Celebrating Pride Month at Cadence

Pride Month is a time for the LGBTQ+ community and allies to come together and celebrate the courage, resilience, and spirit of the LGBTQ+ community, recognizing the meaningful impact they’ve had on our history and culture. Pride Month is held in June to commemorate the Stonewall uprising in June 1969 in New York City, which helped spark the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. It promotes self-affirmation and pays tribute to those who paved the way.

To honor Pride and our LGBTQ+ co-workers making a difference, I interviewed Rene Spring, Program Management Director and Lead of our LGBTQ+ Inclusion Group at Cadence. Rene shared his experiences launching this group and all the exciting initiatives we have underway. 

“I was thrilled when I learned about Cadence’s plan to launch Inclusion Groups to encourage diversity within our company. One of these new groups is our LGBTQ+ Inclusion Group. I felt very honored when I was asked to be this group’s first Lead, and it didn’t take long until we had a great core team put in place and were ready to call our group’s first meetings.

I love these group meetings. It’s so wonderful to get to know other LGBTQ+ employees and the many allies we have at our company. I enjoy hearing their amazing life stories and having the opportunity to network across so many business groups.

As a group, we knew we wanted to celebrate Pride Month at Cadence in ways that were never done before. We quickly came up with a list of proposals, ideas and asks, such as raising the Pride Flag at Cadence’s headquarters, including gender pronouns in employees’ email signatures, creating special Pride WebEx and Zoom backgrounds that could be used year round, etc. We were so happy when we were informed that our Executive Management Team supported all of our ideas.

With the help of the company, we were able to execute these plans. So many of us were deeply touched, happy, and emotional when the rainbow flag was raised at our San Jose headquarters for the first time in Cadence’s history, as well as rainbow progress flags displayed at other sites across the US (pictured). We also have Pride-themed virtual backgrounds and items at the company store.

In addition, we organized some amazing speaker events for the month, including a talk with legends of the Silicon Valley LGBTQ+ movement, Wiggsy Sivertsen and Ken Yeager, co-founders of the Bay Area Municipal Elections Committee (BAYMEC). They discussed their personal activism within the LGBTQ+ community, the history of the larger LGBTQ+ movement, and how it continues today! Cadence has sponsored their exhibit, which showcases the history of the Silicon Valley LGBTQ+ movement. Check out their website and visit the exhibit at http://queersiliconvalley.org!

And, yes, for the first time ever as a Cadence team, we plan to participate in the Silicon Valley Pride March on August 29.

Our group’s journey has just started, but we already feel the love from so many allies who’ve joined our group. We look forward to continuing our work and collaborating with the other Inclusion Groups at Cadence. This is only the beginning. Thank you, Cadence, for seeing us, for hearing us, for trusting us, for accepting and respecting us as the human beings we are!”

Check out the video below for more quotes from employees at Cadence about what Pride Month means to them and how we can recognize the LGBTQ+ community this month and every month!