Building Bridges this Pride Month with Rainbow Carrots

Happy Pride Month! This month, our Rainbow Carrots Employee Resource Group (ERG) proudly led this year's festivities, featuring both virtual and in-person events designed to celebrate Instacart's diverse identities and make room for positive change.

2024's theme, Together in Pride: Building Bridges in Our Community, encouraged employees to take time and space to celebrate the nuances in our identities. Every event had an educational layer behind it, with the goal of making sure members, allies, and diverse team members always understood the group's "why" for putting it on. Rainbow Carrots also carefully curated spaces where employees could meet new people and intentionally create community.

The month kicked off with a dictionary-style event, where author Chloe Davis, a proud Black bisexual woman, author, and featured star in the Tony-nominated Broadway play, discussed her acclaimed book, The Queens' English, The LGBTQ2IA+ Dictionary of Lingo and Colloquial Phrases - and her newest book, a Young Readers adaptation of the aforementioned book. The event taught employees definitions and gave language to common LGBTQ2IA+ terms that folks might not be familiar with, under the goal of helping people get comfortable with having important and nuanced conversations. This event evolved from last year's "Power Behind Pronouns" event which was well received by employees and led to members asking for more practice using new language in corporate environments.

Attendees practiced using pronouns and new LGBTQ2IA+ terms, helping extend their use of inclusive language to their work environments. "Even if you identify as a member of the LGBTQ2IA+ acronym, there are still new things to be learned," said Jamie Lancaster, Workplace Lead and co-lead of the Rainbow Carrots ERG. He continued, "It's important that we continue LGBTQ2IA+ programming throughout the entire year, and this event is the perfect primer for Transgender Awareness Month coming up in November 2024."

Further uplifting intersectionality, Rainbow Carrots intentionally worked with Nightshades, the Instacart ERG focused the experiences, support and wellbeing of Black employees, to make space for the Juneteenth observance. Together, the groups paid homage and respect to the people who were historically and intentionally marginalized and excluded from the fabric of our society. They did this by co-promoting Instacart's internal Juneteenth fireside chat and dedicating a day for recognition, a Fun Color Friday, to honor the intersection of Blackness and LGBTQ2IA+ identities.

Fun Color Fridays, a popular engagement during Pride Month, pulled members into learning about the meaning behind its different colors in the pride flag. It sparked internal conversations via Slack, bringing virtual employees together. Other events included a workout class to encourage members to prioritize their physical health, a Spring Health coaching session to remind members of the importance of their mental health, and a drag bingo event to mix-in some fun. "We wanted to prioritize our members' self-care and have our programming to support them bringing it into their lives each and every day," said Asia Yepez, Expansions & Workforce Relations Sr. Program Manager and co-lead of the Rainbow Carrots ERG.

Our in-person happy hours brought together employees in Atlanta, New York, San Francisco, and Toronto, providing an opportunity for team members working in Instacart's Flex First working environment to find moments of connection and build rapport. LGBTQ2IA+ owned brands, Voon Wines, Sincere Cider, and Hot Cookie, among others, were featured at the events to increase exposure with employees.

Finally, Rainbow Carrots led a collective effort to support Rainbow Railroad, a vital organization aiding LGBTQ2IA+ individuals in danger due to discriminatory laws in over 60 countries by assisting with such things as relocation and crisis response. Employees proudly utilized Instacart's matching program, DEED, for their donations throughout June.