Audio Interview, Emily Jones, April 17, 2012
- EVELYN BAILEY: So Emily, were you born in Rochester?
- EMILY JONES: No, I was born in Canton, New York.
- EVELYN BAILEY: And when did you come to Rochester?
- EMILY JONES: When I was twenty-eight.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Were you out?
- EMILY JONES: No.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Were you well, why did you come to Rochester?
- EMILY JONES: I came to Rochester because my husband had gotten
- a PhD graduate scholarship at the U of R
- in chemical engineering.
- And I was going to attend the U of R as well
- and get my PhD in chemistry.
- But I didn't like the professors so much.
- And so I applied for a job, a couple of jobs.
- And I interviewed at Kodak.
- And I thought it was really fascinating.
- So I chose to go to Kodak with my master's degree
- and not get a PhD.
- EVELYN BAILEY: And was your master's degree
- in science or chemistry?
- EMILY JONES: Yeah, my master's degree is in chemistry.
- I had the first master's degree from Plattsburgh State
- in chemistry.
- EVELYN BAILEY: OK, so you were a chemist?
- EMILY JONES: Right.
- EVELYN BAILEY: And when you went to work at Kodak,
- what was your position?
- Were you
- EMILY JONES: I started in the nuclear magnetic resonance
- laboratory as an analytical chemist.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Wow.
- That's high powered (laughs)
- EMILY JONES: Well, my master's degree
- was in electron paramagnetics resonance imaging.
- And I actually had to build a multifrequency spectrometer
- for my thesis, which was a PhD thesis, by the way.
- But since I was the first master's degree, you know.
- EVELYN BAILEY: (laughs) OK, how did you
- get from there to Lambda Kodak? (laughs)
- There In three sentences or less, no I mean, you
- EMILY JONES: Well, I was married and I had a son.
- When we came to Rochester, he was three.
- And you know, my famous story is the one
- where United Way was extraordinarily strong
- at Kodak.
- Because George Eastman founded the Community Chest,
- which became the United Way.
- So it was expected that you donated
- a particular portion of your salary to the United Way.
- And they gave you suggested guidelines.
- And so I was reading the United guidelines
- and saw how much I was supposed to give.
- And then, I looked at all the agencies.
- And I noticed that the Gay Alliance
- was one of those agencies.
- And I went up and talked to my boss.
- And I said, if I give money, does my money
- go to the Gay Alliance?
- And he said, no, it just goes to the United Way.
- The way money goes to the Gay Alliance
- is if you select it as a specific receiver
- of your money.
- I say, good, because I don't want to give them any money.
- EVELYN BAILEY: You don't want to give the Gay
- Alliance any money?
- OK.
- EMILY JONES: That's my famous story.
- EVELYN BAILEY: So how did you get
- from not wanting to give the Alliance any money to Lamda
- Kodak?
- EMILY JONES: Well, so that was in 1975.
- And (pause) long story, my marriage wasn't the best.
- And I kept struggling with why.
- I didn't know.
- And then (pause) I discovered, when my son was thirteen
- that I was attracted to women.
- And that was very scary.
- Because (pause) I was Catholic.
- And you were married.
- And you were married forever.
- And I was always very proud of the fact
- that our marriage was actually working,
- when so many of our friends' marriages
- were ending in divorce.
- And the whole thing really was very difficult
- for me to understand.
- So of course, you have to go to therapy.
- And the marriage was really bad at that point.
- And so one was a trigger to go to therapy.
- And the other was a trigger to go to therapy.
- And then, it just sort of evolved.
- And it took me about three years to convince myself
- that I really wanted to end the marriage.
- Because it wasn't good for me.
- And it wasn't good for my son.
- That was a really difficult journey for me.
- Because I didn't have the support of my mother.
- She just kept telling me that I had to work harder at it.
- My father, on the other hand, was
- very supportive of my needing to move forward.
- So then, I finally ended the marriage.
- And then, I finally came out to myself.
- And then, I met a woman in Boston,
- who used to be a good friend of mine in high school.
- And then, we had a relationship, long distance, for about four
- and a half years.
- And during that time, because she was such a clear voice
- for gay rights, human rights, and women's rights,
- I got crystallized about what it meant
- to be discriminated against, as a woman,
- and as a person who was gay.
- And it was also right at the crescendo of the horrific AIDS
- crisis.
- And we were seeing the quilts.
- And we walked through the quilts on the Washington Mall.
- And all of this was incredibly overwhelming,
- for someone who had lived a very sheltered life in upstate New
- York, in a town of 20,000 people that didn't even
- have any black people.
- The first person I met, who was a person of color,
- was when I was in college.
- And we had two Jewish people in my high school.
- That was it.
- I mean, you're talking about a Catholic town,
- very white, and very, very, very,
- clearly if you want to call it family values.
- EVELYN BAILEY: OK.
- (music playing)
- Let me stop you and get some dates.
- When did you graduate from college?
- EMILY JONES: 1972.
- EVELYN BAILEY: So actually, Stonewall had already happened.
- EMILY JONES: Right.
- But I didn't even know what Stonewall was.
- EVELYN BAILEY: And when did you come to Rochester?
- EMILY JONES: '75.
- EVELYN BAILEY: And when did you start at Eastman Kodak?
- EMILY JONES: '75.
- EVELYN BAILEY: And then, when did
- you have this awakening, this
- EMILY JONES: 1984.
- EVELYN BAILEY: And so you were at Kodak.
- You had gotten divorced.
- EMILY JONES: Not yet, not in 1984.
- I didn't get divorced until 1988.
- EVELYN BAILEY: OK.
- But in '84, you were intensely aware of
- EMILY JONES: No, just mildly aware.
- EVELYN BAILEY: OK.
- So when did this (pause) did you meet the woman in Boston
- before or after you got divorced?
- EMILY JONES: Before.
- EVELYN BAILEY: And so it was during those two or three
- years that your understanding of oppression,
- and understanding of liberation, and coming
- to know what it was to be a woman in 1984,
- '85, '86, and a gay woman that catapulted you
- into becoming an activist?
- EMILY JONES: I would never call myself an activist.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Well, you are, so (both laugh)
- EMILY JONES: No, I actually wouldn't.
- What happened, there's several things.
- If you think about it, I was a scientist without a PhD.
- I was a woman in a predominantly male field.
- I was the only woman leader in my division.
- At that time, I had moved very quickly
- to becoming the assistant to the director
- in that division, which was never ever held by a woman.
- I was the only woman on the leadership team.
- And then, I find out I'm gay so we've
- got three things going here and soon to become a single mom.
- So what I tried always to do was to learn and understand
- what you needed to do to be successful.
- What did we need to do?
- So anyway, so I went off to the Gay Games in 1990.
- I think that's when it was.
- Or was it
- EVELYN BAILEY: There were Gay Games in 1990.
- EMILY JONES: And I met a few people there.
- And this one guy's name, which I'm still trying to find he
- was a minister, who had been kicked out of his faith.
- And he was working at Kodak.
- And he knew David Kozel and Gary Gray,
- I believe, and told me there was a group downtown at Kodak.
- And then, there was himself and me in Kodak Park.
- And we needed somehow to come together
- to create some kind of an entity to talk to one another
- at Kodak.
- At the same time, Joe Moliere David Kozel
- had done a talk in California at a (pause)
- human resources conference on what
- it was like to be gay in the workforce,
- to a closed audience.
- It was very well articulated and crafted.
- And so that was happening.
- And we were having these conversations
- about the corporate closet in Kodak Park.
- And then, there was this Vice President, which
- I can't remember her name, but I'll
- get because David will probably remember who actually brought
- the two groups together and said, you guys need to talk.
- At the same time, we were recognizing
- that, in other companies, there were these things called
- Employee Resource Groups.
- And we noticed that, when we were at the Gay Games
- and there was also a march on Washington
- following that we noticed they were marching.
- And we said, why can't we form an Employee Resource
- Group at Kodak to educate Kodak about what it's like to be
- gay in the workplace?
- What is it like?
- What does it feel like?
- What does that look like?
- What is it?
- What is it like for us to come to work every day?
- And there was a very famous movie
- called Friday Morning Pronouns.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Friday Morning
- EMILY JONES: Pronouns, (pause) which I've never seen,
- but I've heard about.
- And
- EVELYN BAILEY: It's a movie?
- EMILY JONES: Yeah.
- And that movie is how one transforms from the weekend
- to work, where all of the pronouns are nondescript.
- They're they, we, you, them.
- But there's nothing about he or she.
- And we decided to create this Employee Resource Group,
- as two others had formed at Kodak.
- The very first was for people of color, which was North Star.
- And the second was the Women's Forum.
- So we were the third.
- And
- EVELYN BAILEY: Do we have a year?
- EMILY JONES: Yeah, we do somewhere.
- And K. Whitmore approved it, right before he retired.
- Now, that's significant too.
- Because he was a Mormon.
- But he understood, at some level,
- why it was so important to educate Kodak's leadership
- about all of their employees and what
- they needed to be successful in the workplace.
- So then, we got the approval.
- And, the we had these bulletin boards,
- electronic bulletin boards where employees
- could write to get answers.
- And each one of the Resource Groups had one.
- Ours went live.
- It was up not even a day and was taken down,
- because of the horrific response that the ERG got.
- I mean, it was really people said they
- were going to kill some people.
- They took it down.
- There was a bit of stupidity here.
- All the people who wrote, they had
- their names attached to them.
- They were each met with and talked to.
- EVELYN BAILEY: By who?
- EMILY JONES: By the Vice President of HR staff at Kodak.
- And they were told that you can have whatever belief you want.
- But everyone at Kodak deserves to be treated the same
- and with the same respect when they come to work.
- So then, the bulletin board went back up again.
- And that all disappeared.
- EVELYN BAILEY: OK, go back to when the vice president brought
- the two groups together.
- EMILY JONES: All she did was say, there's a group downtown.
- And you guys ought to meet.
- And we just that's all she did.
- She didn't actually bring us physically together.
- She just made us aware that we existed to create one group.
- EVELYN BAILEY: And so you took it upon the people
- in these groups took it upon themselves
- to come together and meet?
- EMILY JONES: Mm-hm.
- EVELYN BAILEY: What was that like?
- What was it like for you to recognize
- that there were other people at Kodak
- who were gay, who were looking to form support,
- to find support?
- EMILY JONES: Well, what was it like?
- It was like a well, for me, it was just
- like meeting other people who had
- the same sense of want of safety and the ability
- to be themselves at work.
- I mean
- EVELYN BAILEY: Did you know other people
- who were gay in the community, in Rochester?
- Or were you closeted?
- EMILY JONES: Not many.
- Because the person I sort of really
- came out with lived in Boston.
- So I mean, a few, but not many.
- And there wasn't really a way to find out easily.
- EVELYN BAILEY: So information even,
- and we're talking 1987 to '88.
- EMILY JONES: It would be '88 now.
- No, it would be 1990.
- EVELYN BAILEY: 1990.
- Information about gay resources, or where
- EMILY JONES: Oh yeah, that was all in these little bookstores.
- There was a bookstore on Monroe.
- It had a funny name.
- It was a woman's bookstore.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Silkwood.
- EMILY JONES: Silkwood.
- No, that wasn't was that Silkwood?
- What was the one where Edibles is?
- EVELYN BAILEY: Oh, that wasn't Silkwood.
- EMILY JONES: There were two.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Lori Matoka and
- EMILY JONES: There were two.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Yes, Wild Seeds.
- EMILY JONES: Wild Seeds.
- Those two bookstores became sort of my font of knowledge.
- So I just did a lot of reading.
- I never went to a library.
- I just went to those bookstores, and got lots of books,
- and read, most of which are sitting in this library
- here now.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Were computers I mean,
- the computer age had come, (laughs) obviously,
- by 1990, right?
- EMILY JONES: Right.
- Yeah, (pause) right, and the first movie
- came up during that of time as well.
- What was that called?
- What was that woman's movie?
- Something hearts.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Yes, hearts.
- EMILY JONES: Dear hearts, I don't know, something hearts.
- EVELYN BAILEY: It's probably behind you somewhere.
- EMILY JONES: Yeah, and so I don't
- think we had the search capability, though,
- on the computer.
- No, we didn't have the search ability
- that we have now, to go to and stuff.
- It was still books.
- Anyway, so yeah, but what we did, I thought.
- We had a couple of things we did.
- It was we met over the winter.
- And we put together a business plan,
- an actual corporate business plan
- of why we were necessary to the corporation.
- And actually, we talked about before this ever became
- sort of this mainstream thing about recruitment,
- and retention now, and productivity we actually
- wrote the business plan around that.
- And we also wrote about the fact that we did a marketing plan
- that we knew where the company could market directly
- to this demographic.
- And we could open up those doors.
- And we actually started very, very early conversations
- with Witeck-Combs Communications in Washington DC.
- And they worked with one of our famous laboratories
- on the west coast to really start marketing
- to the gay community in the San Francisco Bay Area (pause).
- So we wrote a business plan.
- EVELYN BAILEY: You became indispensable.
- EMILY JONES: And then, because George Fisher was the CEO,
- all the rest of these ERGs would have these management events,
- you know?
- Where the different strata of leadership
- would come and hear about this particular demographic
- in the company.
- And so we presented the first one in 1990 something or other,
- five, I think.
- I don't know.
- I can find that out, too.
- But It was held out at the Burgundy Basin Inn.
- And you could have heard a pin drop in that.
- There was so much electricity in that room.
- If you'd thrown a match in it, it would have all burned up.
- The leaders were afraid to be there.
- The gay people were afraid to be there.
- And we did three skits on what it
- was like to be a gay person in the workplace, different things
- with talking heads behind them.
- It was so powerful that the VP, Mike Morley,
- of human resources, went off and put domestic partnership
- benefits in place in the following year.
- People got it.
- And the other thing is, we did that skit with members
- of all of the other networks, the African American network,
- the woman's network, and then the Hispanic network
- had been formed.
- And so they all took parts in those skits.
- So we had as many straight allies in those skits
- as gay people.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Wow that's incredible.
- EMILY JONES: And so the speaker at that first management event
- was Elizabeth Birch, on her way to HRC
- to become the president and an executive director.
- And she's the person who actually shifted HRC
- to a business focus, with the work place
- project and the whole CEI.
- She knew that, if you could shift business,
- you can shift the United States.
- Because once business gets it, once business advertises
- to any demographic, the most important thing
- is that they become legitimate in the eyes of the population.
- They are a legitimate demographic.
- You can no longer ignore them.
- And you can no longer discriminate them
- or displace them.
- They are a reality, when business recognizes.
- Now, so Elizabeth sat at the table
- and tested her whole speech with George Fisher,
- before she got up and gave it.
- We told her she was not to talk about domestic partnership
- benefits.
- She was to talk about what her story was,
- when she was Chief Legal Counsel at Apple,
- to get Apple to transform and to embrace the gay community.
- And before she left, she got domestic partnership benefits
- in place.
- But she was not to, you know, say to the CEO,
- we want this for Kodak.
- Because we weren't asking for anything.
- What we went there with was, again as I was saying,
- education and why this is good for business.
- There are really two reasons.
- And we wanted to keep that always.
- This wasn't about a personal, I'm being hurt,
- I'm being discriminated against, I'm being it wasn't about that.
- It was about why it would make a difference
- if I could come to work completely and fully as myself.
- Why it would a difference to the bottom line of this company.
- And so she did.
- And she got up there.
- And she said, George Fisher, there all these companies
- that are your peers.
- And they have domestic partnership benefits.
- And you should put them in place.
- And I just fell on the floor. (EVELYN BAILEY laughs)
- EVELYN BAILEY: Did he fall on the floor?
- EMILY JONES: No, he just looked at her.
- Now, you have some great footage,
- as I told you on those DVDs, of him talking to this audience.
- And he read a poem.
- And he cried during that.
- You can feel it, you know, the emotion in his voice.
- Because he really believed.
- He understood the discrimination.
- And he believed that this community really
- needed to be affirmed.
- Now, before we did this management event,
- David Kozel and myself had to go to every one of his vice
- presidents and personally invite them and tell them what we
- were going to do at the event.
- That was not easy.
- Some of the secretaries said, you're who?
- And you're doing what?
- And no, there isn't such a thing at Eastman Kodak Company.
- And I had to suck it up and say, well, George Fisher
- asked me to call and set this up.
- Would you please call his secretary,
- and please clear this up?
- And I'd get a call back in a couple of days and say,
- you are correct.
- Oh, in this haughty tone of voice, you are correct.
- You will be meeting with someone so and so at x time.
- EVELYN BAILEY: But he knew what he was doing.
- EMILY JONES: Of course, he was.
- He was getting us to engage them.
- He wasn't telling them to do it.
- He said, the only way they'll come is if you invite them.
- And you've got to get them there.
- So do whatever you need to do to get them there.
- I'll get you the opening.
- But you've got to do the work.
- He didn't say that verbatim.
- But you know, I made that up.
- EVELYN BAILEY: No, that was the message.
- EMILY JONES: One of the vice presidents
- said there were no gay people in Pittsburgh Well,
- we kind of said, well, maybe.
- EVELYN BAILEY: (laughs) Oh my God.
- So how scared were you through all of this?
- EMILY JONES: I didn't eat my dinner, I remember that.
- I was more afraid of I remember, I
- went to pick up Elizabeth Birch.
- And I was sitting in her anteroom at the Strathallan
- while she was getting dressed.
- She's babbling away, as she does.
- You know, she's just a high energy woman.
- And I was doing yoga breathing.
- Because I thought I was going to either pass out,
- throw up, or do something.
- And then, we got to the event.
- And you know, you made sure all the pieces of the puzzle
- were in place, and the name tags, and this, all that crap
- that you have to do.
- And oh, by the way, when you do something
- for that level of management, it has
- to start on time and end on time precisely, precisely.
- And so we had done that over, and over, and over again.
- But it was amazing.
- And from then on, it took on a life of its own,
- as being the event, the management
- event to attend every year.
- At the height of the event, when we
- had the Glisten Kids come in and talk
- about what it was like to be gay in high school,
- we had six-hundred people attend, six-hundred leaders
- attend that event.
- EVELYN BAILEY: So let me take you back to
- before that first event.
- And you're meeting with all of these vice presidents.
- How concerned were you for your own job?
- EMILY JONES: I wasn't.
- I've never had that.
- I've never had that in anything I've ever done.
- I don't think about it.
- I think about it later.
- But I do not think about it.
- I am driven from a place that's inside of me that I
- don't know where it came from.
- My father used to say he couldn't figure out
- why I was trying to take care of the world.
- But that was my need in life.
- And he said, you just go do stuff and just do it.
- I've never been afraid.
- It's more of a it becomes (pause) like a puzzle.
- How can I create an opening for understanding?
- What can I say?
- Who can I bring into the room?
- And I don't know where it comes from.
- But it's just inside of me.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Have you ever felt
- threatened because you are gay?
- EMILY JONES: Never.
- EVELYN BAILEY: When you were working
- through this process of this first education event,
- how did you deal with the negativity or the secretary who
- said to you, your group doesn't exist, and you said,
- call George Fisher?
- EMILY JONES: No, no his secretary.
- EVELYN BAILEY: How did you deal with that obvious negation
- of not only Lambda Kodak were you called Lambda Kodak then?
- EMILY JONES: Uh-uh, Lambda at Kodak.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Lambda at Kodak.
- EMILY JONES: Never Lambda Kodak, Lambda at Kodak.
- EVELYN BAILEY: So that was your name then?
- EMILY JONES: Mm-hm.
- EVELYN BAILEY: How did you respond to all of that?
- EMILY JONES: It's just kind of like I've always
- been the kind of kid that, if you tell me I can do something,
- I'll try so much harder.
- And I will show you that it can be done.
- It's something inside of me.
- It's like my boss when I came to Kodak said, you have a child.
- You're a woman.
- You're never going to make it here.
- Because you don't have enough time to spend on the job.
- I was his boss in five years (pause).
- Don't tell me I can't do something.
- EVELYN BAILEY: That's very much an intellectual process.
- EMILY JONES: That's right.
- And that's where I go under stress.
- I go way out of the feeling zone and right into the head zone.
- EVELYN BAILEY: But your Employee Resource Group, at the time,
- had how many members, approximately?
- EMILY JONES: twelve.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Were they all in the same ballpark?
- EMILY JONES: No, no, a lot of them
- wanted domestic partnership benefits.
- They also wanted a social group.
- And we very clearly said, no, this is part of the business.
- We are here to improve the business.
- That's why the Employee Resource Groups were formed.
- We cannot represent any group.
- We can't be like a union.
- We are individuals always.
- All we can do is educate management
- about this demographic, so that we
- can improve the business of Eastman Kodak Company.
- That was clear.
- We just stayed on that game.
- And people who wanted to have bowling leagues
- and, you know, all that stuff, go do it.
- EVELYN BAILEY: But within these twelve people,
- was there anyone who wanted to say,
- (pause) go and tell whoever that they were hurting you,
- that they were not being fair, that they were not
- being open to people who were gay, and that damn it all?
- EMILY JONES: But that's how you did.
- What you did was you started to educate people
- about what it was like to be gay in the workplace.
- What was the corporate closet like for you?
- That's what we did with those skits.
- We showed people.
- And then, we created the opening to have
- what we called these Can We Talks with small leadership
- groups, maybe twenty leaders at a time.
- And we would do this Can We Talk,
- where we would talk about what it
- was like to be gay in the workforce.
- We'd just have a conversation led by a facilitator.
- And people would sit around us.
- And they were not allowed to interrupt us.
- They were allowed to listen.
- People would on the outside, those leaders, some of them
- would break down in tears.
- They couldn't believe that people were treated
- like this in the workforce.
- EVELYN BAILEY: So how were people
- treated in the workforce?
- EMILY JONES: The same as they were treated anywhere else.
- They were jokes.
- They were left out.
- They were not included.
- They were made fun of, all of the same things that, you know,
- happen.
- I don't know what all the stories were.
- Because I never heard all the stories.
- But I can tell you those that were in manufacturing,
- especially in the dark rooms, had
- a lot of issues with being gay, didn't want to be there,
- always were fearing for something that may occur.
- Things did occur.
- I know that.
- But I don't know exactly what.
- But I know we had people transition at Kodak
- very early on.
- So people with this, then we set up,
- as a result of that first management, a safe place.
- Or maybe it was the second one, I don't know, safe place zones.
- So we had magnets outside of offices.
- And then, people, if they had concerns,
- if something was happening to them they were worried about,
- they could go talk to those leaders.
- Those leaders would connect them with the right HR people,
- so that they could get their situations handled or whatever.
- I'm sure there are hundreds of people
- that never told their story.
- I'm sure there are hundreds of people that never came out,
- especially the women in the trades.
- The women in the trades never came out.
- That was a place that was really tough to work.
- EVELYN BAILEY: What (pause) changed?
- Kay Whitmore was a Mormon.
- And he allowed the group to begin.
- George Fisher encouraged you to bring people on board
- at the highest level of the organization
- to create an environment which would allow your group
- to do the education necessary (pause).
- What caused them really to buy in to what you wanted to do?
- EMILY JONES: People telling their stories.
- They would move management.
- Management couldn't believe some of the stories they heard.
- And they felt nobody should be treated that way.
- And the passion that the group had for
- creating an environment where everyone could
- be treated as a whole person, they
- could hear it in the stories.
- We had a meeting at one of the senior leader's homes
- with the entire leadership team under it was after Fisher,
- I think.
- But the CEO and president was there and all
- of his key leaders.
- They invited us to come talk.
- They wanted to know how we did it.
- How did we create such awareness and such open conversation
- with our peers, with our leaders, and with them?
- They wanted to know how we did it.
- So that it's so funny we could help other Resource Groups
- do it.
- It was fascinating.
- EVELYN BAILEY: So tell me why Eastman Kodak
- corporate leadership would be in the least
- bit interested in helping you or other groups create a dialogue?
- EMILY JONES: Oh, because of the productivity.
- You needed productivity.
- You were fighting the Japanese.
- You had to create quality and productivity.
- And the only way you were going to do it
- is have everybody on the team at the same time.
- Nobody could be sitting in the stands watching the game.
- Everybody had to be playing, not at 100 percent,
- but at 110 percent.
- So you had to know everybody on the team.
- And everybody on the team had to be
- able to contribute fully and not be afraid, not
- be afraid to take an assignment, not
- be afraid to attend a particular dinner, and so on, and so
- forth.
- You had to have everybody in the game.
- You wanted everybody's knowledge,
- everybody's full participation.
- EVELYN BAILEY: So really, the hearts and minds
- of the leadership were not changed
- by (pause) hearing the stories, they
- were changed by the necessity of keeping Kodak moving
- in the right direction and making the profit that it
- needed to make?
- EMILY JONES: No, I disagree completely.
- It's because their hearts and minds were shifted.
- They got their head around what they
- needed to do to support their people,
- so they could be profitable.
- EVELYN BAILEY: OK, I wanted to push that.
- Because the bottom line is, for most businesses,
- the ultimate reason why you make change
- you don't make change necessarily to help.
- You make change because, without doing that, you're not
- going to survive.
- You're not going to grow.
- You're not going to be bigger and better
- EMILY JONES: Well, I think here's the issue.
- The issue was all of corporate America was changing,
- from a very predominantly white male led society
- to one that was one that had many, many
- different ethnic demographics.
- It now had more women than it had ever seen before.
- And they had no experience of that, none whatsoever.
- All these companies had no experience
- of what it was like to work shoulder
- to shoulder with a woman in the laboratory,
- or in a business mode.
- They had even less working with a Jewish man
- or an African American man.
- And now, let's put in the Asians and the gay people.
- They were all there.
- They didn't know how to talk even.
- They wanted to learn.
- Because they knew, if they didn't know how to engage,
- create relationships with all of their people,
- they could never shift to create the change they wanted.
- They may see the change.
- But they can't move the ship if they
- don't know how to engage with, you know, the people
- sitting there with the oars at the bottom.
- They had to learn.
- It's like Excellus created a Gay and Lesbian Employee Resource
- Group without gay and lesbians asking for it.
- Because they couldn't get to these people
- any other way to find out what they needed in their workforce.
- And they wanted their workforce to be the most productive.
- There's another thing.
- If you look in the financial community,
- it's a very, very highly competitive community
- for personnel.
- And there are a lot of people who are gay and lesbian
- in the financial community.
- They took this on with a vengeance,
- to make sure that they were open, inclusive companies.
- They moved so fast in the late '90s,
- early 2000, to make sure that people weren't stealing them
- away, and that people were coming out of,
- you know colleges would start seeing the ratings.
- They wanted to be competitive.
- In fact, you have the first career fair
- for master's students called the Gay MBA.
- And that's been going since the '90s.
- It's that population.
- And they want the best talent.
- They want to retain the best talent.
- But again, you can't engage unless you know it,
- unless you can speak the language,
- unless you can affirm the people and not push them off
- by saying something what you think is totally harmless
- and it becomes totally offensive.
- So it's like learning a whole set of languages.
- So that's what the whole diversity thing was about.
- Most people thought it was about numbers.
- It wasn't.
- EVELYN BAILEY: So after that first educational event,
- in which you fell on the floor because Elizabeth told
- George Fisher
- EMILY JONES: To put domestic partnership benefits in place,
- right.
- EVELYN BAILEY: How did you feel?
- EMILY JONES: Well.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Aside from relief that it was over.
- EMILY JONES: Well, we knew we had a lot of work to do.
- And I felt really proud of being associated
- with the company and the people that
- showed such incredible courage and passion to put this
- together.
- And it was remarkable (pause).
- The assistant to George Fisher was in the closet, not out.
- And she came out about two months later in an elevator
- at Kodak Office, as a result of the event.
- She knew she couldn't stay in the closet any longer.
- Because there was this courageous group.
- They know she's gay.
- And he spoke to everybody in the company.
- George Fisher thanked her and said, let's move on.
- This is a good thing.
- That was the only thing he said.
- So we felt pretty proud.
- And we also felt pretty lucky that we
- had this incredible leadership team that really cared.
- We'd get called down to Kodak Office.
- Like on the domestic partnership,
- we got called down to sit through a thought
- process of whether we should make it just for same sex
- or should we make it for same sex and different sex.
- Because in the future, more and more people
- may not want to marry.
- So should we put it in place for all people?
- That was like, well, I don't know.
- But you know, we all kind of was,
- like, we haven't thought about that problem.
- But it makes more sense to make it inclusive than not.
- So I think Kodak was the first to do that.
- Kodak was the first to testify on the Employment
- Nondiscrimination Act, first company to have a VP there.
- We signed on the Tax Equity Benefits Act.
- We were the first to sign on that.
- We received every single award there was at Out
- and Equal, every single one.
- We had a 100% on the Human Rights Campaign, CEI,
- since its inception.
- So we were a pretty amazing entity,
- in terms of transformational change across the United
- States.
- Disney was waiting for Kodak, to see what Kodak would do.
- And then, Disney followed Kodak.
- Because they were in the same business basically.
- EVELYN BAILEY: What was the group's response
- to the success of that first event, in terms of
- did they think they had arrived and everything would be OK?
- Or did they have a similar response as you
- that you recognized there was a lot of work
- to do, even though certainly the management and leadership
- team was obviously supportive?
- EMILY JONES: Yeah, it was probably the same
- as it is always in a company, that senior leadership says
- stuff.
- But it's the middle leadership's behavior
- that people pay attention to.
- It either translates through or stops.
- So there's a lot of skepticism as to
- whether mid-level management would actually follow.
- EVELYN BAILEY: But Lambda at Kodak (pause)
- I want you to say this.
- I don't want to say it.
- Was the level of commitment any different after
- that first event than before?
- EMILY JONES: Level of commitment by whom?
- EVELYN BAILEY: By the Employee Resource Group?
- EMILY JONES: I don't think so.
- It was the same people with the same passion.
- And so we just started thinking about what we were
- going to do for the next year.
- This was successful.
- Now what are we going to do?
- And that was not trivial.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Did more people come into your group?
- EMILY JONES: Yeah, well, there's an interesting question.
- Because we had a distribution list.
- But it was you couldn't see it.
- So people could sign up.
- Only a few people knew who the people were on that list.
- Yeah, there were more people on the distribution list.
- Were they visible?
- Not so.
- But more people were interested in finding out
- what was going on.
- Yeah, there were still I mean, it was so long ago.
- There were still meetings, you know.
- The meetings were held in a way that anybody could come.
- And they were held in places where, you know,
- people felt they weren't being watched.
- Like, they would be held at Kodak Office,
- as opposed to out in the park, so nobody could associate you
- with blah, blah, blah, I guess.
- That was important to a lot of people.
- But you know, it's like any other group.
- A lot of people are watching it.
- But the people who really worked on it about the same 12 to 20
- people every year, a few new ones, a few dropped off.
- But we had an enormous amount of support,
- more and more support by mid-level managers,
- and more and more interest.
- And we'd have meetings with the HR personnel
- in different sections of the company.
- And they were very, very hungry to learn, very hungry to learn.
- EVELYN BAILEY: There are still, I
- think I'm not sure really two different workforces at Kodak.
- There were those who worked in manufacturing and those that
- didn't.
- Was there a difference in perception and in response
- to what you were doing from those two entities?
- EMILY JONES: Well, I would say manufacturing very rarely
- got involved with any of the Employee Resource Groups,
- no matter what they were.
- Because their view was this is a bunch
- of people who are trying to grow their career,
- and suck up to management, and do the right thing,
- and say the right thing.
- And it wasn't about the people that were working on the lines
- or doing stuff like that.
- No matter how hard you tried to engage those populations
- and you did.
- You know, you'd have meetings with people on the third shift,
- or just all kinds of stuff.
- We had Can We Talks on the (unintelligible).
- There's a natural skepticism in a company between manufacturing
- and the people who are seen as the white collar workers.
- It just exists everywhere.
- And it's a different mindset.
- It's people who come to work, do their job.
- Their job has a real structure around it.
- And then, they go home.
- They're very proud of what they do.
- They're incredibly talented.
- Their craft is phenomenal.
- They don't really care about changing the world.
- They care about their world.
- And they care about their world running well
- when they're in it.
- But the big picture, not so interested.
- They want somebody to make sure they
- have their benefits, their time off, their whatever,
- their blah, blah, blah.
- But it's not an interest to them.
- It's not what brings them to work.
- There's a different group of people
- and it's not that big, by the way.
- It's fairly small in the company who really cares about what's
- happening in the workforce, how this workforce could be
- different, how is this workforce could be more engaging, how
- this workforce could share its innovations, how, you know,
- it could take care of everyone.
- And the manufacturing people don't very often
- want to participate in that.
- It's not important to them.
- The passion is about their skill and their craft.
- And boy, they're good at it.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Can you estimate how
- visibility of gay and lesbian employees increased,
- decreased remained the same, well,
- from the beginning of your first educational event
- to today or five years ago?
- EMILY JONES: Oh yeah, it increased.
- But I would say that, in that mid-level management level,
- I don't think it really ever opened up (pause).
- It opened up at the top.
- It opened up, you know first and second levels.
- People all throughout the company.
- But that mid-level management still not so sure
- this was a good thing to come out.
- It's very different from IBM or Xerox.
- EVELYN BAILEY: How so?
- EMILY JONES: IBM and Xerox have an international network.
- They actually come together once a year
- as a gay workforce and talk about opportunities,
- leadership, what they're doing.
- IBM actually had a whole program where they actually
- came together and figured out how
- they could get more customers through their own networks.
- But the leadership there was very male centric
- in both of those companies.
- And I think that has a lot to do with it.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Very male?
- EMILY JONES: Male centric.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Huh (pause).
- Why?
- EMILY JONES: I don't know.
- It happens differently in every company.
- We always had more women involved than men.
- EVELYN BAILEY: So let me go back to when you first
- came to Kodak and the first Employee
- Resource Group that began, and the second, and the third.
- Did openness and welcome of those groups
- increase, surpass LGBT I mean, I don't know how many African
- Americans, or Hispanics
- EMILY JONES: I think that the focus
- of the African American network was more on developing
- your leadership skills.
- That's what they worked on.
- The women's group worked on developing networking
- across the entire company, all over the world,
- to develop visibility and potential assignments.
- You know, I don't really know what
- the Hispanic network worked on.
- We just worked on education and acceptance,
- affirmation, understanding.
- I can tell you.
- We had one VP of diversity, who said that the company
- leadership should have our element of diversity
- as part of its tracking mechanism
- for putting LGBT people in high level leadership positions.
- And he wanted to track that metric.
- And we all kind of laughed and said, OK,
- so I can identify all these people that
- won't identify themselves.
- So that was kind of fascinating.
- But he really was clearly someone
- who wanted to go after that.
- So we had, like I said, the management event that was most
- attended by anyone, always.
- Because it's fascinating.
- People wanted to learn about it.
- People didn't know about it.
- EVELYN BAILEY: So how many years did you work for Kodak?
- EMILY JONES: thirty.
- EVELYN BAILEY: So in those thirty years,
- what would you identify as the moment you are most proud of?
- EMILY JONES: Hm, I don't know.
- There he is!
- KEVIN: Hello.
- EMILY JONES: Hey Kevin.
- The most proud of, wow (pause).
- I guess, the day I talked to Walter Fallon
- into spending a half a million on a nuclear magnetic resonance
- spectrometer.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Oh (laughs), all right,
- let me ask the question a different way.
- KEVIN: That was crucial for the LGBT movement, I'm sure.
- EMILY JONES: Well actually, if you want his particular remark,
- our credibility to senior management
- as employees was actually critical for them
- to listen to us.
- If our performance wasn't great, they
- weren't going to listen to us.
- So you had to have people that were leading these Resource
- Groups, who were on the high potential list.
- So it didn't make a difference.
- EVELYN BAILEY: So let me ask a similar question.
- But in your thirty years at Kodak, as a member of Lambda
- at Kodak, what are you most proud of?
- EMILY JONES: I guess I am proud of the very first management
- event, where we actually shifted senior management in a way
- that they took us seriously.
- And we awakened them to the horrific misunderstandings
- and the un-understandings of this population.
- And they were so open to being educated going forward.
- Yeah, I think that was a real remarkable event.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Now that you're here
- KEVIN: I'm just going to have to listen to the recording.
- EMILY JONES: Yeah, you are.
- Because I'm not repeating all this stuff.
- KEVIN: I should've called you.
- I don't know if you got my email this morning
- or not, that I was going to be able make a 2:30, or 2:00.
- EVELYN BAILEY: No, well we had a 1:00.
- KEVIN: We had a 1:00?
- EVELYN BAILEY: Yes, that's all right.
- Our 1:00 was Karen Hagberg.
- KEVIN: Oh Christ, yes.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Emily was our 2:30.
- KEVIN: Yeah, that's OK.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Kathryn Rivers is at 4:00.
- EMILY JONES: It'll be fun for you to listen
- to Kathryn following me.
- Because her view of this is going to be the same time,
- almost all the same stuff.
- But it's going to be totally different.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Oh, Kathryn?
- EMILY JONES: Yeah, it's going to be fun.
- You should go interview David.
- KEVIN: Yes, I just emailed David.
- Are we still recording?
- EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.
- So let me let me finish this piece.
- Since you don't identify yourself as an activist,
- when did you start becoming involved with the Gay Alliance?
- That was before you left Kodak?
- EMILY JONES: Oh yeah.
- Shirley Bowen got me on her board.
- Cindy Martin was on that board.
- Cindy Martin got me on the board of the Gay Alliance.
- That was when Shirley was the president.
- It was like six years before, in 1999.
- EVELYN BAILEY: OK.
- We need to have more conversation with you.
- Because your involvement in so many
- organizations, ESPA, Gay Alliance, HRC
- EMILY JONES: Out and Equal.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Out and Equal.
- I mean, I have to say to you, you may not
- consider yourself an activist.
- You may not consider yourself someone
- who has been instrumental in creating the environment
- and moving the agenda.
- But you have been.
- And you are and continue to be.
- So even though it's only 2012 and you will
- live for another forty years
- EMILY JONES: Oh please (both laugh),
- not unless there's really good stem cell technology.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Your contribution to the gay community
- goes far beyond your work with Lambda
- at Kodak, and far beyond your personal commitment
- and passion.
- And we have to stop.
- Because Kathryn's probably on the other side of the door,
- or trying to get in.
- EMILY JONES: But I have to tell you.
- The core of my engagement is around the business community
- and always has been.
- Because as I said before, and this is really important:
- if the business community affirms,
- recognizes a demographic, it is legitimate.
- They have the ability to legitimize a demographic.
- When they start advertising to them,
- when they start saying they're important,
- that's where it all shifts.
- And that shift affects public policy.
- That's why that was so central.
- And it plays out in what I do with Out and Equal.
- And it plays out with what I did with making sure
- that the Corporate Equality Index got established and got
- really working as a viable entity,
- and the Gay Alliance to make sure
- that we had these ongoing educational events that I
- did in the early days here, to engage the community.
- Because it all centers around this legitimizing
- of that particular demographic.
- And the way it's done is that the business says
- it's real, needed, necessary.
- And we need to affirm it.
- That's really where it all came from.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Mm-hm.
- I hear that.
- EMILY JONES: Oh, OK.
- EVELYN BAILEY: I do.
- EMILY JONES: I guess there's something else I'm supposed
- to say, or do, or be, but
- EVELYN BAILEY: No.
- EMILY JONES: That's the way I think about it.
- KEVIN: So before you leave, I do have some questions actually
- I was going to ask Kathryn.
- But here's a question for you.
- Where is Cindy Martin these days?
- EMILY JONES: She's in yeah, don't ask Kathryn.
- KEVIN: Yeah, I know.
- Yeah, that's right.
- Just thank you for reminding me of that.
- EMILY JONES: Oh please, don't even bring it up.
- A whole set of other things will happen.
- She's in San Francisco.
- She's a consultant now.
- She's married to Selisse Berry, who's
- the Executive Director of Out and Equal Workplace
- Advocates in San Francisco.
- KEVIN: Do you still keep in touch with Deb Price at all?
- EMILY JONES: You know, it's funny you bring that up.
- I just was opening one of my old paper address books.
- I saw her name in it and her phone number.
- And I was like, I should give her a call.
- I do that every once in a blue moon, maybe four, five years.
- But no, not