LGBT expert and understand his experience and how we can apply that to the workplace. So Christopher, it's lovely to see you again. Would you mind introducing yourself a bit further, your background and tell us about the work that you do at Manchester Pride?
Christopher Owen: Yeah, absolutely. And it's lovely to see you again too, Toby, thank you so much for having me on your podcast today. I'm really delighted to be here. So yeah, I have a PhD in intersectional systemic oppression, primarily through a framework of Black feminism. So my work, historically has been thinking about the root causes of inequality, discrimination, exclusion, mistreatment harm and then thinking about what can we do about tackling those issues at the source. So at Manchester Pride, I am the Inclusivity Development Manager and my job, it's sort of in the title, my job is to support businesses and organisations with developing their inclusivity. So, through the All Equals Charter program, I work with businesses and organisations to identify where they're at in their inclusion journey and then figure out where they need to go next and create sort of bespoke action plans with them, especially around intersectional LGBTQ+ inclusion to both support their colleagues, but also their communities in a really meaningful and proactive and productive way.
Toby Mildon: That sounds like what we do. So we help clients look at where they're at in terms of the broader diversity, inclusion, inclusive leadership space and where they want to and then they're gonna... How they will bridge that gap as well. So it sounds like you and I are definitely on the same page when it comes to working on this. Would you mind explaining what the All Equals Charter is and its importance for promoting intersectional LGBTQ+ inclusion within businesses and communities?
Christopher Owen: Yeah, so the All Equals Charter is a membership programme for businesses and organisations. A charter, the word charter, is sort of a written agreement between different bodies. And so we ask organisations to sign the charter, sort of agreeing to a set of principles, values and commitments, all of which have to do with meaningfully supporting LGBTQ+ communities. But Manchester Pride, of course, is, people when they hear Manchester Pride they might think about the festival in the summer and the big Pride parade and the big party. But Pride itself isn't just an event, it's a global social movement. It's called the Pride Movement. And social movements aren't just about celebrating marginalised communities, they're about creating meaningful change. They're about organising the liberation of marginalised communities. So the All Equals Charter sort of works a little bit differently, in the sense that we are very, very connected and engaged with and in conversation with, our intersectional marginalised communities here in Greater Manchester and across the UK.
Christopher Owen: So whether that be through connections with other charities in the same sector, or grassroots organisers or individual activists or artists and performers, we're having these conversations regularly about, "What is going on on the ground? What do you need? What does your liberation involve and look like?" And then my job is to bring that into organisations and help them understand authentic inclusion, authentic connections with diverse communities. I think sometimes and I'm sure you've seen this yourself in your own work, Toby, people will think about diversity as a statistic, they'll just be like, "Oh yeah, we have this percentage of people of color and this percentage of women," and that's it. And they don't actually think about it as real life human beings with real lived experiences, with experiences that are changing on the regular, depending on how legislation might change, what the media is paying attention to right now, or what global politics are currently looking at.
Christopher Owen: And so our job here at Manchester Pride is to sort of keep our finger on the pulse and then the All Equals Charter will be quite thorough in the way that it will support organisations with bringing that authenticity into their inclusivity. So we have the membership option, which would include things like accessing resources, connecting with other members and really just growing knowledge. But we also have a full accreditation program. So the full accreditation, those are the little stamps and stickers that people like to put on their website saying like, "Oh yeah, we're confident in this," or, "We're accredited in that." We have one of those. And it's lovely. And I'm all here for the nice, rosy sticker. That's lovely. But actually the really valuable thing that our members get from the accreditation process is that bespoke action plan. So we'll look at everything from policies and procedures, decision-making practices, the workforce, everything from recruitment to training and development and retention, to wellbeing and happiness, the service delivery and actually how these organisations are supporting their customers and clients. And then working with partners is our final area. So thinking about networks, contractors, suppliers, connecting with the sector as a whole and now all of these things are coming from a place of thinking about...
Christopher Owen: "How do we meaningfully support the liberation of LGBTQ+ communities in an intersectional way and how do we contribute to the modern Pride movement?" Not just come to the party, but actually contribute to the movement quite meaningfully. That's the key piece of work that we do. But we also offer something where for organisations that maybe aren't ready for that accreditation sticker who don't wanna be assessed yet 'cause they don't have the right policies in place, we have a programme called The Getting Started Programme, which is specifically designed for businesses that just wanna get started without any judgment or without any assessment. And it's a very thorough consultative service where we look at, "What do you already have? What do you need? What are you missing?" And then we talk about how to implement it for the very first time. No matter where a business or an organisation is at in their inclusion journey, we help sort of our members figure out where they're at, provide them with the knowledge and the resources that they need to move forward and then support them in making sure that their action plans and the movement moving forward is authentic and meaningful and we'll actually genuinely bring about the positive changes needed for our marginalised communities.
Toby Mildon: I especially like your point about how organisations keep their finger on the pulse and build those relationships, because we are seeing an incredible amount of transphobia at the moment that's being reported in the news. We're seeing, for example, the government clamping down on the NHS having LGBT networks. Which is only going to leave LGBTQ+ individuals feeling unseen, unheard, invalidated by not providing that service. And it's just being used as a political football in my opinion. So it's really important that employers understand that these kind of factors are going to be affecting individuals on the shop floor in the office on a day-to-day basis, don't you think?
Christopher Owen: Oh, absolutely. And the attack on trans rights is really, really dangerous. Really, really frightening and currently having consequences. It's not theoretical or abstract. The current consequences are a huge spike in hate crime, a huge spike in mental illness, a huge spike in a lack of access to healthcare, a higher rise in deaths by suicide or attempts of suicide. And so, yeah, the consequences are really, really severe and they're happening right now. But a key thing that I think employers are really struggling with is that a lot of transphobia is framed around protecting women and protecting children. And so a lot of employers will think that they either have to support women or trans people. And as they tend to have more women, like cis women employees, that then becomes their priority area and of course nobody wants to be accused of being a misogynist.
Christopher Owen: And it's quite popular to be a transphobe right now. Especially if we're gonna delegitimise the identities of trans people and say that they're not real identities. Which is something that's happening quite a lot right now. And so one of the things that I do a lot in my work, that I have to do a lot in my work, is helping people understand that trans inclusion will not harm the inclusion and the support of your women colleagues and staff. And in fact, transphobic policies, transphobic legislation, transphobic guidance is deeply, deeply dangerous to cis women and has huge implications for cis women for LGB populations. And actually our inclusion and liberation is all interconnected and tied to one another. And so often people will implement transphobic policies or legislation, or guidance I mean, because they wanna support women not realising that they're actually hurting women as well.
Toby Mildon: Could you give me some examples of organisations that have successfully implemented the All Equals Charter and the positive impact that that has had on their business?
Christopher Owen: Yeah, absolutely. We work with a wide array of sectors and industries. So I can give you some very different examples. For example, one of our member organisations is Tameside Council, a local public body. They've actually, thanks to the recommendations made through the All Equals Charter accreditation and they achieved our highest level of accreditation at role model standard, they've actually changed sort of like local bylaws to expand their protections in Tameside beyond the Equality Act. For example, the Equality Act only protects based off of gender reassignment for trans communities. Which actually there's loads of trans and gender diverse communities that don't fit the definition provided in legislation, but in Tameside, they brought into that to just gender identity more broadly, which means that trans communities are safer in Tameside than they're gonna be probably anywhere else in the UK.
Christopher Owen: And that's specifically thanks to the All Equals Charter and the recommendations we've given here. Another example is one of our members, they're called Bruntwood, they own property, the commercial property and they're a national business. And thanks to the recommendations made by the All Equals Charter, they don't just think about LGBTQ+ inclusion and safety with their staff, they also think about it with their customers. And so one of the things that they do is they've trained their staff in how to report hate crime. They've created a programme for addressing bullying and discrimination with customers and if their customers are doing anything that's harmful to LGBTQ+ communities, they now have a procedure on how to address that and how to have those conversations. But they're also working with intersectional community groups, so they're supporting youth programmes and arts programmes specifically to support LGBTQ+ communities as a separate initiative as part of their charitable giving and ESG.
Christopher Owen: That's all stuff that's developed and grown thanks to the All Equals Charter. I could go on and on and on about our members. We've seen some really brilliant work. The Growth Company, which is a local organisation, have done some really amasing work, specifically supporting LGBTQ+ businesses with their development and growth and we're really, really proud to see. So yeah, it's been about, I think, with all three of those examples, connecting what you're doing internally, the LGBTQ+ inclusion you're doing internally, with what opportunities you have to influence LGBTQ+ liberation externally. And thinking about the communities that you serve, the communities that you work in and supporting them in a way that you have the resources, capabilities and skills to support them and doing that quite meaningfully and intentionally.
Toby Mildon: That's really cool. I know we're not supposed to have favorite clients, but what is one organisation that particularly stands out for you that you are really proud about the impact that they've made?
Christopher Owen: I'm proud of all of my clients, all of my members are in different parts of their journey and they're all doing really, really good work. I've mentioned three. A fourth one that I can mention is Auto Trader, who I'm sure you've heard they sell cars online. They're a really great organisation, but actually what a lot of people probably don't know but should know is that Auto Trader don't just drive really incredible LGBTQ+ inclusion internally. And it is quite robust internally, but they do really, really important work in their sector. So they're really connected with the automotive industry.
Christopher Owen: And they have created resources, created spaces, founded programmes specifically to drive LGBTQ+ inclusion within the automotive industry and really taken a leadership role in that space that I'm really, really impressed by. And then on the side to that, the amount of charitable giving that they've done as an organisation is really, really impressive.
Christopher Owen: So they're one of our sponsors at Manchester Pride. But that's not why I like them because they don't sponsor our festival and the parties, they sponsor our year-round community engagement work, they sponsor the stuff that's specifically tapped into marginalised communities that's more on the ground, more authentic. Manchester Pride is a charity that runs year-round and we couldn't do that work without organisations supporting us financially.
Christopher Owen: And Auto Trader is one of those organisations. And so are several of the other ones that I've mentioned or haven't mentioned, but absolutely it's that kind of meaningfully connected with communities that we're really very quite proud of as part of the All Equals Charter team.
Toby Mildon: That's brilliant. I always say to my clients that I really want them to get into a position where they are a leading employer and then they're able to educate and support the rest of their industry as well. And where people look at them as they're the leaders in their sector and that they're looking to them for best practice and things like that. That's the ideal situation to be in. You mentioned that you take an intersectional approach to your work and I believe this is something that you specialised in with your PhD as well...
Toby Mildon: Could you just explain why you take an intersectional approach? But also maybe define it for us as well. It is a topic that we've discussed on previous podcast episodes, but maybe the person listening to us right now hasn't managed to catch up with those episodes, but yeah, if we could start with what do we mean by intersectional approach? And why you take the approach?
Christopher Owen: Yeah. So intersectionality was coined by a law scholar named Kimberlé Crenshaw, to refer specifically to a road intersection. So you can think about one road being Black and another road being gay. And so right in the middle of that road is a Black gay person. And I love Kimberlé Crenshaw and I think she's done really brilliant work, but I think it's a disservice to the theory and to the field of Black feminism to only name her. There's other names that have been really influential in intersectionality, including Audre Lorde and Bell Hooks. But more recent scholars that I really like are Patricia Hill Collins and Emma Dabiri are also really, really good names to be reading up on. But the definition that I like to use for intersectionality actually comes from a Jewish scholar named Nira Yuval-Davis.
Christopher Owen: And she defines it as the ways in which different social divisions are concretely enmeshed by one another. And that concept of enmeshment, I think is really, really important for understanding intersectionality. I want you to go back to that road intersection. You've got your Black road and your gay road and you're standing right in the middle of the intersection, which road are you on? Can you say that you're on the gay road and equally say that you're not on the Black road? No, you're on both roads. You're on this whole new moment. It's neither road and it's both roads and it's... The concrete in the ground is all one piece, right? It's concretely enmeshed. And I think that that's what we need to understand about intersectionality is that people's identities cannot be separated from one another. They all come together.
Christopher Owen: And there's really actually two key ways to understand intersectionality. One is to be thinking about, yeah, the Black road and the gay road and then therefore the Black gay person in the middle. But there's also the roads of the racism road and the homophobia road and the experience right there in the middle as well. And what does that feel like? What does that look like? What does that involve? And so when we're thinking about workplaces and organisations and driving inclusion, if you are only tackling the homophobia road, if you're tearing up the homophobia road to build in the inclusion road, you are gonna get to that intersection and there's gonna be bits of hate left over from the racism road that you missed because you were only tearing up the homophobia road. In fact, that middle piece is gonna remain fully intact because you couldn't get at it because it was enmeshed with the racism road.
Christopher Owen: And so, to make a long story short, and I know it's too late, our endeavors to drive inclusion have to acknowledge the different systems of oppression are all concretely enmeshed with one another. That they are all interlocked, they're all interconnected and they all sustain and uphold one another. So I talked earlier about how transphobic policy can harm cisgender women and there's loads of examples of that. For example, cutting young people from accessing puberty blockers in order to medically transitioning for trans people has meant that cisgender girls who are precocious, who start their puberty early, also now can't access those puberty blockers because of transphobic legislation, which means that cisgender girls can no longer access the healthcare needs that they have and are having to start menstruating at a very, very young age which has all kinds of social and health implications. So here we have a transphobic policy that's cis women, all of our systems of oppression uphold one another, keep each other going, ensure that those who are in power, the super mega wealthy elite...
Christopher Owen: Are gonna keep their power, are gonna keep hold of all of the cards and they're gonna pit us against one another rather than let us remember who's actually at fault here and who's actually got the power to make change. And we need to recognise that if we don't dismantle patriarchy, we'll never dismantle homophobia or transphobia. And if we don't dismantle White supremacy, we'll never be able to celebrate and uplift women and so on and so on and so on. And it goes on and on and on. So the approach that I deeply believe and the team at Manchester Pride deeply believes in is, none of us can be free until all of us are free. And that's just the way that it is.
Toby Mildon: When we talk about oppression, what is it and how does it impact individuals?
Christopher Owen: There's lots of different kinds of oppression. There's psychological oppression, economic oppression, political oppression. I like to talk about systemic oppression, which is the holistic combination of all of the other kinds of oppressions all into one big chunky problem. And systemic oppression is big and it is complicated, but it can be simplified really easily into how easy or difficult it is for people to get opportunities.
Christopher Owen: But those opportunities can vary. The opportunity might be to get promoted at work and become the CEO. We talk about the glass ceiling and how women have been facing the glass ceiling for years and years and years. We could also talk about the opportunity to be safe and we can talk about the higher rates that people of color experience police brutality and how it's more difficult for them to find safety, even from institutions that are designed to keep them safe.
Christopher Owen: It might also be the opportunity to be respected on the day-to-day. And we can think about trans people and having their pronouns respected and used as an automatic norm in a way that is comfortable for everybody involved. So there's loads of different kinds of opportunity, but I really like to use the theory of the matrix of domination developed by Patricia Hill Collins, one of the Black feminists I shared earlier.
Christopher Owen: She breaks oppression into four key areas that we can think about. So the first one is, the way that institutions interlock to organise oppression. So that might include healthcare, the police, the government and laws, the family, housing, education. These are all different institutions and they all work together to create a working system in our society. They're the cogs in the machine that keep us going.
Christopher Owen: They organise society and how society is organised and they are all designed to best support and to create opportunities very, very easily for historically privileged groups. And therefore, opportunities are less easy to come by through these institutions for historically marginalised groups. And there is a history there and we have to acknowledge that history and uproot the historic structures in place.
Christopher Owen: And one of the problems that we have with oppression is we will say, "Well, it's always being like this. This is how healthcare is done." And then we have to say, "Well, it needs to be done differently because it doesn't work for X community," for example. The second area is bureaucracy. And we can talk about bureaucracy all day you and I working in workplaces and I'm sure most people listening can think about the ways that bureaucracy is a headache.
Christopher Owen: And the way that you have to fill out the admin forms, you have to do it correctly and you have to get it approved by the right person. And all of these annoying, frustrating things that actually just take all of the power out of you. And you can't just make it happen. You've gotta go through the right channels and the right people and the right processes. And while bureaucracy can have ways... Really important features for protecting communities, it can also function to protect the status quo and to limit the voice and autonomy and power of populations.
Christopher Owen: Bureaucracy's job is to manage oppression and to keep populations subservient to the status quo, docile and obedient to the process. A process that benefits those who already have power. The third area has to do with cultural belief systems and the ways that we justify the harm that we commit to marginalised communities. So for example, LGBTQ+ people have to come out of the closet, but cisgender and heterosexual people don't have to come out of the closet. The reason for that isn't homophobia and hate.
Christopher Owen: The reason for that is sort of the way that our society has automatic assumptions and norms and that therefore justifies erasing LGBTQ+ people. And so while we might not mean anything hateful, we can still exclude or forget about or leave out LGBTQ+ people because of the way that our culture has belief systems that have these automatic assumptions. And so one of the reasons that we have inclusivity measures or call out culture or whatever else, is to help create new knowledge for people to realise, "Oh, the way that we think as a society on an unconscious level is actually deeply harmful."
Christopher Owen: And then the last area and I know I've gone on a long time, apologies, is the way we experience oppression, our interpersonal relationships and interactions, our day-to-day experiences, whether that be microaggressions or inappropriate questions or outright hate and bigotry and slurs and slanders and violence. Our everyday experiences can vary and they vary every day. But they have a real impact on our mental wellbeing, on our physical wellbeing and overall just happiness in society. And so how we treat one another also is part of how we liberate one another.
Toby Mildon: I love what you're saying and how you've brought the social domination matrix to life, because I've actually developed a workshop called Being an Equitable Leader and the need to focus on equity in order for us to create equality within the workplace. And I actually use Patricia Hill's Collins framework, the Social Domination Matrix. And I'm just thinking the person listening to us right now might be thinking, "That's really fascinating and interesting, but how on earth do I actually bring this into my organisation in a practical sense?" So how does oppression translate into workplaces? What is its effect on the culture of the organisation? And what are some really practical things that the person listening to us right now could start to think about implementing in their business?
Christopher Owen: It's a really good question and I don't wanna give all of the trade secrets away, right? Maybe step one is, join the All Equals Charter and hire me [laughter] but...
Toby Mildon: Of course, we also don't want to just give people too much and just overburden them with a long to-do list. It's always better just to keep it simple and start with the really basic stuff.
Christopher Owen: So here's where we start. Here's the basics. Take the abstract concept out of your diversity. Who are the people? Where are they in your organisation, are they senior decision makers? Are they shaping your policies or your procedures? Are they being asked to do too much work to help you shape those things? Or are you treating them like people? So I think... We talked about bureaucracy for example, does your organisation have any monitoring forms? Are you checking if that form is trans-inclusive? If non-binary people can answer that form accurately and fairly? Have you checked through your policies to make sure that they work for all LGBTQ+ people? For example, do you have a uniform policy that, again, would exclude non-binary people or parental and maternal leave policies that would exclude same-sex couples? For example. So just stop and think about real people and what their real lived experiences would look like.
Christopher Owen: And can they access the same opportunities just as readily and easily within your organisation as your cisgender and heterosexual staff? And where that's not gonna be true, where they're not senior decision makers or they fit within policy or anything else, that's where you have space to create some real change quite meaningfully. So that's where I would start. Think about your people, be authentic and honest about it. Next is gonna be thinking about your communities, thinking about who you might be recruiting, who you might be working with as customers, clients, etcetera. And that's something that absolutely the team at Manchester Pride could support with.
Toby Mildon: Brilliant. You've just reminded me. I was working in an organisation where I worked with a colleague, and forgive me if I get the language wrong here, they were gender fluid, or they are gender fluid, so they presented differently on different days. And one practical thing was whether our ID badges reflected how they wanted to present and we actually had double-sided ID badges so they could have different photos for how they wanted to present on the day. And actually, I was quite surprised it was very easy for the security team to produce these double-sided ID badges, which actually remove that bureaucracy, because I have spoken with colleagues, sorry, with clients that say, "Oh, it's impossible to have double-sided ID badges," that you got one photo and that's it. Or you're only allowed one badge. You can't have more than one badge. And it just adds that extra layer of bureaucracy like you say.
Christopher Owen: Yeah, it's, you know what? My easy easy advice is to take all of those things that you say, "Oh, well, sorry, that's policy. We can't do that." Or, "Oh, it's always been done this way, we can't do it." Everything that you wanna wash your hands of and say, "Not my responsibility. I can't help this. There's nothing we can do about it." It's not true. You probably can do something. Try and get a little bit innovative. Try and think outside the box. Try and... Put your foot down and make some change because, yeah, it's easy to say, "Sorry, we can't have double-sided ID badges. That's not how it works." And go, "We'll, make it how it works." Change it. You can change it. And I think a lot of people don't know that they have the power to make a change, "It's this way and it's always been this way, therefore it has to continue to be that way." No. Real inclusion is about looking at what we can change and then changing it. And there's more opportunities than people realise.
Toby Mildon: When I work with leaders around inclusive leadership behaviors, one of the things that I talk about is challenging the status quo. And inclusive leaders are bold. They're not afraid to rock the boat. And they do question, they say, "Why are we doing it this way?" "Okay, we have been doing it this way for 10 years, but why are we continuing to do it this way? Surely there is a better way or a different way to be doing things."
Christopher Owen: Well and it might have worked 10 years ago, but it might not work today. And one of the things that I would hate for an organisation is to be outdated and to fall behind. Customers and clients are looking for organisations that are the best, who are on top of things. Who are the most up-to-date. To sit back and say like, "Oh, that's just the way it is," is allowing yourself to fall behind. And that's just not a good business sense.
Toby Mildon: Absolutely. Now, the penultimate question that I ask everybody when they come on this podcast is, what does inclusive growth mean to you?
Christopher Owen: You know what? Let's think about what growth means for a plant, right? For a tree, how are you gonna help a tree grow? Well you're gonna make sure it gets sunlight. It's gotta be outside and you've gotta water the roots specifically. It's lovely to get the leaves wet, but actually the roots are where the water is needed. Inclusive growth is the same. You've gotta get outside. You've gotta go and get to know those communities and real people. And you've gotta tackle the issues at the root. What is causing exclusion? What is causing inequality? Go and solve those problems first and then the rest of the tree will grow.
Toby Mildon: Fantastic. Now my final question is, what is one thing that you would like the person listening to us right now to do after they've heard our conversation?
Christopher Owen: I would love them to get in touch with me so that we can have a conversation about where they're at in their LGBTQ+ inclusion journey, what issues they're facing, what their goals are and how I can help and how the All Equals Charter team can help. So if they wanna go to the Manchester Pride website, they can find the All Equals Charter there. Or they can go to allequalscharter.com and hopefully we can have just a conversation to see what they need and try to get them going on tackling those root causes of the problems, connecting authentically with communities and making real meaningful change to support the modern Pride Movement.
Toby Mildon: Brilliant. Well, Christopher, thanks ever so much for joining me today. I love just talking to you. All of our conversations that we've had on the podcast and off the podcast are always enlightening. So even today, I've just learned so much from you about systemic change, about applying the power domination matrix within organisations, some really practical things that organisations should do, about how they need to be thinking about that backdrop of the lived experience of LGBTQ+ individuals in today's society. So as always, I've thoroughly enjoyed chatting with you. I'd love to get you back on the podcast where we can talk about another topic. So thanks very much.
Christopher Owen: Oh, the feeling is entirely mutual and it's always a pleasure to speak with you. I've really enjoyed being on your podcast today and I hope to have the chance again in future. Thank you so much, Toby.
Toby Mildon: Thanks Christopher. And thank you for tuning into today's episode with Christopher and myself. Hopefully you've taken away some really insightful information and you've taken away some practical hints and tips that you can start applying within your organisation. As Christopher says, please do get in touch with him through the Manchester Pride website. It is worth looking at the charter and seeing whether your organisation should sign up to that charter. I would highly recommend it. Christopher is a great person to work with, so it will add immense value to your organisation. So please do reach out to Christopher and get the support from him and his team. So thanks so much for tuning in and I look forward to seeing you on the next episode, which will be coming up very soon. Until then, take good care of yourself. Goodbye.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to The Inclusive Growth Show. For further information and resources from Toby and his team, head on over to our website at mildon.co.uk.