Aviva Insider - Pride - Meet Hillary
Aviva Canada
Leading insurer for home, auto, lifestyle and Business / Assurance automobile, habitation, mode de vie et entreprise
It’s Pride month! One of our five diversity and inclusion groups, Pride, focuses on creating a safe and equitable workplace, no matter gender or sexuality. They bring awareness and education about issues surrounding the 2SLGBTQIA+ community and foster a place of inclusiveness through allyship for all. This article is written by one of our Pride community leads, sharing her story and the importance of Pride and allyship in the workplace.?
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Hillary Gingerich (she/they)
Hi Hillary, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? How did you get started at Aviva?
?I grew up in small town Ontario before migrating to Toronto like a lot of the small-town queers and weirdos do. My partner and I are parents to two amazing kids (4 and 2). We also have two dogs and two cats, a full house! I love plants and gardening and playing Dungeons & Dragons.
I identify as queer. None of the other labels felt like they fit for me. I like that queer is an umbrella term and it’s a word that’s been largely reclaimed by the community.
I work as part of Aviva’s in-house legal team as a litigation clerk. I’ve been at Aviva since 2018 and came from a private practice insurance defense background.
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What an amazing family you must have, full house indeed! Were you always involved in Aviva Pride since you started here? What was your journey like to becoming a co-lead?
To be honest I kind of just fell into becoming a co-lead with Aviva Pride. I was part of the larger Pride group when Julie and Andre reached out to me and asked if I wanted to get more involved. I am very 0 to 100 so it just took off from there and here I am. Both Julie and Andre are the loveliest people and great leads. I’m so pleased I get to work with and learn from both.
I’m hoping to help increase our involvement in some of Aviva’s other D&I communities. Intersectionality is so important in social spaces. We have a lot to learn from each other in addition to there being plenty of folks who are part of multiple marginalized communities.
Additionally, we are working on addressing some internal areas we’ve identified where we could be more inclusive (forms, benefits, language). I’m excited to continue to drive that forward. It has real life results for myself and my family and how we operate in the world, and at work. It means a lot to be someone pushing for continued development in this area at Aviva and to be honest it wouldn’t feel true to myself if I wasn’t doing that.
For it to fall naturally to you and the work you’ve been able to help achieve, it’s amazing. Aviva Pride has certainly evolved since its inception in 2018; what excites you about its current or future growth?
I’m most excited about growth outside of the Pride parade. As much as it’s important to celebrate and recognize the history of the Pride parade and of our queer elders, I think current day Pride has allowed a lot of folks to become complacent with respect to advocating for the community’s rights. If we’re going to partake in the huge celebration, we also need to put efforts into areas of inequality for the community.
We’ve started to make some of these changes over the past few years. This year, we had a great event for Trans Day of Visibility and we’ve partnered with the 519 Community Centre in Toronto. The 519 has a ton of resources for the community including housing and legal services, counselling, trans-specific services, 2SLGBTQIA+ elder services, anti-violence and family services. In addition to donating to the centre we are looking at having them in to host some speaking events in the future. There’s so much to learn. We have lots of enthusiastic participants and we want to be able to provide the space to help build knowledge too.
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It’s true, our people have really become involved in the Pride community, and all the other great communities we have, which is important for creating that culture of inclusion. We certainly can’t do it without all of the work from our people. Are there any messages you’d like to share with others about Pride or Aviva Pride, for people who may want to come work here who are allies or part of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community?
Yes. Just a promise really that there are people within Aviva Pride and Aviva’s other communities that are actively doing the work, and committed to constantly bettering the quality of the 2SLGBTQIA+ Aviva work experience.
We are involved as a member with the Pride at Work organization here in Canada. Additionally, Aviva has been named one of the top employers according to the Global Workplace Equality Index put out by the Stonewall organization based in the UK.
?We are always learning and growing and trying to create that inclusive space. We want that for not only our people at Aviva, but also so that our people can take home what they learn about how to be an ally and what they can do to their day-to-day lives outside of work.
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Are there any resources you can point to for people who are interested in learning more?
Yes, always happy to plug resources!
Thanks for sharing, Hillary. We have so much up and coming, and hope that for those who have questions, they find these resources helpful. If you’re interested in learning more about Aviva Pride, or working at Aviva, check out our available jobs here: https://www.aviva.ca/en/careers/