Trans in the City - Role Models & Real Models

Bobbi Pickard, Brighton-based trans activist and founder of Trans in the City, tells us about her new initiatives to mark Trans Awareness Week and Trans Day of Remembrance

Role Models & Real Models is a Trans in the City initiative, scheduling global events from companies, charities, organisations and individuals. The aim is to make visible the positive reality for trans people in business and in society – despite some hugely negative attacks from high-profile people and a small minority with excellent media connections, despite the healthcare trials and a massively ill-informed and misdirected government, trans people are already present, successful and flourishing in our society. It’s to show trans people they are valued and that people are actively working to make things better.

The #TransRightsAreHumanRights campaign has given us an amazing opportunity to showcase our inclusivity and show our support for the trans community during Trans Awareness Week (November 13-19) and on Trans Day of Remembrance (November 20).

We’d like every organisation to do something positive during the week; whether that is hosting a panel event with established role models or joining with another organisation to host a virtual film viewing, flying the Trans Flag for the week or just holding a trans awareness session.

We’d also like to highlight that trans people are already successful in careers across all of our organisations – people who are not only role models but real models; doing real jobs, being a success and highlighting how supportive each organisation is. We’d like to give those individuals the recognition they deserve for the work they do every day.

We’d like as many organisations as possible to organise an event between 60-90 minutes – we’ll then provide you with the means to publicise that to all the other organisations

and their employees so we can get the greatest coverage and a fantastic schedule of trans awareness and discussion. The event can cover any aspect of gender non-conformity across trans, non-binary, differences in gender expression, drag, anything - be as inventive as you’d like.

If your organisation is just starting out on this journey or perhaps doesn’t have an active role model, or even would just like to share an event, then we can help link you up with one or more partner organisation. We can link you up with well-known trans role models as well if needed.

We will, in addition, have at least one flagship event every day as well as a kick off and a close out event – we’d love to hear from organisations that would like to partner with us on those.

We’d also like trans role models from across the organisations to make a short video of themselves on their phones – max two mins 20 secs – that we can release through social media throughout the week to really highlight the depth and breadth of trans people in industry. This can be a short message saying: their name, company, what job they do, something about themselves and wishing everyone Happy Trans Awareness Week.

We’ll provide a support pack providing some ideas, social media assets, and ways of submitting events and videos.

Finally for Trans Day of Remembrance we will be asking everyone to simply post an image of a candle on social media using the hashtag #TDoR or #TransDayofRemembrance and then remaining post free for the rest of the day.

Please block out the week and get thinking how you’d like to participate on what will be the largest online corporate collaboration of the year.

Bobbi Pickard is a Senior Project Manager and was the first openly transgender person at BP. As the co-chair of BP Pride’s Transgender Group she has transformed transgender awareness globally within the company. She is the founder of Trans in the City, an open corporate collaboration which has brought together over 200 major organisations to collaborate on furthering transgender awareness across the world. Bobbi speaks at many events around the world on LGBTQ+ inclusion in business, transgender and diversity and inclusion in industry.

For more info and to get involved, visit: www.transinthecity.co.uk