Amadeus proud sponsor of IE Business School LGBT@work event

The LGBT@work event started back in July 2006 when a group of students from the renowned Spanish Business School Instituto de Empresa – IE – wanted to create a community for LGBTs within the school. This was the catalyst for the club IEOut, which is celebrating its 10^th anniversary this year. The journey has not been easy and much has been achieved in these past 10 years where Spain is today amongst the most progressive countries both in terms of legal regulations and social acceptance.

Despite the progress throughout the years and across geographies, which started in 1969 with the Stonewall Riots, a demonstration which blazed the trail for activists across the country and spilled over the rest of the world, becoming today a symbol of freedom and anti-discrimination, there is still a long way to go for us to reach a future without discrimination in the workplace and beyond.

A proud sponsor

To support this effort, Amadeus was a proud sponsor and speaker at the LGBT@work event which took place on 29^th June and gathered over 80 people from all backgrounds sharing their insights and experience in a very interactive session.

Opened by Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of the IE business school, Celia de Anca, IE’s Director for Diversity in Global Management, and Margarita Alonso, IE’s Foundation General Director who also managed and moderated the event, the conference provided a 360 degrees view of the challenges facing the LGBT community in the corporate world:

• McKinsey & Company’s Denis Layton, Expert Partner for the Organisation Practice and Global Leader of the firm’s Diversity Practice, shared his great insights on the difficulties experienced by the LGBT community to grow and get to C-Suite positions and how these could be tackled;
• Amadeus’ Jean-Louis Richard, Director Global Customer Support, gave an inspirational speech which captivated the audience, openly talking about his personal experience coming out to his wife, sons, friends and to his peers, colleagues and management within Amadeus;
• Nielsen’s Beatriz Perez Iñiguez, Mirrow Program Manager, spoke about the trends and purchasing habits of LGBT people;
• IBM’s Gary Kildare, Chief HR Officer Europe shared with the audience the IBM journey in diversity and inclusion with a special focus on the efforts around LGBT employees.
• Iberia’s Gemma Juncá, Head of Marketing, Communications, Branding and Sponsorship, exposed the difficulties that her company encountered when trying to service LGBT travellers.

What we believe in

At Amadeus, we firmly believe that people are our most critical asset and we encourage any facet of diversity and strive to be as inclusive as possible and we strongly support the quote of Jason Collins, the first openly gay athlete in US pro sports: “Openness may not completely disarm prejudice, but it's a good place to start." We are looking forward to more initiatives that continue supporting tolerance and acceptance. Visit the Amadeus Diversity & Inclusion website for more about what we do to foster equality of opportunity, fairness, respect, and dignity for all our employees.

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