Caroline Griffin Pain is #9 on the OUTstanding 50 LGBT+ Executives List

I’m incredibly proud and honoured to be included in this year’s OUTstanding LGBT+ Executives List, supported by Yahoo Finance. Being an ally and champion of the LGBTQ+ community is something I have been passionate about my whole career, and I am thrilled that together with the Colt community we have been recognised in the strides we’ve taken in making everyone feel as though they can bring their true selves to work.

At Colt, we proudly support our LGBTQ+ employees through the Pride Matters network- a diverse group who have worked tirelessly since the network’s inception in 2019 to promote equality and inclusivity within our business. This award is just as much for them – so I would like to thank them for all that they do.

Since Pride Matters’ launch we have made significant progress within Colt, introducing a number of policies to help support our LGBTQ+ staff, such as the Transition at Work policy and the Global Family Leave policy, which considers parental leave in terms of primary and secondary caregivers rather than the previously gendered leave policy. We’ve organised 12 internal virtual Ally Trainings- focusing on spreading awareness in the Colt community of how to support your LGBTQ+ colleagues in the workplace- and have so far trained 211 people. I have supported this group as Executive sponsor since the network launched, and I am proud to say that we will be growing this initiative to all Colt locations in 2021. This year the network is also focusing on how we can better support our trans and non-binary colleagues.

I believe all this work played a role in the Financial Times announcing in November 2020 that Colt is ranked 44^th on their Diversity Leaders listing.

When I think about what I really want to achieve as an ally for the LGBTQ+ community at Colt and more broadly, it’s about visibility. When we launched the Pride Network, we all wore rainbow lanyards and we also commissioned a wall mural which combined the technical side of what we do and also showed that we were proud to fly the flag for the LGBTQ+ community. Due to the global nature of our business we want all LGBTQ+ persons to feel welcome and supported no matter where they reside. I would like to put out a call to all of my colleagues to come together to celebrate our differences and those things that make each of us unique, and to help make everyone feel welcome and safe at Colt. Our LGBTQ+ colleagues are highly valued and making them feel included and supported must be our top priority.

We are on a journey at Colt to become the best allies we can be, and there’s still a way to go on that journey. However, this recognition shows just how far we’ve come and I can’t wait to see how far we can all go together.

Caroline Griffin Pain, General Counsel