Breaking the mold: these top executives used their influence to help bring equality to their workplaces--as well as their communities.

DEAN HANSELL

OCCUPATION: Managing partner

COMPANY: LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene, & MacRae LLP 

AGE: 53

RESIDENCE: Los Angeles 

HOMETOWN: Salem, Ohio 

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Partnered with Jason Murakawa for 13 years

Dean Hansell experienced his share of homophobia in the I workplace as a newly minted attorney fresh out of Northwestern University Law School in 1977. Rude and inappropriate comments from colleagues and supervisors included "Well, what time are you going to the bathhouse tonight?" and "Half the people in this office suck dick."

But there was little Hansell could do about it. "I was a lowly associate at the time," he recalls. "If I had spoken up, it would have had a negative impact on my career."

Hansell--a Jewish 53-year-old native of the small Appalachian town of Salem, Ohio--gradually came out and in 1997 was appointed a Los Angeles police commissioner by then-mayor Richard Riordan. (The commission acts as the board overseeing the Los Angeles police department.)

Knowing that the appointment would raise his public profile, Hansell came out to some of his colleagues at his current firm--LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene, & MacRae LLP. "To their credit, they said it made no difference," says Hansell.

Since Hansell had been involved with gay organizations for a long time--he's a cofounder of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and cochair of the board of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center--he made a decision to bring that sense of activism to his professional life. He pushed for his firm to offer domestic-partner benefits. (Hansell and his partner, graphic designer Jason Murakawa, 45, have been together for 13 years.)

Hansell convinced the American Bar Association's endowment arm to cover domestic partners in its insurance programs. As president of Los Angeles's Board of Information Technology Commissioners, a position he has held since 2004, he persuaded the board to adopt a policy that all cable companies doing business in Los Angeles must offer domestic-partner benefits. (Former city mayor James Hahn had appointed Hansen an information technology commissioner in 2001, and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa renewed the appointment in 2005 after Hansell became president of the beard.)

As an accomplished business, environmental, and insurance litigator and former civil prosecutor, Hansell is well-versed in arguing for what he believes is right. But what sets him apart from many of his contemporaries is that he made a conscious decision to use those skills outside the courtroom as well. "I feel that I have an obligation to give back to the community," says Hansell. "It's just part of my life and who I am."

BOB WILLIAMS 

OCCUPATION: Director of new business development in the mobile devices retail group

COMPANY: Motorola

AGE: 48

RESIDENCE: Dallas

HOMETOWN: Detroit

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Partnered with Marty Polasko for 18 years

MARJORIE CHORLINS

OCCUPATION: Senior director of international business advocacy in the government relations office

COMPANY: Motorola

AGE: 43

RESIDENCE: Washington, D.C.

HOMETOWN: St. Louis

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Partnered with Sieglinde Friedman for 12 1/2 years

When Bob Williams, 48, is asked if the corporate environment has gotten better for gay employees since he started at Motorola 11 years ago, he says, "I don't know, because I was in the closet." But eight years ago he got tired of hiding. "I've always maintained that people are good--they're just afraid of what they don't know," he says.

The reaction? One of the company's executives asked him to join the global communications giant's GLBT Business Council, which he now coleads.

Marjorie Chorlins, 43, had a similar experience. She was in the closet when she worked in Motorola's Washington, D.C., office from 1992 to 1998. She left to take a job in San Francisco at the nonprofit organization Business for Social Responsibility, but she returned to D.C. in 2000 and rejoined Motorola soon after. Her biggest coming-out moment was when she and her partner, Sieglinde Friedman, were accepted as a couple at her 1998 farewell party at Motorola.

Upon returning to Motorola, however, she had no problem being out in the workplace. In fact, both Chorlins, originally from St. Louis, and Williams, a Detroit native who works out of Motorola's Dallas office, have taken leadership roles in making the corporate world more welcoming for LGBT employees.

Williams's leadership of the GLBT Business Council resulted in the creation of education and awareness programs as well as targeted LGBT recruitment on college campuses. Chorlins serves on the board of directors of the Human Rights Campaign.

As director of new business development, Williams implemented a strategy that focuses on marketing to LGBT consumers with slogans such as "Moto Pride" and "Moto Equal," part of Motorola's "Hello Moto" campaign.

Chorlins has a long professional history of leveraging politics and government to the advantage of business, starting in the late 1980s as an adviser on international trade and competitiveness issues to then--U.S. senator John Danforth, a Missouri Republican. But she added social consciousness to the mix as executive vice president of Business for Social Responsibility, which counsels companies on corporate social responsibility.

Today, she manages a team that uses the U.S. government's political and financial resources to help Motorola win sales around the world. "We are most successful when we are leading by example," says Chorlins, "when we show the company that there is value in a truly diverse workforce."

"We serve as the experts," adds Williams, who lives in Dallas with his partner of 18 years, Marty Polasko, 48, owner of a chain of pet spas. The couple has also raised Williams's nephew for the past eight years. "We educate, we inform, and we ask for change," Williams says. "It's pretty simple."

DONNA ROSE

OCCUPATION: Information technologies consultant; former senior IT program manager at Dell

COMPANY: Self-employed

AGE: 47

RESIDENCE: Scottsdale, Ariz.

HOMETOWN: Chicago

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Single

Donna Rose's journey to becoming an I internationally known and respected workplace advocate began back in her native Chicago when in 1959 she was born as David.

Today, the 47-year-old transgender woman consults with Fortune 500 firms and is a member of the Human Rights Campaign's business council and beard of directors (HRC's first and only transgender beard member). While at Texas-based computer company Dell, she was instrumental in convincing the firm to amend its antidiscrimination policy to include gender identity. That earned Dell a perfect rating of 100% on HRC's Corporate Equality Index.

Rose now works to help other companies include similar protections for transgender workers. She also continues to work as an information technologies consultant, something she began doing in 1981 after getting married and settling down with her then-wife near Rochester, N.Y.

In 2000, Rose moved from her home in Scottsdale, Ariz., to Texas and took the job of senior information technologies project manager at Dell--coordinating computer hardware, software, and vendor and human resources--as a way of "starting fresh" after her sex-reassignment surgery and her marriage's disintegration. In fact, her interview with Dell was her first as Donna.

Although she made a decision not to mix her personal and professional lives, she soon came to realize that her coworkers had become her friends. After being asked too many personal questions that forced her to not be completely honest, she told one friend "who handled it very well." She then gradually told others.

One of the most interesting reactions came from her director, "who got nervous and ran to human resources. When I asked him why, he said that he was worried that he wouldn't know how to handle it. He said he needed to make sure that no one was harassing me."

Dell's positive response was quite different from what she had experienced at other companies. When she started to transition in 1998, she was told flat-out by a supervisor at a pharmacy benefits management company that even though she would not be fired for being transgender, she could be. "That was a rude awakening," says Rose.

Rose, who again lives in Scottsdale, has fostered strong relationships personally--most notably with her son--as well as professionally, helping to advance transgender interests in the workplace. "My mantra is that being transgender isn't necessarily about sex or gender. There's a more core issue of just being yourself. It's a much healthier way of looking at the issue."

MARK TRISTAN NG

OCCUPATION: GLBT segment manager

COMPANY: Wells Fargo and Co.

AGE: 28

RESIDENCE: San Francisco

HOMETOWNS: Davao City, Philippines; Barrow, Alaska 

With a background in nonprofit activism--working for organizations such as the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the Search to Involve Filipino Americans--Mark Tristan Ng never thought he'd end up in the corporate world, let alone be working to help one of the nation's biggest banks to better understand the LGBT market.

But that's exactly the role that the 28-year-old tackles every day as GLBT segment manager at San Francisco-based Wells Fargo and Co. Ng joined Wells Fargo's diverse growth segments division in 2002 as a marketing consultant for the Asian-American population. And in part because Ng was out at work, the bank decided to create a position targeting the LGBT market.

"Since Wells Fargo was my first full-time employer, I had some concerns about being out at work," says Ng, who earned his master's degree in public policy at Princeton. "But for me, being gay was very connected to who I was professionally. It wasn't just my personal life. It's not just part of my identity, it's my expertise."

So for Ng, being out on his resume and in job interviews was a no-brainer. "I had to find a company that would appreciate all that I bring to the table," he says. And he found that in Wells Fargo.

As a native of the Philippines whose family moved to Alaska when he was 7, he has also had no problem in his professional life floating between the Asian-American and LGBT populations. "I have always belonged to several communities and have never compartmentalized by life," he says.

Ng considers himself lucky that being out has not only helped him in his professional life, but he has been able to bring his form of activism to the corporate world. "I realize that my reality is not everyone's reality, but what it shows is that it is somebody's reality and it is indeed possible."

SONDRA BOLTE

OCCUPATION: Human resources director of ethics investigations

COMPANY: Cummins

AGE: 55

RESIDENCE: Columbus, Ind.

HOMETOWN: New Albany, Ind.

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Partnered with Carla Barrett for 7 years

In 1999, Cummins announced it would start offering domestic-partner benefits. Life would never again be the same for Sondra Bolte, a longtime employee of the Columbus, Ind.-based company, which designs, manufactures, distributes, and services gas- and electric-powered engines and related technologies.

As Cummins became more outwardly welcoming to LGBT employees, Bolte, a 55-year-old mother of two, slowly but surely burst through the corporate closet door. That led to her being asked to lead the development of Cummins's diversity training for managers; its sexual orientation training module is now required for all company leaders.

In fact, Bolte worked at Cummins for 19 years before coming out at work, for fear of losing her job. First she noticed that sexual orientation had been added to her company's nondiscrimination policy. Then came the announcement about domestic-partner benefits.

But it was the local backlash against Cummins's nondiscrimination policies that convinced her to speak up. She wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper, in which she came out as lesbian. Tensions were so high that the paper even called her to ask if she really wanted her name published. But she stood firm, and so did Cummins.

And although she was expecting a negative reaction--she still experiences the occasional group of teens shouting "Kill the queers"--she received only kudos from CEO Tim Solso, vice presidents, and coworkers.

"I always had respect for the company," says Bolte, "but for the first time, I felt like the company had respect for me. I immediately felt a commitment to the company that I had never felt before." She also says the policy changes have made her a better and more productive employee: "I'm no longer wasting energy on being fearful."

Bolte cites Cummins's business ethic as one of the reasons she has prospered there. And Bolte is now one of the people who helps to keep the workforce ethical, as director of ethics investigations in the company's human resources department. She also notes that Cummins was named the most ethical company in the United States in 2005 by Business Ethics magazine.

The native Hoosier now feels comfortable enough to put pictures of her partner, 42-year-old massage therapist Carla Barrett, on her desk. But that's not to say that all her fear is gone. "It's really a matter of being afraid but doing it anyway," Bolte says. "We've got to stand up, we've got to tell people who we are, if anything is going to change."

Trans-Corporate America

Brian McNaught--the man who The New York Times named the "godfather of gay diversity training"--has launched a new series on gay and transgender workplace issues.

The DVD or VHS program, called "Understanding and Managing Gay and Transgender Issues in the Workplace," consists of four half-hour segments and features McNaught educating a corporate audience about what gay and transgender people are looking for in an employer, why they want to come out at work--and what prevents them from doing so. He also provides information on sexual orientation and gender identity/expression. McNaught also seeks to help viewers understand how their gay and transgender colleagues are personally and professionally affected in the workplace by the lack of understanding of their issues.

The program is available from TRB Productions at www.trbproductions.com or by calling [phone]. The cost is $495 for part 1 or $895 for the entire four-part presentation.--Chad Graham