In June 2024 in Washington DC, our AIANY LGBTIA+ Alliance joined the first programming dedicated to discussing industry issues which impact the queer community and our clients at the annual national conference. A first indeed!

The timing wasn’t incidental. The symposium ran the closing Saturday of the conference, the same day as the DC Pride Parade, and attendees moved straight from the room to the march.

The structure was built to move from listening to doing. It opened with Setting the Stage, a panel on the intersection of queer advocacy and the profession, tracing the through-line from pioneers like OLGAD to today’s national organizing. Creating Spaces Within Your Communities followed, putting our Alliance leadership front and center to talk grassroots work at the local component level—the scale where most of this actually happens. The afternoon turned the mic around: a roundtable and collective conversation where attendees, not just panelists, shaped the agenda on queer histories, firm policy, healthcare access, and what a nationally connected community could look like.