Looking back at Pride Month 2021 here at Snyk!

Wow! Pride Month at Snyk was amazing this year! We had more events, more opportunities to learn and share, and more baked goods than ever ?. And some of us even got to see each other in a few of our newly reopened offices!

One of Snyk’s core values is Care Deeply, and a big part of that is making sure that every Snyker feels like they can be themselves. Caring deeply can be as simple as giving people the flexibility to prioritize their life above work. But during Pride Month, it means being loud and proud about our support of the LGBTQIA+ community — celebrating the progress they’ve made through the years and spreading awareness about the progress that still needs to be made.

So without further ado, let’s take a look back at Pride Month here at Snyk.

Rainbow, rainbows everywhere

Our Boston, London, and Tel Aviv offices recently reopened, which means our decorations weren’t limited to Pride-themed Zoom backgrounds anymore!

Tasteful celebrations

And as any office worker knows, a celebration is only as good as the desserts that are served.

Never a drag in drag

We also held three different virtual drag bingo events so Snykers around the world could have a fabulous time.

We also had a “Name that Tune” event full of LGBTQAI+ music trivia. Questions spanned decades and genres of the musical landscape without getting too tough for the average music listener. Unfortunately, we forgot to take screenshots of the Zoom, so you’re just going to have to believe us on this one...

Always inspiring

At our Tel Aviv office, we had an amazing presentation from Anat Nir, Marketing Manager for the LGBT social app Moovz. Aside from starting the first lesbian bar in Tel Aviv on Lilienblum Street, producing the first gay pride parade in Beerheba, and co-founding the Lethan Lesbian film festival, Nir is a member of the board of directors in Hoshen (a Hebrew acronym for “Education and Change”). Hoshen is a nationwide, nonprofit organization that works across Israel to combat stereotypes regarding sexual orientation and gender identity. Growing since 2004, Hoshen focuses on sensitivity training and raising awareness on LGBT issues, conducting more than 1,800 events a year, and working mostly in schools, where its activities reach around 50,000 students annually.

Hoshen is a volunteer-driven organization with over 250 volunteers. Prompted by a belief that tolerance for LGBT Israelis should not be limited to the “enlightened” Tel Aviv metropolitan area, Hoshen has placed growing emphasis in recent years on reaching out to communities and volunteers from across Israel’s periphery.

In her talk, Nir shared her personal experience from her early days at school and the questions that she started asking herself from a very young age. She spoke about the key events in her life that helped her to understand who she really is. The talk was followed by a great Q & A session that got everyone involved and interested in what really goes on in Israel today with the LGBTQIA+ community.

Allyship at DevSecCon

To decide where DevSecCon24’s charitable contributions would go, attendees were able to vote for different organizations that were increasing diversity, equality, and inclusivity in the software industry. Each region of the 24-hour event got to vote, and the winners were:

• EMEA: Women of Security (WoSEC) - A safe space for underrepresented individuals to network, form a community, learn, and have fun!

• APJ: Indigitek - A community of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander people who are continuing a proud tradition of Indigenous innovation and entrepreneurship in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics.

• Americas: Girls Who Code - Building the world's largest pipeline of future female engineers.

Additionally, Snyk also hosted three virtual events at our booth around championing inclusiveness in technology:

• LGBT in Tech, fireside chat - This panel, featuring Snyk talent and Snyk Impact leadership, focused on allyship, the merits of helping people bring their whole self to work, examples of inappropriate things people say, and ways to educate teams about creating safe inclusive spaces at work.

• Best Practices for a Diverse Workplace, AMA with the Snyk People team - This panel offered insights on how to approach diversity and inclusion behaviors, culture-building, and hiring strategy, programs, and measurement.

• LGBTQ+ Allyship in the Workplace, workshop - We ran this workshop here at Snyk too, so keep reading to learn all about it.

Allyship at Snyk

And just this week, we had Sum of Us present the LGBTQ+ Allyship in the Workplace workshop for all of our Snykers. Our amazing speaker, Conor, talked about things like understanding the LGBTQ+ community (and how to not be afraid of getting the letters wrong), sex v. gender v. sexuality, the history of the LGBQT+ movement, and how to put allyship in action. At the end, we broke out into small groups to talk about things that Snyk does in terms of allyship and what Snyk can do to be even better!

Giving back

Fundraising for LGBTQIA+ organizations was another way we showed our support. With our Good Todayintegration in Slack, we raised money for:

• Lesbians Who Tech - Queer. Inclusive. Badass.

• The Trevor Project - A national 24-hour, toll free confidential suicide hotline for LGBTQ youth

• Out in Tech - Uniting LGBTQ+ in tech

• StartOut - Empowering LGBT entrepreneurs to succeed & unite with a community of like-minded professionals

• BuildOn - Mobilizing U.S. students to transform their communities through service — and change the world by building schools in developing countries

• Muso - Collaborating with policymakers and implementers to design, test, and scale evidence-based health systems that deliver care with speed: to all patients who need it, when they need it.

• Camp Aranu'tiq - Building confidence, resilience, and community for transgender and non-binary youth and their families through camp experiences.

• Hetrick-Martin Institute - Providing community, basic needs, health, education, and career services to thousands of LGBTQ youth every year.

• NAACP - Working to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination.

• NBCDI - Engaging leaders, policymakers, professionals, and parents around critical and timely issues that directly impact Black children and their families

• Anti-Violence Project - Ending gender-based violence

• Rosie’s Place - Providing a safe and nurturing environment that helps poor and homeless women maintain their dignity, seek opportunity, and find security in their lives

• The Okra Project - Seeking to address the global crisis faced by Black trans people by bringing them home cooked, healthy, and culturally specific meals and resources   

• Trans Lifeline - Providing the trans community with peer support and care

• SAGE - Advocacy and services for LGBT elders

• Stonewall Gives Back - Spreading the Stonewall Inn legacy to the places, faces, and spaces that need it the most

Snyker Pride

Finally, we put out an ask to our Snykers in the LGBTQIA+ community to find out what Pride means to them. Here are some of the responses:

"Pride Month is a time that all people can come together to support LBGTQ+ individuals, whether they are loud and proud, or haven't been able to express themselves."

Cristian Arendell, Systems Engineer, Boston office

"Just celebrating the way we are, and not be sorry about it!"

Koby Damari, Sr. Software Engineer, Tel Aviv office

"Pride means being accepted for who I am and to commemorate how far we've come. Pride is fighting for what's right, proving that "love is love", and normalizing LGBTQ+ individuals."

Stacy Dunn, Solutions Engineer, US remote

"Being proud of who you are, no matter who or how you are."

Josh Emerson, Sr Engineering Manager, London office

"Survival. That enough of us made it this far and made enough noise to be counted among society. There's also a strong element of hope — on a very long timeline. Things have improved for queer people and will continue to do so."

Avery Schneider, Technical GRC Manager, Boston office

Pride is more than a month

We recognize that it’s easy to be an ally during Pride Month, while LGBTQIA+ issues are at the forefront of news and events. At Snyk, we want to be allies all year round. We will do our best to be conscious of our biases, focus on inclusivity, and be mindful of the great strides that still need to be made at Snyk and across the software development and application security community. To that end, if you see us slip, help pick us back up. We want to do the right thing, not the easy thing.

If you’d like to help us be a better ally from the inside, check out our open positions. We welcome you exactly how you are.