Changing Tides for Queer Diversity in the Accountancy Profession.
Izzi Lerwill (they/them) is a chartered accountant who trained in audit in Leicester, Nottingham and St Albans. They are now a financial modelling assistant manager for the London office at Grant Thornton UK currently seconded 50% to the Inclusion and Diversity team focusing on Social Mobility. Alongside their accountancy work, they work as a human rights activist and One Young world Ambassador.
“I’m a queer person from a working class background with long-term mental health disabilities called premenstrual dysphoric disorder and complex post-traumatic stress disorder.
My queer identity includes two aspects: my sexual orientation and my gender identity. In terms of my sexual orientation, I am bisexual which means I have the potential to be attracted to a person regardless of their gender. In terms of my gender identity, I am transgender and non-binary. This means that my gender identity does not match the gender I was initially assigned at birth.”
Reverse mentoring
While at Grant Thornton, Izzi had the opportunity to reverse mentor their CEO.
“Reverse mentoring is where senior partners are paired with and mentored by more junior colleagues. This exposes the partner to challenging dialogue which they might otherwise never encounter. This dialogue enables our senior partners to reflect on how they can build a more inclusive culture at Grant Thornton and it helps our junior people know that their perspectives are understood.
When I started reverse mentoring our CEO, I wasn’t fully out at work regarding my queer identity. I was out to colleagues about my sexual orientation, but I wasn’t out to most colleagues about my transgender non-binary gender identity. I was being held back by a negative experience of being outed in a previous team.
The supervisor had confronted me loudly in the office, in front of my whole team. They said, “Izzi I heard you’re gay, is that true?! We need to know these things!”. I was mortified. The general anti-LGBTQIA+ “banter” then became directly targeted at me. I’d overhear colleagues talking about me being bisexual, and how, in their opinion, it wasn’t really a thing and that it was disgusting. It really negatively impacted my mental health. LGBTQIA+ people are more likely to experience poor mental health, and this is generally thought to be linked to the stress of hiding or disguising that you are LGBTQIA+ and the harassment that you may face for simply being you.”
Unfortunately, this type of experience that Izzi suffered still occurs within some organisations. An anonymous ICAEW student survey in 2020 indicated that queer students do not yet perceive the accountancy profession as a completely safe space. Despite increased support for queer employees in many workplaces, students nevertheless reported that they often prefer to stay in the closet due to a fear of negative repercussions. Students reported that, to feel safe and be their authentic selves in the workplace, they require the following:
1) Public company statements in support of the LGBTQ+ community.
2) Visible role models and success stories from members of the LGBTQ+ community.
3) Events and networks connecting members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Fortunately, many organisations are now implementing these measures and young LGBTQ+ chartered accountants, like Izzi, are feeling increasingly safe to be themselves.
Coming out at work
“I was really keen to become a reverse mentor, as I want to drive cultural changes, to ensure that in the future, people don’t have to go through the same negative experiences that I have. I want to live in a society where people are happy and able to bring their whole self to work.
Since becoming a reverse mentor, I’ve come out at work about my transgender non-binary gender identity. This has been so liberating and was something I didn’t think I would do before non-binary people in the UK gained more legal rights (in the same way that non-binary people in other countries, such as Canada and Argentina, already have).
The culture where I work is really special. We don’t have restrictive dress code policies here that police your self-expression. I can have “unnatural” hair colours, visible piercings and tattoos, because my employer respects that these don’t have a negative impact on my ability to work. If anything, enabling people to self-express in a way they feel comfortable allows them to bring their whole self to work and, as such, their performance will be even better.”