Say hello to Pride Month, a rainbow-hued celebration of LGBTQ+ folks. The month-long mix of parades, parties, and pasties reflects incredible social, political, and cultural leaps forward over the last few decades, ushering in a more welcoming environment for all who identify as queer.

Today, it’s common for corporations to acknowledge Pride Month. But for those people who have seen Pride celebrated every June of their lives, mere recognition is no longer enough.

This year’s festivities are shadowed by numerous pieces of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation that have passed or been proposed since last June, disproportionately affecting transgender Americans and queer youth. Savvy consumers are paying attention to which brands are true allies 365 days a year and which are just dancing down Rainbow-Washing Way. As corporate Pride campaigns in June have gone mainstream, there is mounting pressure from this newer cadre of consumers to make more tangible, substantial commitments to the LGBTQ+ community.

“One of the biggest pitfalls is when we see companies that only want to have this conversation in June,” shared Jean-Marie Navetta, Director of Learning and Inclusion at PFLAG National, an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization. “That is problematic because people who are queer are queer every single day and every single month of the year.”

Some of these rainbow-come-June companies have internal policies that discriminate against queer employees, engage in business practices that are actively damaging to the queer community, or support anti-LGBTQ+ politicians, prompting the term “rainbow-washing” — cashing in on Pride merchandise while doing little to support LGBTQ+ organizations.

But the good news is that some companies are knocking it out of Pride park by being true supporters of LGBTQ+ rights. Here are four organizations doing Pride right. All the companies listed rank high on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index, a nonprofit that is the national benchmark for corporate policies, practices, and benefits as they pertain to the LGBTQ+ community.

ABERCROMBIE & FITCH

A&F x The Trevor Project | Gender Inclusive ‘Pride Hoodie’

With a muted colorblock design reminiscent of LGBTQ+ flag colors, this oversized hoodie works for various shapes, sizes, and genders. It’s part of Abercrombie & Fitch’s gender-inclusive collection, co-created with The Trevor Project, the world’s largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ+ youth.

In support of Pride 2022 and their ongoing partnership, Abercrombie & Fitch is donating $400,000 to The Trevor Project, regardless of sales. To date, Abercrombie & Fitch has raised over $2.8 million for The Trevor Project.

Abercrombie & Fitch has long had comprehensive and inclusive benefits for U.S. Employees. Health insurance and other benefits are equivalent for different-sex and same-sex couples.

🏳🏳️‍🌈️‍ Received a perfect score of 100 on HRC’s Corporate Equality Index/Best Places to Work for LGBTQ+ for the last 16 years

ADIDAS

Adidas ‘Love Unites’ Print Pride Tracksuit

Queer artist Kris Andrew Small designed Adidas’ Pride capsule collection, which includes apparel, accessories, and footwear like limited edition Stan Smith Pride shoes. His work spreads a message of empowerment and support for the LGBTQ+ community. It’s inspired by the pop art and graphic design of the 1970s and 1980s, which helped shape his lens as a creative. In this doodle-driven print design are hidden messages of acceptance and self-love for people to discover.

Adidas’ goal for the collection was to bring visibility to the many voices of the LGBTQ+ community. They are continuing their partnerships with longtime British LGBTQ+ advocacy group Stonewall U.K. and Athlete Ally, an organization focused on ending homophobia and transphobia in sports.

🏳️‍🌈 Top-rated Brand: HRC Corporate Equality Index/Best Places to Work for LGBTQ+

APPLE

Apple Watch Pride Edition Sport Loop

Proud All Year Long is the tagline on the Apple.com website, clearly signaling their 365 days a year approach to supporting the LGBTQ+ community. In honor of Pride 2022, Apple has released two Apple Watch Pride Edition watchbands for 2022. The regular Sport Loop features the word “Pride” woven into the rainbow band, including shades of black, brown, and pink to recognize the trans, Black, and Latinx communities.

A darker Pride Edition Nike Sport Loop, featuring a matching rainbow-colored Nike Bounce face, honors “individuals who are expanding sport for future generations,” according to the company.

Apple continues to support many LGBTQ+ organizations like GLSEN — The Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, The Trevor Project, and the Human Rights Campaign, among others. CEO Tim Cook came out as gay in October 2014, becoming the first “out” CEO of a Fortune 500 company. He famously said, “I’m proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me.”

🏳🏳️‍🌈 Top-rated Brand: HRC Corporate Equality Index/Best Places to Work for LGBTQ+

CHIPOTLE

Chipotle Pride 2022 Burrito 

Chipotle has been LGBTQ+-friendly from the beginning. The founder, Steve Ells, is an openly gay man. Though he stepped down as CEO in 2017, 27 years after founding this innovative chain, Chipotle continues to be an uber-inclusive company.

This year, Chipotle worked with its Pride employee resource group to identify key issues that members of the LGBTQ+ community face and, in response, developed its first-ever yearlong support program.

One of its new initiatives is partnering with Happy Hippie — a nonprofit organization founded by Miley Cyrus — whose mission is to fight injustice facing homeless youth, LGBTQ+ youth, and other vulnerable populations. The goal is to provide $250,000 in free Chipotle food to Happy Hippie’s partner LGBTQ+ centers across the United States so that they have real food throughout the year.

A longtime Pride supporter, Chipotle celebrates equality with its employees and customers. They offer enhanced paid parental leave for adoptive parents, same-sex couples, and paternity leave, and cover care and surgical costs for their trans employees.

🏳️‍🌈 Received a perfect score of 100 on HRC’s Corporate Equality Index/Best Places to Work for LGBTQ+

Bottom Line

Brands that are true allies 365 days a year are the ones whose rainbow ad campaigns speak to more than just jubilant June Pride celebrations. They are showing up for their LGBTQ+ employees and the queer community at large all year long by making tangible, substantial commitments beyond a kaleidoscopic marketing splash. To do Pride right, consider partnering with known LGBTQ+ organizations and take stock of how your internal policies align with your June Pride marketing.

About the author. 

An award-winning creator and digital health, wellness, and lifestyle content strategist—Karina writes, produces, and edits compelling content across multiple platforms—including articles, video, interactive tools, and documentary film. Her work has been featured on MSN Lifestyle, Apartment Therapy, Goop, Psycom, Yahoo News, Pregnancy & Newborn, Eat This Not That, thirdAGE, and Remedy Health Media digital properties and has spanned insight pieces on psychedelic toad medicine to forecasting the future of work to why sustainability needs to become more sustainable. 

The ongoing pandemic, coupled with Americans’ fast-changing attitudes about their life at work, has radically reshaped the labor landscape.  
Sluggish demographic growth and a growing legion of burned out workers who are opting out means that the pool of available labor is diminishing. Employees have made such a dramatic beeline for the exit that Texas A&M professor Anthony Klotz coined the term The Great Resignation.  

Organizations are struggling to fill roles and retain burned out employees, which means that workers have become increasingly important stakeholders. Employers need to rethink work and management styles, adjust their strategies, and innovate quickly because right now, the odds are not ever-in-their-favor. Job openings are near an all-time high, and with talent pipelines at a slow drip, hiring has become a rough and tumble full contact sport. 

But as the game ratchets up into ever-higher gear, one innovative solution is hiding in plain sight: older workers.  

Baby boomers may just be the answer to the labor shortage challenge.  
When most of us think of freelancers, we envision millennials. While they have embraced the gig economy, they are increasingly working alongside middle-aged and older Americans seeking alternate ways to stay employed past the traditional retirement age. 

Workers age 55 or older have been leaving their jobs at higher rates than before the pandemic — the share of older workers who exited increased by 7.6% points during the pandemic — but many are not ready to retire. The Pew Research Center estimates that 20% of the American gig economy — from marketing consultants to Uber drivers — are over 50. 

Businesses may pay a high price if they don’t recast their labor market lens. A 2021 report by AARP estimates that excluding older workers could cost the United States economy nearly $4 trillion by 2050. Today’s labor shortage is an opportunity to evolve thinking for individual and collective benefit.  

Generational diversity does a company good. 
Employers get a lot of proverbial bang for their buck when they create an age-inclusive workplace. A 2013 study of 147 German companies, published in the Journal of Management, found higher profits and growth projections in organizations with a mix of workers of various ages and higher employee productivity and retention rates.  

Older workers bring cognitive diversity to their teams, which improves business performance. Mixed-age work teams have higher relative productivity. An AARP study found that age diversity in a group involved in complex decision-making tasks performed better than mono-age teams. And age diversity within an organization can lower employee turnover.  

Hiring older workers can both ease the challenge of hiring in this tight labor market and result in greater generational diversity for businesses, bestowing the benefits that diversity in all its guises brings to operations and the bottom line. For this to happen, organizations will need to shift their acquisition strategies to be more all-encompassing and be conscious of moving past implicit age bias that often hampers older workers’ employment searches.  

Hiring managers need to remove coded language like “recent college graduate” from job descriptions and dispense with terms like “ninja,” “digital native,” “rock star,” and “guru,” among others. Older workers being tech-illiterate or overqualified are common assumptions that need to be left aside. Instead, talent acquisition teams should focus on the knowledge and expertise that come with experience, which are the main predictors of job performance. Older workers frequently outperform their younger counterparts on many success metrics, like stronger interpersonal skills, less turnover, and less absenteeism.  

Say hello to returnships and partnering with organizations dedicated to older adults. 
One way to leverage older workers’ skills is to offer “returnships” — full-time paid internships for adults who have been out of the workforce for several years. Returnships help get people back to paid work while giving employers a chance to diversify their workforce to reflect the communities their businesses are serving more accurately.   

Another smart way to access job-ready older workers is to partner with organizations that can help recruit talent across age groups. AARP Foundation has several job skills training programs, such as the Digital Skills Ready@50+ initiative, which focuses on training more vulnerable older adults, like women and people of color, in underserved communities. Its goal is to help this demographic group gain the digital skills to succeed in today’s tech-driven workplace. Partnering with organizations like AARP can offer companies a pipeline of older candidates to consider who have the necessary digital skills to be job-ready from the jump.  

Bottom Line:  
Today’s hiring challenges can become tomorrow’s opportunity — but nothing will change if employers don’t abandon hiring and firing practices that favor the young. To be competitive in this market means companies need to reinvent how they approach diversity, including age in the matrix, and rethink whom they invest in. It’s the dawning of a new day indeed. 

About the author
An award-winning creator and digital health, wellness, and lifestyle content strategist—Karina writes, produces, and edits compelling content across multiple platforms—including articles, video, interactive tools, and documentary film. Her work has been featured on MSN Lifestyle, Apartment Therapy, Goop, Psycom, Yahoo News, Pregnancy & Newborn, Eat This Not That, thirdAGE, and Remedy Health Media digital properties and has spanned insight pieces on psychedelic toad medicine to forecasting the future of work to why sustainability needs to become more sustainable. 

Asian American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander Heritage Month pays tributes to the generations of Asians and Pacific Islanders who have enriched America’s history and are instrumental in its future success.

We’ve gathered a list of AANHPI businesses, organizations, and creatives to support and share with your community.

AANHPI-Founded or Owned Businesses

Clothing/Jewelry

• AMYO
• Back Beat Co.
• Grey State
• Joah Love
  • Kids
• Ji Won Choi
• ​​​​​​​JW PEI​​​​​​​
• ​​​​​​​Miki House 
  • Kids

Home

• Aerangis

Makeup/Skincare/Hygiene

• Allies of Skin
• Coco kind
• Em Cosmetics
• Live Tinted
• Pink Moon
• Rael
• Soko Glam
• Strange Bird
  • Vegan

Food

• Nguyen Coffee Supply

AANHPI Creatives

• Lili’uolani
  • multi-talented visual artist, designer, and Creative Circle candidate
• Saarika Sharma 
  • collage artist, contemporary paintings, and more
• Larry Shinoda
  • American automotive designer best known for the Chevrolet Corvette and Ford Mustang  
•  Karen Tong
  • graphic, hand painted ceramics artist
• Viet Thanh Nguyen
  • Pulitzer Prize winning author
• Jessica Chou
  • photography united by empathy curiosity and nature
• Swati Khurana
  • writer and contemporary artist
• Terisa Siagatonu
  • award-winning poet and activist
• Godwin Kou and Kuansoi (Christine) Kou 
  • Chinese brush painter (Chinese watercolor) and calligraphy artist 
• Ruth Asawa
  • modern artist best known for her abstract wire sculptures
• Mail Order Brides/M.O.B.
  • Filipina-American artist trio that engages in an ongoing conversation with culture and gender

Organizations Supporting AANHPI Communities

Photo Credit: The Trash Project

What catches more flies — vinegar or honey?

Joyful activism, a growing trend in social and environmental advocacy, follows this logic, seeking to inspire change in behavior through celebratory actions rather than by scaring or shaming people.

A bright example is TRASH Project, a public art project developed by artist Adrian Kondratowicz to inspire mindfulness about waste creation, while raising environmental awareness and beautifying urban spaces. Kondratowicz shares: “By activating public space with sculptures of color, TRASH sparks awareness about waste, sanitation, and consumption.”

The project entailed getting residents and business owners to put their garbage in the artist-created, hot pink polka dot trash bags (made of 80% post-consumer waste) — transforming standard piles of trash into flamboyant soft sculptures, a vivid homage to Claes Oldenburg.

Photo Credit: The Trash Project

We typically walk blithely past piles of garbage on city streets, but these vibrant bags are so strikingly different we cannot help but notice. And in the process of making the unseen seen, the artist invites us to stop and reflect on just how much we really throw away.

Joyful activism spurs change through the power of positive emotion.

When psychologists studied people engaged in communal dance, singing, or other rhythmic modes of entertainment, they found that people connected physically. Musicians playing the same melody have brain waves that sync up, and choir singers’ heart rates synchronize. Even when strangers move or sing together, they become more altruistic and generous. These synchronous experiences create a physiological sense of community that can be conscious or unconscious.

It is a notable feature of autocratic regimes that forms of joy are often banned. In Trinidad, the British banned drumming. In Mao’s China, listening to Beethoven was a crime, and in Nazi Germany, traditional Jewish music was verboten. The Soviet Union censored songs by artists across the musical spectrum, such as Tina Turner, AC/DC, and Julio Iglesias.

The Singing Revolution, a four-year series of protests marked by mass singing demonstrations, swept across Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania between 1987 and 1991, eventually helping lead to their independence from the Soviet Union. Matt Zoller Seitz from The New York Times described it like this: “Imagine the scene in ‘Casablanca’ in which the French patrons sing ‘La Marseillaise’ in defiance of the Germans, then multiply its power by a factor of thousands, and you’ve only begun to imagine the force of ‘The Singing Revolution.'” All of which goes to show that joy is a powerful and unifying force.

Dance, Dance, Revolution!

DAYBREAKER is an early morning, sober dance party that began in 2013 as an NYC-based social experiment and art project and has now evolved into a worldwide movement to increase mindfulness and ignite change through radical self-expression and joy.

DAYBREAKER launched the Cool Kids Club this past Earth Day, a collective described as “inspired humans determined to cool the planet through joyful climate activism.” In early 2022, DAYBREAKER took their unique brand of revelry on a trip around the globe as part of their Natüre Series, with a momentous stop this past March in Antarctica.

Photo Credit: Cool Kids Club 

As DAYBREAKER cofounder Radha Agrawal shared on Instagram: “When there’s shame & blame we get paralyzed into inaction…our goal is to invite the arts, joy, and belonging — not just to each other but to our ecosystem — into the conversation to magnetize more people into climate action.”

Connecting the dots between joy and freedom

“Recognize that pleasure is a measure of freedom,” writes Adrienne Maree Brown in her book Pleasure Activism, which centers on the premise that the things activists strive for — liberation, wellbeing, justice, and more — are highly joyful states, underscoring that pleasure can be a powerful tool for helping us achieve these aims. Working for change you believe in can be profoundly joyful and straight-up fun if done with the right people.

Can we dance and sing our way to a healthier planet? It might be not only the most fun way to tackle such a serious problem, but perhaps the most successful. Leading with joy may make us more receptive to making real and actionable change.

About the author. 

An award-winning creator and digital health, wellness, and lifestyle content strategist—Karina writes, produces, and edits compelling content across multiple platforms—including articles, video, interactive tools, and documentary film. Her work has been featured on MSN Lifestyle, Apartment Therapy, Goop, Psycom, Yahoo News, Pregnancy & Newborn, Eat This Not That, thirdAGE, and Remedy Health Media digital properties and has spanned insight pieces on psychedelic toad medicine to forecasting the future of work to why sustainability needs to become more sustainable. 

You’ve read these words hundreds of times, usually from companies trying to sell you products and peace of mind. But what do they really mean?

How does buying these products help the environment? Are they better than what you already have? Or, are they participating in a little something called “greenwashing” — making promises that either aren’t quite true or that distract you from other bigger problems that their company might cause?

The short and short of it is that sustainability and consumerism are inherently incompatible. Most greenwashing relies on misdirection. “Look at this little thing we’re doing over here” distracts consumers from manufacturing or logistics pipelines that create most waste and emissions. It’s a tale as old as climate activism and it started with the oil industry.

FOSSIL FUELS + TRANSPORTATION

Let’s start with the greatest scam of all. In 2006, BP, with the help of ad agency Ogilvy & Mather, coined the term “carbon footprint.” This propaganda ploy accomplished a vital task, shifting attention from corporate to personal responsibility when it comes to climate change, pollution, and environmental impact.

The phrase is still firmly cemented in the cultural zeitgeist as we look for ways to reduce our own. BP even started shifting their branding to “Beyond Petroleum” even though they are anything but. They were in fact the cause of the largest oil spill in history.

The origin story starts way before 2006, though. Chevron started way back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, running ads showing employees interacting with nature even when the company knew they were contributing to climate change. The transportation industry has tried to make even more green promises since then, but that doesn’t change that reliance on fossil fuels will never get us past a brownish gray. In spite of new ad campaigns like Shell’s greenwashing campaign, oil and gas are ruining our air and heating the planet and the industry has had concrete evidence of this since the 1980s. Why would you trust anything they say ever again?

Rugged truck brands that showcase commercials in mountains and open fields can be accused of greenwashing as they celebrate being closer to nature… as you simultaneously destroy it. Those gas guzzlers are extremely useful if you need them. If you’re a true laborer or adventurer that has to haul gear up and down mountain roads, much respect to you and your need for this vehicle. However, living in Miami, Florida I see way too many souped-up Jeeps that look more pristine than the obnoxious Ferraris along the street. There is no off-roading on Ocean Drive.

But is switching to electric any better? Well, that’s complicated, but not really. Not yet. Without the infrastructure to support electric charging, it’s not a practical solution for a lot of people. Plus the cost of making new cars, digging up materials for these batteries and vehicle structures, shipping them across the globe, etc. has its own carbon cost that may outweigh some of the long-term benefits if you’re not getting maximum use out of your vehicle. According to Car and Driver, “EV batteries are energy-intensive to manufacture, and there are humanitarian costs associated with mining the metals they rely on. Though EVs don’t emit greenhouse gases, the electricity they pull from the grid often does.”

That means it also depends on where you live and how electricity gets to you. In my home state of Florida, the majority of electricity is made by burning natural gas, which is pretty counterintuitive when trying to shift away from gasoline. However, if you live somewhere like Washington or Vermont where the majority of electricity is derived from renewable sources, then over the long term your electric investment might pay off, as “the life-cycle emissions of a small gas car will surpass those of a small EV after roughly 27,000 miles of driving.”

So in sum, it’s a higher carbon price to build an electric vehicle, but that cost is offset by the performance of the vehicle over the course of its lifespan. That still makes choices a lot more complicated, especially if you currently have a fully functional combustion engine car. Is buying a brand-new electric vehicle really the right move today?

FAST FASHION + TEXTILE WASTE

Zara, H&M, Forever 21, and now… Shein. What do these brands all have in common? They’re fast fashion brands that contribute tons of waste.

It’s a really toxic cycle that fashion brands and consumers are locked in. These companies produce hundreds of thousands of articles of new styles and clothes per year, and yet 60% of those will be thrown out within the year they were purchased. I’m sorry… WHAT?!

A lot of these brands have definitely made an effort, like H&M with their conscious choice line and product material and origin transparency. But that doesn’t change the fact that fast fashion is inherently not sustainable. Which is honestly a consumer issue as well. While corporations must make strides to look at their production, packaging, and shipping process, consumers need to stop demanding the latest craze of trend cycles, an area that has exploded with the rising popularity of Shein. The whole industry is built around people wanting more and more. (And that’s to not even touch the unethical labor practices of their overseas factories.)

So when a company, especially a fashion brand, makes claims about recycling and carbon-neutral practices… you may want to dig a little deeper. They might just be buying carbon credits, which is a step but doesn’t reduce their impact.

Still, some companies are doing good in the textile world, including Patagonia and Lucy & Yak. (That article also includes personal care brands like Dr. Bronner’s that don’t overhype their promises.)

SO WHAT THE HECK DO WE DO?

Trying to be an ethical consumer is quite frankly an existential nightmare. If you’ve ever watched The Good Place, you know what I mean. (Don’t click that link unless you want spoilers. The point of this clip is about halfway in.) So, what do we do? The best we can.

Obvious signs of greenwashing are when companies just use buzzwords and make big promises but don’t explain the how.

Akepa, an ad agency working exclusively with sustainable brands, does a pretty good job of tracking and pointing out examples like these nine companies with recent disingenuous campaigns.

A big one: companies that claim to recycle plastic. Single-use plastics are one of our biggest problems on the planet. Coca-Cola and Nestle are the companies producing the most plastic waste that DOES NOT get recycled. BlueTriton (owner of many popular water bottle brands) is currently in court over its “hyperbolic” sustainability claims.

So if a company is using plastic, they’re not helping the planet.

But what about companies that use compostable packaging? Well, you’ve got to check the details, because some of those require high heat levels that the average compost can’t handle. Those, unfortunately, end up in landfills, too.

See, I told you it was a nightmare.

If you have the time to check in on the ethical practices of a company, do so. If you don’t, do your best. Shopping smaller and locally will often help. Having some “go to” places to shop can help, too. That way your research can go towards a place where you can keep shopping.

But the number one thing we can do as individuals is to just buy fewer things we don’t really need, even if you’re replacing something with a product that is “zero-waste.” For example, if you already have a plastic product, don’t throw it away and replace it with a bamboo one. But if your plastic product is on its last leg and you need to replace it, then making the switch is a great idea.

There are tons of resources out there to help us make better choices, but more importantly, we need to let large corporations know we’re not falling for their empty promises, fudged statistics, and public gaslighting anymore.

About the author.

Alessandra is your friendly neighborhood writer, coach, and facilitator with a varied history of experience from digital agencies and corporations to yoga studios and gyms. Her expertise and interests range from fitness and wellness to self-care and personal development to intersectionality and justice to science and creative cultivation. She has worked on and off with Creative Circle since 2014, originally as an NYC recruiter, later as an internal sourcer, and currently as a community wellness and culture specialist as well as a contributing writer for this here blog. You can find up-to-date offerings or sign up for her newsletter at alessandracalderin.com.