At Omnidian, Pride is woven into the fabric of who we are as a company. One of our core values is “We Treat Everyone With Dignity and Respect,” and we strive to live this value every single day.

With over one in four of our employees identifying as LGBTQ+, Pride Month is personal for us – and it’s personal for me, too. I have family members who are gay or trans, and I’ve come to identify as queer. I feel fortunate to be part of a company that’s created a culture that embraces this community, and I feel proud to have played a role in cultivating that culture over the last seven years.

One of the key ways we celebrate this culture is through a Pride logo design contest that gets printed onto shirts for the whole company to wear. While we aim to deliver these shirts to employees each year in June for LGBTQ+ Pride Month, these shirts are a year-round, visible reminder of our commitment to treating our colleagues with dignity and respect. 

Below, I share how this initiative got started, and some other ways we support our LGBTQ+ community throughout the year. 

How Our Pride Shirt Tradition Began

While Omnidian’s founders are strong allies to the LGBTQ+ community and some of the very first people to join Omnidian were out and proud, Omnidian didn’t begin having official Pride celebrations for its first couple of years as a company. Then, in 2020, the Pride shirt campaign was officially launched.

“Our first Pride shirts came as an employee initiative as one element in our ‘Work From Home Pride Celebration,’ which I pitched as a way to celebrate pride and connect with our community during the early days of COVID,” explains Mal Culbertson (they/she), Omnidian’s Software Product Analyst. “We also just really wanted a fun shirt to live loudly in.”

Omnidian’s Marketing team created two rainbow versions of our logo, and the entire company voted on their favorite for our shirts and social media. The following year, our team thought we should open up the creative process to the whole company to come up with our Pride Logo for the year. Thus, our annual employee Pride Logo contest was born.

“Since we only printed enough in 2020 for our existing team (plus a few extras for upcoming hires), we had run out by the next year. We needed more gear to celebrate Pride with our quickly growing team,” adds Mal. “Rather than reordering last year’s design, we decided the annual winning Pride logo would be featured on the shirts for that year.”

In 2021, a few queer employees (myself included) formed Rainbow Array, one of our first affinity groups at Omnidian.

Rainbow Array took over Pride Month planning the following year, including coordination of our annual Pride shirt contest. Our members decided on the theme, solicited designs, and voted in a primary election before presenting our favorites to the full company in a general election. This has helped keep the winning logos centered within the queer community while still getting input from everyone.

In addition to these shirts, we also celebrate Pride Month through additional workshops, storytelling, and panels, all decided upon within Rainbow Array.

Why These Shirts Matter

The Pride shirts represent something deeper than company swag. As attacks on LGBTQ+ rights have intensified, many of our employees feel deeply protective toward our queer team members. They aren’t just colleagues – they’re friends, and these shirts are one of the ways we show our solidarity.

“We’re a very communal, supportive team that likes to uplift each other, and that’s a core tenant of Pride celebrations,” says Mal. “For our queer employees and allies, the Pride shirts are a way to make sure that at Omnidian, all of our team members are valued in their entirety and for the fullness of who they are.”

I remember one of our employees, Kris Huntting (he/they/she), experienced this support first-hand after receiving his first Pride shirt in May 2022. Having just left a job with a conservative institution in a red state, Kris said receiving an Omnidian Pride shirt as a queer person meant that “my heart wasn’t just relieved – it was unlocked.”

“For the first time, I was part of a company where I saw people who looked like me. Pronouns were in email signatures, queer folks sat on interview panels, and there were non-binary and gay people in leadership roles,” Kris explains. “At my old job, I was told to hide my sexuality and gender identity – even on my personal social media. Here, in my very first month, I received a shirt that was loudly, visibly queer-supportive. Omnidian didn’t just say, ‘You’re welcome here.’ They said, ‘We are you.’“

Mal was also incredibly proud to get their first shirt in 2020: “To see this idea pitched in May and have a shirt in hand a month later represented total buy-in from our executive team and company at large, and it felt so validating to have complete alignment in our support of the LGBTQ community.”

The annual Pride shirt initiative is also special because it provides a snapshot into the sentiment and work of the real people who make it happen, including collaborations with affinity groups like Black Lights Matter. Each year, the new design and a one-time printing of shirts means there’s a “limited edition” factor that sheds light on the company’s journey as it grows and develops.

“From our first shirt (a simple white cotton tee with a rainbow version of our standard logo) to the thrifted shirts two years ago where we put our logo onto shirts we bought from Goodwill, to last year’s collaboration tee with Black Lights Matter to celebrate the intersectionality of Juneteenth and Pride and Black queer culture, each shirt is a little time capsule of the culture and people of Omnidian and what we faced in that moment,” Mal says.

This year’s theme for the logo contest was trans pride and solidarity.

“This logo design was inspired by a version of the Progress Pride Flag, which was created to include and uplift Trans, BIPOC, and Asexual communities,” says Oliver Klicker, our Marketing Operations Manager (he/they). “I envisioned the traditional rainbow colors as a powerful surge rising upward, symbolizing the energy and solidarity of the broader LGBTQ+ community. These colors form a foundation that supports and elevates the letters above, which appear in the colors of Trans, Asexual, and BIPOC identities – those most underrepresented and under attack.”

Our runner up logo features the trans pride colors and a unity fist to symbolize solidarity with the trans community and the determination to keep fighting for trans rights and lives, especially in this moment as we see trans rights systematically coming under attack. We loved this so much we decided to make patches in addition to our shirts.

How Omnidian Supports Pride Year-Round

Five years later, the Pride logo + shirt tradition continues to be evidence of our long-standing commitment to the LGBTQ+ community and lasting solidarity from our team members and leadership. However, our commitment to our LGBTQ+ teammates isn’t about looking good or feeling good – it’s about creating a company where our employees are seen and safe. 

As such, we’ve built our company structure to support our people wherever they are. Our remote work program allows employees to work from over 30 states, ensuring that people in areas where LGBTQ+ and BIPOC support may not be as strong have a path to move somewhere safe while remaining at Omnidian. 

When educating our employees on our insurance benefits, we highlight coverage for gender-affirming care, because we believe healthcare should be accessible to everyone.

Our commitment also extends beyond our company and beyond the queer community. In 2021, we partnered with the One Roof Foundation in Seattle, an organization that provides crucial housing and mental health support to LGBTQ+ community members. This year, our Las Vegas team worked with Shine a Light, a homeless outreach organization that helps everyone in their community find stable housing, work, and safe spaces, while our Civic Action committee has been partnering with BIPOC-led businesses and non-profits since 2020.

At Omnidian, we’ve created a thriving community with all parts of the rainbow. We believe everyone deserves respect and the opportunity to thrive, and our Pride shirts are just one way we live that belief every single day.