9 LGBTQ Entrepreneurs and CEOs Paving the Way for Future Generations
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From technology to activism, these trailblazing LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs have shattered the glass ceiling in their careers so that the LGBTQ founders of tomorrow can pick up where they’ve left off.
While the movement towards greater inclusivity and diversity in the business world gains steam, a report from Proud Ventures highlighted that in the start-up ecosystem, there are still many barriers that LGBTQ+ founders face. The ‘LGBTQ+ Founder Report’ found that 75 per cent of LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs and founders hid their identity from investors at some point during the funding process.
To affirm the value and innovation that LGBTQ+ people bring to the business world, we’ve put together a list of 9 of the most influential LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs and CEOs.
Sam Altman – CEO of OpenAI
Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI, the company responsible for ChatGPT (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Sam Altman, the co-founder and chief executive of OpenAI, the company known for bringing ChatGPT and allowing the world to access generative AI. Before his venture into AI, Altman was the president of Y Combinator, a renowned startup accelerator. His entrepreneurial journey began early, co-founding Loopt, a location-based social networking app, at the age of 19.
Altman has been in the headlines recently – after being fired from OpenAI, then joining Microsoft, then returning as head of OpenAI after a company revolt just a few days later. In more happy news, Altman just married his partner, Oliver Mulherin in a seaside ceremony. No word if either used ChatGPT to write their vows.
Tim Cook – CEO of Apple Inc.
Tim Cook took over as CEO of Apple Inc. after the passing of Steve Jobs in 2011. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
The boss of Apple is one of the most prominent LGBTQ+ business leaders in the world. Tim Cook took over the reins of Apple in 2011, just months before Steve Jobs passed away from pancreatic cancer.
Cook came out publicly as gay in 2014 and has been an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ+ rights ever since. Under his leadership, Apple has continued to be a leader in innovation and has become the first US company to reach a market value of $1 trillion.
Martine Rothblatt – Founder of United Therapeutics and Sirius XM
Martine Rothblatt founded both Sirius radio and the biotech firm United Therapeutics. (Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images)
Martine Rothblatt is a futurist, entrepreneur, lawyer, and author. She’s founded companies like Sirius XM Radio and the biotech firm United Therapeutics. Rothblatt came out as transgender in 1994 and has been an advocate for trans rights ever since. While money isn’t everything, Rothblatt was the highest-paid CEO in the biopharmaceutical industry in 2017.
Leanne Pittsford – Founder & CEO of Lesbians Who Tech
Leanne Pittsford is head of Lesbians Who Tech, a community focused on lesbian and non-binary visibility in the tech sector. (Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images)
After noticing the gap in lesbian women and non-binary people in tech, Leanne Pittsford founded Lesbians Who Tech in 2012. Lesbians Who Tech is a community-based group committed to visibility, intersectionality, and changing the face of technology. The community has grown to over 70,000 LBTQ+ women and allies from 100 different countries and offers coding scholarships and mentoring programmes.
Peter Arvai – Co-founder of Prezi
Peter Arvai co-founded Prezi in 2009 to compete with Microsoft PowerPoint. (Mike Coppola/Getty Images)
Swedish entrepreneur Peter Arvai founded the cloud-based presentation platform Prezi along with Péter Halácsy and Ádám Somlai-Fischer in 2009. Arvai was CEO of the company until he stepped down in 2020 but still serves as its Executive Chair. He came out publicly in 2015 in a Forbes feature and has been an advocate for LGBTQ+ visibility in STEM ever since.
Alicia Garza – Co-founder of Black Lives Matter
Alicia Garza co-founded Black Lives Matter and is also a community activist. (Paras Griffin/Getty Images)
Alicia Garza helped create the Black Lives Matter movement after the acquittal of the man who murdered the American teenager Trayvon Martin in 2013. Since then, the movement has evolved into a global organisation in the UK, USA and Canada. A decade later and the BLM movement has helped to pave the way for the modern feminism movement of today.
In addition to being an activist, Garza is an author, public speaker and the Principal of the Black Futures Lab – a California-based think tank focused on engaging Black communities to get involved in politics.
Joel Simkhai – Co-founder & former
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