06.22.15
FORTUNE Magazine has named Tlaca Benavides, Dow's Latin America Marketing Manager, Advanced Manufacturing Solutions & ERG Leader, to its 2015 “Heroes of the 500” for his work to drive equality and inclusion in the workplace and throughout the community.
Editors of FORTUNE Magazine aimed to find people working at Fortune 500 companies who demonstrated "extraordinary acts of bravery, kindness and selflessness" that are changing people’s lives.
The article states: "For the second year in a row, we’ve set out to evaluate the nation’s biggest companies with a metric that isn’t disclosed in their SEC filings: heart. And sure enough, in the ranks of the nation’s biggest companies, we found it. We discovered extraordinary employees—from ground-floor receptionists to top-floor executives—who have committed acts of remarkable kindness and service, putting their time and well-being second to the needs of others. We call them the Heroes of the 500.
"When Tlaca Benavides began working at Dow Chemical (No. 48) in Mexico City, he didn’t tell his coworkers he was gay. But when Benavides’s supervisor offered him a move and a promotion in 2012—suggesting that, as a single man, he was well-positioned to relocate— Benavides decided he needed to come out and explain he was in a serious relationship with a man. “I had been hiding it for three years and I felt so pressured,” the marketing manager says. His boss’ response was hardly the one he had feared: “His reaction was, ‘I’m pleased to know you have someone in your life,’ and I was so relieved.”
"Though Dow had several employee chapters of GLAD (Gay, Lesbians and Allies at Dow), across North America and Europe, the group hadn’t gained traction in the chemical company’s Latin America offices. Hoping to prevent his colleagues from suffering the same anxiety over their sexual orientation, Benavides launched Dow’s GLAD network in Latin America in 2012, and later, when he moved to Sao Paolo with his partner, he founded a chapter there. Membership in the group has grown from five Dow employees to 230 across the region. Benavides is also working with other multinational corporations to raise LGBT awareness and acceptance in Latin America, and it was his efforts that in 2014 led Dow to host more than 200 representatives from companies including Google and General Electric in Sao Paolo to discuss advancing LGBT rights in the workplace."
The full list can be found here.
Editors of FORTUNE Magazine aimed to find people working at Fortune 500 companies who demonstrated "extraordinary acts of bravery, kindness and selflessness" that are changing people’s lives.
The article states: "For the second year in a row, we’ve set out to evaluate the nation’s biggest companies with a metric that isn’t disclosed in their SEC filings: heart. And sure enough, in the ranks of the nation’s biggest companies, we found it. We discovered extraordinary employees—from ground-floor receptionists to top-floor executives—who have committed acts of remarkable kindness and service, putting their time and well-being second to the needs of others. We call them the Heroes of the 500.
"When Tlaca Benavides began working at Dow Chemical (No. 48) in Mexico City, he didn’t tell his coworkers he was gay. But when Benavides’s supervisor offered him a move and a promotion in 2012—suggesting that, as a single man, he was well-positioned to relocate— Benavides decided he needed to come out and explain he was in a serious relationship with a man. “I had been hiding it for three years and I felt so pressured,” the marketing manager says. His boss’ response was hardly the one he had feared: “His reaction was, ‘I’m pleased to know you have someone in your life,’ and I was so relieved.”
"Though Dow had several employee chapters of GLAD (Gay, Lesbians and Allies at Dow), across North America and Europe, the group hadn’t gained traction in the chemical company’s Latin America offices. Hoping to prevent his colleagues from suffering the same anxiety over their sexual orientation, Benavides launched Dow’s GLAD network in Latin America in 2012, and later, when he moved to Sao Paolo with his partner, he founded a chapter there. Membership in the group has grown from five Dow employees to 230 across the region. Benavides is also working with other multinational corporations to raise LGBT awareness and acceptance in Latin America, and it was his efforts that in 2014 led Dow to host more than 200 representatives from companies including Google and General Electric in Sao Paolo to discuss advancing LGBT rights in the workplace."
The full list can be found here.