Celebrating Queer Voices: Inside Shopify’s “Free To Be Me” Campaign
Meet Calvin
“Representation matters” is a phrase that has become somewhat buzzy over the last few years. And like many buzzy terms and phrases, with its popularity, the phrase can lose some of its important meaning. Representation does matter…but how do we ensure that we are moving beyond just representation to show people of various identities as whole, unique people with experience and expertise to share? And on the other side of this coin, how might we help employees of diverse identities and lived experiences know that they belong within an organization?
For Calvin McKee, Senior Diversity and Belonging Specialist at Shopify, these questions are central to the work that he does every day. But, his commitment to creating the conditions for belonging existed long before he was in this particular role. Whether as a Facilitation Specialist in charge of onboarding new employees to Shopify or as the Global Chair for the Pride ERG, Calvin knows that in being exactly who he is at work, he is helping to create the space for others to do the same. This is why we needed to talk to him about the “Free To Be Me” photo campaign, which featured LGBTQ+ employees from across the organization, showing multiple diverse experiences of being queer at Shopify.
And while this article serendipitously falls during Pride month, I’ve been wanting to chat with Calvin about how this project came to be and what the process was like since he referenced this initiative at CultivatorCon 2023. Here’s what he had to say:
The Idea:
The campaign idea came from Calvin’s experience as a Facilitation Specialist, in charge of onboarding new employees. He estimates that he onboarded over 1,000 employees during his time in that role, which he saw as an important opportunity and platform. Speaking of the experience he says, “I’m your welcome committee. The first person you see when you show up to Shopify is me, someone who is confident, openly gay, part of the queer community, and advocating for anyone from a minority or underrepresented group. I get to show up in this way every single day and I want to promote that that is something you can do as well. This is a safe place to do that.”
Calvin wanted to expand that impact so that employees felt that sense of belonging beyond their onboarding experience. He wondered how they could expand that experience across both the employee journey and the company in coordination with the DE&I organization and the company’s existing communities.
Speaking of communities, Shopify has eight employee resource groups (ERGs) and each one has a designated month in which they develop and launch a “Belonging Campaign,” offering programming, spaces for connection and networking, professional development, and more. At the time of this initiative, Calvin was the Global Chair of the Out at Shopify ERG, in charge of the community’s belonging campaign and outcomes.
As a community, they developed the concept of the “Free To Be Me” campaign, a photography and storytelling initiative featuring queer employees and demonstrating the unique and thriving queer community that exists within Shopify. The goal was to show employees that “Shopify is a place where you can feel fully authentic and show up to do your best work”.
When asking folks to show up authentically, creating a safe space for them to do that is paramount. Because of this, the campaign had another purpose; to demonstrate the importance of acceptance and allyship within the larger organization. Calvin sees it as a “two-way street,” in that, “we want to be as authentic as possible when we show up, and when we do that it will equate to us doing our best possible work and creating the best possible product, but that takes a lot of support from the people around you.” He felt the photo campaign could serve as an essential bridge.
The Challenge:
The challenges were varied throughout the process. Calvin first mentions budget as a constraint. He and his team needed to show diverse experiences within Shopify’s queer community on film, which necessitated a venue for the photo shoot, a photographer, and travel for those who would participate. As a fully remote team, planning an in-person initiative was a logistical challenge. Ultimately, they settled on an in-budget venue that was queer-owned and invited mainly local employees to participate, saving their budget to support those who needed to travel farther, and for the photographer.
The second challenge was relatable for many experiencing the job market right now: Lay-offs. Namely, as the campaign was in the process of launching, Shopify underwent a round of layoffs that impacted some folks involved with the creation of the campaign- and some featured in the campaign itself. This impacted not just the rollout of the campaign, but morale within the community. Calvin says that by focusing on uplifting the community and having hard conversations around loss with those who remained, they were able to move forward together.
The Outcome:
Photographer Wynne Neilly, himself a Shopify employee at the time of the campaign, brought his photography expertise to the project, as well as his internal perspective. The resulting photographs are joyful and stunning. It is not an understatement for me to say that they made my day and they will make yours (Catch the teaser trailer here). Calvin says of the project “This is a celebration of eight different individuals and their experiences.” And you can feel that celebration in every smile.
He notes that due to layoffs, they had to scrap a lot of their initial plan which included a more public-facing campaign. To be respectful to those impacted, they featured five of the eight stories they collected and featured two participants as entrepreneurs who now run their business, Queeriosity, off of Shopify. It feels important to note this, as many individuals, ERGs, and companies continue to experience layoffs.
Of the internal impact, Calvin notes, ”We received a lot of internal feedback and sparked conversation around how much this meant to people to actually see that there was care for this community and the prioritization to feature our employees and to be able to tell their stories and highlight the successes and joys of the queer community, but also really rally behind the importance of acceptance and belonging.”
This is just the start! Calvin sees ERGs as playing a crucial role in helping Shopify understand the challenges and obstacles entrepreneurs with marginalized identities face. He aspires towards a more equitable entrepreneurship space for their customers and knows that that can only come from a diversity of inputs. He is planning to involve ERG input in everything from how capital is spent in their creator communities, to UX product feature changes, to the marketing function. Reflecting on where they’re going he says, “Ensuring that folks from the Latinx community feel ‘This is a really good opportunity for me to start my own business and for me to succeed or find success in a way that feels good to me’” while breaking down barriers to entrepreneurship. He sees the “Free To Be Me” campaign as a good example of the power of storytelling and how that might be expanded to include the customers that Shopify serves.
Calvin asserts that when ERGs and the folks within them thrive, their customers of those identities also thrive. Referencing this he says, “We have so many incredible merchants and entrepreneurs that are on the platform. We have lists of hundreds of merchants from these communities that we support. It’s one thing for us to have that internally and for our 10,000 employees to support and buy from them, but it’s another when we are able to share that with other organizations and get our friends, families, and communities to shop from them.”
Talk about scaling that impact! (Want to see that merchant list? Us too! Calvin was kind enough to share it with us, and you can check it out here.)
What Worked?
Building company investment and buy-in: It is worth noting that Shopify has created a robust platform for ERGs to share the work they do and celebrate their identities, through the Belonging Campaign initiative. By creating these opportunities for ERGs to thrive, Shopify is empowering them to have visibility and a voice within the company. We love to see it!
Referencing existing frameworks: Within Shopify, there is a concept known as “the jungle gym” which acknowledges that there is no one path to a career or the ability to be successful within the organization and that all experience is good experience. Calvin referenced this during the campaign, elevating an employee’s experience of their identity as valuable to their career and development. This gave all employees a common frame of reference in how they viewed the campaign.
Being agile: The campaign had to shift due to organizational changes that led to some of the content needing to be recovered or usable. While this was disappointing, Calvin and the team were able to make the most out of the content they did have to ensure they accomplished the campaign’s purpose.
Finding co-conspirators: Initially, this campaign was an ERG-only initiative. Calvin expanded their impact (and their budget!) by partnering with the Employer Brand team, by growing the project to include an external element.
Calvin’s Advice for Fellow Cultivators:
Don’t overthink it: At the start of this project, Calvin thought they would need a hair and makeup artist and a complex set to make an impact. Ultimately, they kept it simple, spending their budget on a professional photographer and venue and asking participants to show up in the clothing and adornment that felt most authentic to them. He says, “ “I built it up to be this huge daunting thing and it wound up being simpler than I imagined which was really nice.”
Stay true to your purpose: The purpose of this campaign was to tell authentic stories, and that was the focal point that Calvin and his team came back to again and again.