Video Interview, Emily Jones, May 23, 2012

CREW: OK.

I am rolling.

I can hear Mr. Day.

KEVIN INDOVINO: OK.

Jill's giving them Hell now.

First and foremost, just so we can get a microphone check,

could you give us the correct spelling

of your first and last name?

EMILY JONES: E-M-I-L-Y. J-O-N-E-S.

KEVIN INDOVINO: OK.

Very good.

CREW: OK.

I am rolling.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So Emily, our primary focus with you

is going to be really how you've worked with the business

community for the advocacy of gay rights,

particularly gay rights in the workplace.

So let's start out with the beginning days of Lambda

at Kodak.

How did you initially get involved?

How did you initially start hearing

about this network that may be in development?

And what peaked your interest to get involved?

EMILY JONES: OK.

So I went to the Gay Games in Vancouver.

And I met some folks from Kodak at the Gay Games.

We were singing in the same world chorus.

And they were saying that they had

heard some folks back at Kodak were trying to get together

an employee resource network.

The first resource network was Network NorthStar

for black African-Americans.

And the second one that had formed was the Women's Network.

And so we thought it might be interesting to see

what it would take to do that.

Well, this is a very interesting thought process

because there was another group in Kodak which

was thinking of doing similar things

and they were in Kodak office.

I was in Kodak park.

And they talked about it with one

of the senior vise presidents.

And she actually got the two groups together

to talk about the opportunity to form an employee resource

group.

And she basically set the stage for it to happen.

Still had to happen by the employees,

but the skids were greased, if you will.

And what was really quite amazing at the time

was that we had a president and CEO, Kay Whitmore,

who was a devout Mormon.

And he sanctioned the formation of the network.

He thought it was important for the business

and he had to step out of his role

as a leader in the Mormon community

to do so, which I thought was pretty amazing at that time.

KEVIN INDOVINO: It would be even amazing in today's time.

What was it about the idea of this employee

network that really sparked something within you?

EMILY JONES: Well, I think it had a lot

to do with people talking about not being able to bring

their full selves to work, hiding, worrying about who they

were, worrying about being found out, whether they

were going to lose their job.

CREW: We have to stop for church.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Church bells, sorry.

We have five church bells we'll have to wait for.

(pause in recording)

CREW: OK.

And I'm rolling again.

KEVIN INDOVINO: OK.

So let's take it back to that same question.

What was it about the idea of this network that really

sparked an interest for you?

EMILY JONES: I think it had to do

with how everybody can participate

to their fullest in the workplace.

And a lot of people weren't actually talking

to other gay people, if they were gay,

for fear of being found out.

So they sort of regulated their conversations,

their friendships at work, and I thought that was quite bizarre.

It seemed, why couldn't I talk to David, let's say.

And David wasn't out but I knew he was gay

and he knew I was gay.

And then all of a sudden, oh my.

Maybe they'll make up a story.

And if they see us in a particular place--

and it seemed so ridiculous, not being

able to talk about this magnificent world chorus

that I'd just sung in with over five hundred people

from all over the world.

Where did you go?

I went to Vancouver.

What do you do there?

Oh, I listened to some music.

Well, that wasn't very satisfying.

So there were parts of me that I had to hide.

But for others, it seemed to be devastating.

They were out in college and when they got to Kodak

they were no longer out.

So we started to work on and developing the business case

for why to start to form a network at Eastman Kodak

Company, why it was actually good for the business.

KEVIN INDOVINO: I want to add a question

to that in just a moment.

EMILY JONES: OK.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Because this next question

I'm going to ask is going to get into that.

EMILY JONES: OK.

KEVIN INDOVINO: You're getting together with people at Kodak

and talking about forming this network.

What were some of the first initial challenges

that you guys had cited or recognized

would be the first hurdles to overcome in regards to making

it really happen?

What were some of the initial conversations?

Let's put it that way.

EMILY JONES: In what respect?

Help me.

Tell me what you're thinking about.

KEVIN INDOVINO: OK.

There's this great idea, but how do we actually get this going?

How do we make this a reality?

What were those kind of conversations like?

EMILY JONES: OK.

So we actually talked to the leaders of the other networks

at Kodak.

How did you do it?

What did you put together?

Did you get someone from the company

to champion this for you?

And they actually did have mentors

at high levels in the company.

When we began, we actually didn't have that.

We were actually working on our own

with this one HR vice president, who was basically saying,

I'll make sure that at least you're not being shut down.

So we actually started to form the business case

for the network.

Why was the company going to benefit by this?

So people could bring their whole selves to work.

They could fully participate in the workplace.

It's actually quite interesting.

If a person comes to work and they really

don't show up, like they're talking

about their outside life and always putting it back

on the person asking the questions,

the person asking the questions starts

to wonder about this person.

They make stuff up, right or wrong.

But there's a trust factor.

And when you're working on a team,

you have to really have trust in every member of that team.

And by creating that opportunity for that person

to be themselves, that trust can be developed.

So we really did it with respect to productivity,

making sure people were 100, 110 percent fully involved.

Creating a trust factor so that everybody on that team

could work as a team, no matter whether they were in one city

or in another city in the United States

or maybe in a foreign country.

They had to be fully available to this team 100 percent.

So that got to the productivity side.

The other side was, we knew this was a demographic that

could be marketed to.

We knew it had a lot of discretionary money.

It may not have made more money on average

as the same people in that particular business sector,

but they had discretionary money.

And so we thought about how do we market to it

and how to build that case.

And IBM had started some of that so we

knew that that's possible.

And there was this really creative company, Witeck

and Combs Communications, were starting

to work with companies on how to market to this demographic.

And they started to say how big of an opportunity this was,

which now is in the billions.

Back then it was in early low millions.

So you had a new opportunity, you

had a way of connecting to that productivity,

and the other was maintaining and retaining that workforce

at Kodak.

Kodak hires a very unique set of skills

and they invest an enormous amount of money

and training their people.

And to have that person walk out the door for some reason

that Kodak would never know, because the person would never

say that they left because they felt discriminated against.

That would be a huge loss in both income and productivity.

So we built the business case around those three areas,

productivity, retention, and marketing.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So I want to kind of recap

that in the question of, in building that business case

and business model, that was key to moving this network

idea along with upper administration.

There's a question in there somewhere.

Talk to me about really that being a real key factor

in getting the attention of upper management

by presenting it as a business case.

EMILY JONES: Right.

It was clear that we were not going to represent

someone's feelings.

We wanted to show specifically that we could actually

drive the bottom line, grow it in different ways.

And we had enough examples of things that had happened

and were happening that were depressing that bottom line

as a result of people making remarks,

not engaging people fully, not using inclusive language.

And so when we presented it to the head of HR

at that time, which was Mike Morley,

he was fully satisfied that it was a very solid business case

and that we could go forward and establish the network.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So then take me from that point on.

What was next hurdle?

EMILY JONES: The next hurdle was going live in the company.

When we went live in the company,

we had these electronic bulletin boards.

And when we went live, people got

to see and read that there was this new network

and it was to support gay and lesbian people.

Notice, not bisexual and not transgender yet.

That's later.

The beginnings of all of this was totally

captured in gay and lesbian people.

And people came out of the woodwork

and attacked the formation of the network

using some pretty vile language and also

adding threats, physical, violent threats of death

to the people in the network.

And the bulletin board came down in one day.

It wasn't even up twenty-four hours.

The humorous part of this is, everyone who wrote

had their name attached to what they wrote.

And they were subsequently counseled by HR

at the highest level in the company.

And they were given a choice.

They could come to work and participate in work

and leave their prejudice at home.

And if they wanted to choose to discriminate at work,

then they would be asked to leave the company,

because what Kodak was trying to do

at that time was get everybody's voice in the room

because they were starting their transition

to a new set of businesses.

So it was very, very important that they had

this very broad base of ideas.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So with this bulletin board incident

and the way HR responded to it, what

did it say to you in regards to the company

that you're working for?

EMILY JONES: It was incredibly affirming.

People immediately got it that the company wasn't just paying

lip service to the network.

They really were clearly in support

of affirming this group of people in the workplace.

CREW: Can we get that question again?

That answer again, please?

KEVIN INDOVINO: OK.

Probably picked something up in traffic or something.

Again, you know, from the HR response and Kodak's response,

what did that say to you about the company

that you were working for in what you were trying to do?

EMILY JONES: Well, it was a real clear signal, a very clear

signal that the company affirmed this demographic

in the workplace.

It was so clear.

And the buzz that was created was amazing.

And people got a sense that this wasn't lip service.

They really were going to support the formation,

and not only support it but cultivate it.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So everything is kind of falling into place.

Looks like, OK, yeah.

We're going to be able to form a network here.

Well, we formed a network because we have bulletin boards

now that are being reacted to.

Dialogue is starting to begin.

What, at that point, did you feel

was the core mission of Lambda at Kodak?

You got the business model that you set up.

But within the umbrella of all of that,

what really was your core mission of what you were trying

to do within the company?

EMILY JONES: The core mission was to educate.

What was it like to be gay and lesbian in the workplace?

How was it that different than someone who might be

heterosexual in the workplace?

What things did people talk about, speak about,

that totally disengaged this disenfranchised someone who

was gay or lesbian that they didn't even know about?

So we spent about two years building an educational event

for management.

And George Fisher was the CEO at that time.

And we went to George and we asked him

if we could have a management event where

we could do education about the gay

and lesbian demographic at Eastman Kodak company.

And he said yes.

And it was interesting because I think

we had about six months to produce it.

And he got called out of the country.

And he let us know two months prior, maybe,

to the time that we were going to produce it with him.

He said, "You can postpone it till later in the year

or I can do a video for you."

And people read a lot into this particular decision

that he had to make.

They made up stories like, see?

I told you they really weren't supportive.

He's not even going to attend, therefore

he doesn't support what we're doing here.

So we met with his assistant and we had a long conversation.

And we felt the right thing to do

was to postpone it and make sure George was there

and make sure that we had all the right pieces

of the puzzle in place.

But there were a lot of members of the gay and lesbian

community that were not in favor of postponing it at all.

But we did.

And luckily, there were a lot of things that fell

in place as a result of that.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Talk to me about that first management event.

Describe it for me, talk to me about the importance

of having George Fisher there.

EMILY JONES: The first management event

was held at Burgundy Basin.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Take that back and start it over.

EMILY JONES: The first management event

was held at the Burgundy Basin Inn.

There were probably two hundred people there,

one hundred people from management

and one hundred people that were employees.

And maybe 75 percent of those were gay and lesbian.

Nobody really wanted to go.

The employees really didn't want to go because they were scared

to death that these leaders would see them

and therefore they'd not have a job again.

The leaders didn't want to go because they didn't

want to be embarrassed, because they really didn't know much

about this demographic.

They did not want to participate.

Some didn't want to participate for fear

that somebody would talk about them as potentially

gay or lesbian.

There was so much electricity in that

room, if you threw a match in, probably would have blown up.

So we were very fortunate, again,

through a whole set of circumstances.

I tried to get the CEO of Apple to talk

about why they had put domestic partnership benefits in place.

But I couldn't get to him.

Even though he was a good friend of George Fisher's, I

couldn't make that work.

So they said, could you work with the chief legal counsel

for Apple?

She's going to leave Apple and she

is the one that actually did all the legal work

behind making this happen.

And I said, "OK.

I'll talk to her."

Well, this turns out to be Elizabeth Birch on her way

to lead HRC.

And she was actually coming from Apple

to Kodak and then to lead that organization.

It couldn't have been better.

We told Elizabeth, please do not ask George to pass

domestic partnership benefits.

What we want you to do is set the stage.

Why did you go through this at Apple?

What was the business case?

Why did this make a difference for Apple

in terms of their employees?

Well, she sat at the table and bantered with him and his wife.

And they had a grand old time.

And when she got up there, she told some wonderful stories.

And then of course she said, "You know,

George, if you really are a leading Fortune 500 company,

you'll put domestic partnership benefits in place."

And we all sunk under the table.

It was like, oh my god.

Now we've had it.

CREW: I'm sorry.

Another motorcycle going by.

If you could, just pick it up from where

she's bantering with George and his wife at the table.

EMILY JONES: OK.

So she's bantering with George and they're having a good time.

They're laughing.

She's really pressing him on issues,

trying to make sure she understands where he is.

She gets up to talk.

She tells all of their stories.

And at the end she said, "George, you should be ashamed.

You're a leading Fortune 500 company.

You should have domestic partnership benefits

in place for your company."

And of course, we all just fell under the table

and just wanted to float away.

Because what we knew from the company's guidelines is we

could not ask for a policy change.

All we could do was represent the community

and educate management and leadership

about what it was like to be gay and lesbian in the workplace.

OK.

So anyway, within two months Mike Morley

was putting domestic benefits--

KEVIN INDOVINO: Let's not jump there just yet.

EMILY JONES: OK.

Let's not jump.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Elizabeth got up there.

She stood up.

She did her speech.

She challenged George.

Talk to me about his reaction.

Because he got up and did something fairly emotional.

EMILY JONES: Right.

George Fisher shared at the table

that he has a family member that's gay.

And he's very, very affirming of who we are.

And he really, truly understands the struggles

that we've been through.

And he got up and read a poem that was so touching.

He got emotional.

He teared up.

KEVIN INDOVINO: It's rush hour.

This is important and I don't want to miss it.

Let's pick it up from him acknowledging

that he has a family member.

EMILY JONES: OK.

So George acknowledged that he had a member

of the family that was gay.

And he really, truly understood the difficulties.

And that he wanted us to know that

and wanted us to understand that on some level,

he gets what we're going through.

And he got up and read a poem that

said everyone in the universe was important.

Everyone had meaning.

Everyone deserved to be part of the universe

in a very equal way.

And he teared up.

And it was really obvious that he really, really meant it.

And you could have heard a pin drop in that room.

KEVIN INDOVINO: And when that happened, how did you feel?

EMILY JONES: Well, I felt--

Let's see.

I'm trying to remember.

To be perfectly honest, how I felt

was a little scared, a little overwhelmed.

I was really running on adrenaline

as being the co-chair of that event,

trying to manage the conversations at the table

and making sure things were running well.

And when he got so emotional, I think I just relaxed.

Went, whoa, this is OK.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So now, let's move two months later.

Mike Morley.

EMILY JONES: Two months later, Mike Morley

announces that they are really going to put domestic partner

benefits in place.

He calls three of us together to work with HR

to consider whether it should be for only same sex or same sex

and different sex.

And Kodak really felt that things were changing.

More people were living together,

whether they were same sex or different sex, than marrying.

And they wanted to make sure that all of their employees

who were in these relationships were honored,

and they would have the same benefits as those who

were married in the workplace.

And so that was a very, very critical juncture

because many of us hadn't really thought about that.

But they really became the role model for many companies

to follow.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah, I want to touch on that a little bit,

how significant that was that they weren't passing

a policy just for gays and lesbians,

but they were including gay and lesbians in an overall company

policy.

EMILY JONES: Right.

KEVIN INDOVINO: What's your feelings on that,

how significant that was?

EMILY JONES: I think that was very, very forward looking,

because today we know that the people who

utilize domestic partnership benefits

are about 80 percent different sex.

Same sex people, it's less than 15 percent

of the population in any company.

And that is quite amazing, in terms

of how people are changing with respect

to their so-called values and norms

about what it means to be in relationship.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Just quickly.

Going through my notes here.

So there's a point that you make very strongly about, again,

working through the business community,

nationally, globally, about working through them

to promote change.

Talk to me about having a business

market towards the gay and lesbian demographic.

Because it legitimizes a gay and lesbian community.

EMILY JONES: I read it in some book.

I don't remember.

I don't know if it was Richard Florida's book

or I read it in the New York Times.

I read it somewhere.

If you market to a particular demographic,

that legitimizes that particular demographic in the world.

When black Americans were advertised to, marketed to,

it legitimized them in the United States

as a valued demographic.

And so I thought a lot about that.

And I said, you know, that's a significant piece

of this puzzle.

But a second piece of this puzzle

that's really, really important is

that we create the largest number of Fortune 500 companies

that actually have a fully inclusive EEO policy,

provide benefits to all of its people in an equitable way,

and then have all of its policies as equitable

as possible, and also philanthropically develop

their outreach and market to the particular demographic.

And so, I was able to be part of the initiation

of the corporate equality index of HRC.

I was on the Business Council at that time.

And we began rating companies along those dimensions

that I just shared.

And Kodak was among the first thirteen

to receive 100 percent, along with Xerox

and JP Morgan Chase and others.

And this group of people, this small group

of people from companies, there's eighteen

or twenty of us, started to reach out to our friends

in other companies, other Fortune 500 companies,

asked them to take the survey.

And what we knew from that, and what

Elizabeth Birch knew deep down in her heart,

is if she could get companies to put

their arms around this particular demographic

and legitimize it, she could change public policy

in the United States.

And today it is the force that really

calls for change in Washington.

There are many, many coalitions that

are built out of this Business Council and this CEI index.

Last year there were three hundred

and ninety-eight companies that scored one hundred

on the corporate equality index.

They've now changed the bar.

So there's fewer companies right now,

but they're all moving back up.

And the bar was changed about creating health benefits

for people who would like to transition at work.

So now companies, to get 100 percent,

have to have those health benefits in place.

Kodak's still a member of that 100 percent,

as is IBM and Xerox and many others.

But it's this whole idea, if companies

say this demographic is absolutely

important to their success, then you

can use that group of people to then change

public policy with respect to this demographic.

And that's what's been happening.

You saw the Business Coalition for Marriage in New York state.

That was formed.

It helped pass.

It actually helped create sort of this

back up to the senators that really

were worried about whether someone would have their back.

KEVIN INDOVINO: The next question

is just kind of a general question regarding

the growth of Lambda at Kodak--

really, how large it came, how influential it came,

you did cite one of the management events

where you had students from Gleason there

and how you had six hundred people there now.

And this became the management event

that everybody wanted now to attend.

So just kind of, if you could in general terms

just talk to me about how much Lambda Network had

grown over the course of years and how influential

it became within the company and what it

was doing within the company.

EMILY JONES: It was a very interesting evolution.

And I think it was interesting and perplexing to leaders

because here's this group that takes you to the edge.

Every management event, every management educational event,

took them to the next edge of things they really

didn't want to talk about but were really curious about.

And we did that purposely.

Every year we would just push the envelope just a little bit

more to open a few more doors.

And the year that we asked the kids from the Gay Lesbian

Educational Network to come in was

the year that the actual assistant to the--

no, I guess she wasn't the assistant then.

She was actually a business president.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Hold that thought because two things.

One, a motorcycle.

Is it the Gay Lesbian Straight Educational Network?

EMILY JONES: Yeah, that's it.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So let's take it back from there

so we can get that right.

And we're past this motorcycle.

EMILY JONES: Oh dear.

OK.

So the year that we actually invited young people

from the Gay Lesbian Straight Educational Network

to come in and talk, was the year

that we had participation by about over six

hundred employees, managers, and leaders in the company.

And one of our champions at that time

was really nervous because these were

kids that were under eighteen.

And what were we doing?

Were we saying that they should be gay and straight?

Are we doing something inappropriate?

And she was very nervous.

But we said, no.

This is a group from a school.

And their advisors will be there.

And we're just going to have them talk.

And so these young people got up and talked.

And they had written their speeches.

And they started out reading them, of course.

And it was pretty metered.

And then all of a sudden they read something that

really struck them emotionally.

Their voices cracked, their demeanors changed,

and they started to tell their stories

about the horrific environment that they faced in schools.

And this particular event received so many accolades

from people in the company for opening up

their eyes for what it's like for young people.

That kind of thing, grownups should be able to handle it.

But they think kids should not have to go through this.

So it was a really moving event.

And we actually were asked by senior leadership.

We met with the entire senior leadership

once about what was it about our network that

got so many people to attend and engage

so many people emotionally, to really want to drive

the work of this network?

And I can tell you that there wasn't any magic formula.

They wanted us to give them the magic formula

to transfer to these other networks.

But it came from a place of telling the stories of what

it was like, just what it's like to be

in the world every single day and the passion to change that,

just to change it.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Let's talk about two Kodaks.

Because a lot of this work you were doing,

you were doing for a lot of the white collar workers.

They seemed to be more actively involved in the Lambda Network

and in the work with these management events.

But they had the whole management side of Kodak.

Were there challenges there of trying to bring

that faction into the fold?

EMILY JONES: You're talking about manufacturing?

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah.

EMILY JONES: Yeah.

You know, this was interesting.

This is a general problem for all the networks.

The manufacturing people thought the networks

existed for people who were professionals,

not the people that actually worked and made things.

They thought that the networks existed to advance your career

or something along that line.

And so we engaged people on the manufacturing floor

that we knew were gay and lesbian.

And we would actually go in and talk

with them, with their peers, and with their leaders

in this process that we called Can We Talk.

It's a circle by which you get the people who are self

identified as gay and lesbian to talk about what it's

like to be gay and lesbian, bisexual,

transgendered in the workplace surrounded

by people who did not self identify as that group.

And the emotion would just transgress to this other group.

It was amazing how people would relate.

And they would say they had no idea it was like this.

And it would create these openings for conversation.

And we were able to engage manufacturing

on all three tricks, A, B, and C and also in Kodak Park

and out at Elm Grove over the years.

Now, the interesting thing is they would participate

but they would rarely want to take a leadership

role in the network.

One or two would maybe per year, but it would never

be more than that.

Because there was still this, I don't

trust this professional group, you know?

But they were grateful that the conversations

had where they worked.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Let's step away from Lambda a little bit.

You done all this work with Lambda at Kodak,

but yet you're getting involved in GAGV,

you're getting involved with Out & Equal, and HRC, and all

of these other groups.

What drives you?

What is it that drives you, that you're

continuing this fight, this education motive

through all of these different avenues?

EMILY JONES: It's probably be--

CREW: Wait for this truck to go by.

OK.

So no interviews at noon, no interviews during rush hour.

OK.

EMILY JONES: Well, this is a really great story.

When I first came out in the 1980s, mid 1980s,

I dated a woman in Boston.

She is a real leader.

I mean, incredible leader.

She was running the fertility clinic for lesbian women.

And actually, first creating the opportunity for eggs

to be fertilized, to be implanted in lesbian women.

She was written up in Time.

So, she told me I wasn't a good enough lesbian.

I wasn't doing enough in my company or in the world.

And I mean, I must have just taken that to heart

like I can't tell you.

I mean, I still think about those words today.

She said, "You're just sitting on the sidelines working

at Kodak.

You're just going along.

You're not doing anything to create any significant change."

I said, "Well, OK.

I'll show you."

So there's something in there that really stuck.

But what continues it?

It's when I still hear someone say,

I'm afraid to tell my boss.

I'm afraid to ask to take time off to be with my partner

as they have an operation.

Or, we're thinking of adopting a child but I

don't want to tell anybody at work because I

don't think they'll approve and it might affect my career.

It still goes on.

So that's what does it.

It's not over.

KEVIN INDOVINO: I'm going to throw some names at you.

I just want to get your general impressions

of who these people are and what they were like and again,

their most significant contribution to,

particularly Lambda at Kodak.

Obviously, we have to first start with David, David Kosel.

EMILY JONES: Yes.

David Kosel was an amazing man with an amazing heart

and amazing sensitivity to people.

And he could get people in a room

and create relationship so quickly

and calm the fears of others and create something

that no one else might have thought of creating.

And make it big and make it really well-done.

Had to be superb, had to have great food and great music,

including usually Thomas Warfield.

But the thing is that he created an opening for people

who were our allies to want to come together and be with us.

Because we were fun and funny.

And he had endless energy and just loved to create stuff.

We went to New York City together

to do his first marketing event with IBM, marketing IBM Kodak

stuff and Xerox stuff with David Frischkorn.

I mean, it was amazing.

He was amazing.

KEVIN INDOVINO: How about Dan Sapper.

EMILY JONES: Dan Sapper. rock solid.

This is the guy that, you know, detail man.

He was afraid to come out.

We had to talk him into getting on the team.

But once there, he established himself

as someone who was going to make sure

that we didn't have any pitfalls, that things were

going to be documented, that the history

was going to be documented.

I remember him doing the first management event

by every two minutes.

He had it written down.

This was Dan.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Just trying to think,

who else were the key people, particularly

in the initial stages of Lambda?

EMILY JONES: Oh, Katherine Rivers.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Katherine, yeah.

Talk about Katherine.

EMILY JONES: So, Katherine, David, and I basically

were the three co-chairs that really initiate in Lambda.

Katherine was an engineer.

And again, and she was someone who

had great attention to detail, amazing sensitivity

to the audiences, and she was the one

that engaged every one of the networks

at that time to participate in our event in our skits

as we went through what it was like to be at Kodak.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah.

Let's talk about that a little bit.

There's one thing that made me want to touch upon

is, at those management events, doing those skits,

and what were those skits?

Because they were based on a book or something, right?

A book of pronouns, or something?

EMILY JONES: No.

The skits, actually, were written

by Janet Barbario based on scenarios that

had occurred in the workplace.

Like, so let's say Kevin, you are telling me

that you're going to give me a promotion.

And I'm thinking, oh my god.

You want me to move to Ohio?

I've got a family here.

I've got two children, a partner.

I can't go.

I can't tell you that.

You're sitting there thinking, what's wrong with her?

Doesn't she want this promotion?

It's a two level promotion.

It's got all kinds of perks associated with it.

That kind of thing.

And we did it with talking heads,

so you and I are having conversation

and the heads were having the other conversation.

So everybody could see this.

They were really, really powerful.

KEVIN INDOVINO: I want to get to some general stuff here.

Were you part the first Gay Pride Parade

EMILY JONES: I walked in it.

KEVIN INDOVINO: You walked in it.

Talk to me about that.

Talk to me about how the first Gay Pride Parade came about

and your involvement with it.

And work in how you felt marching in this Gay Pride

Parade here in Rochester.

EMILY JONES: I can't remember the woman's name.

Well, it came about, I don't really

remember the person who got it together.

And it just went down Main Street to the liberty pole.

And there were probably, maybe a couple hundred people in it.

And it was pretty scary.

You had no idea what was going to happen when

you got to the liberty pole.

But you decided to go anyway and see what occurred.

Nothing really occurred.

People sang.

It was at the end of the day.

Nobody was really around.

But it was the very first event.

And I remember that two women rode

on the back of a car pretending to be married.

KEVIN INDOVINO: This was, what, 1989?

Do you remember?

EMILY JONES: I'd have to look it up.

I don't remember exactly when it was.

KEVIN INDOVINO: I want to say '89 but I'm not sure.

EMILY JONES: I think it was earlier than that but maybe

not.

KEVIN INDOVINO: It might have been.

I'm just going to skip some of this.

Yeah, there's one question that I wrote up here

from your point of view, whether it's

from a business or a social community sense.

Gay activism here in Rochester, what

do you think it says about Rochester as a whole?

EMILY JONES: Oh.

Rochester is a community that affirms difference,

difference in terms of ideas.

It's been this way forever, since the Iroquois nation,

since the Quakers, since Bausch and Lomb

who said education was important for all people.

When we had people who came to the Divinity School who said,

we need to take care of people who have lost

their spouse in the Civil War.

That was unheard of for a church to take care of people.

But this whole thing about ideas, cultivating new ideas.

When you cultivate new ideas, you actually