Lesbian Visibility Day Panel

Pride in Diversity’s Sapphire Initiative will be hosting a zoom panel event on Lesbian Visibility Day - Tues 26th April, 12:30pm – 1:30pm (AEST)

Sapphire continues to look for ways to generate awareness around what it is like to be an LGBTQ person who is or may be perceived as a woman, and the additional barriers that we face.

For Lesbian Visibility Day, our panellists will share their stories and experiences from the workplace and beyond.

Our panellists:

Celina Campas (she/her)

Celina Campas is a Mexican-American, lesbian woman from Arizona in the United States. She works as a Project Manager for Disability Inclusion within Workplace Diversity and Inclusion at The University of Queensland. Celina’s work at UQ has also focused on inclusion of people of diverse sexes, sexualities and genders, and people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. She started her career teaching literature and writing at a California high school where the majority of students were both from low socio-economic and culturally diverse backgrounds. Frustrated with the very unlevel playing field these students were on, she began leading and teaching an accelerated reading program for students entering Year 9 with very low reading skills, and leading another program aimed at getting students ready to go to university. With great foundations in the practicalities of working on inclusion and equity, Celina moved to Cambodia to do development work with teachers of the deaf/Deaf in 2006. Celina met her Australian wife there in 2009, and moved to Sydney to be with Emma in 2010. She and her wife now have two small children and they all live in Brisbane.

Lorena Araneda (she/her)

Lorena Araneda is a Senior IT Service Delivery Analyst at Charter Hall, and a committee member of CH Proud - a team dedicated to fostering LGBTQ+ workplace inclusion.

Lorena is a proud queer woman of faith and is passionate about supporting queer Christians who may be struggling to be their authentic self. Outside of work, Lorena enjoys spending quality time with family and friends, meeting new people, attending church, eating out and tasting different styles of food and wine, travelling, going on adventures, and listening to and playing music.

Sarah Cox (she/her)

Sarah is the LGBTQ+ Inclusion Manager for Pride at KPMG where she works across the firm to create a more inclusive culture and workplace for LGBTIQ+ employees. She was a founding member of Bupa’s Pride Network and over her 10 year career with Bupa, she worked across a number of roles within Customer Growth focusing on Learning and Capability of frontline employees and developing Reward and Recognition initiatives that focused on being values led and customer centric. Prior to joining KPMG Sarah was a Senior Relationship Manager with Pride in Diversity.

Rosie Piper (she/her)

Rosie Piper is Australia’s premier transgender lesbian comedian*. A long-running favourite of Sydney’s comedy scene, you might’ve seen Rosie perform her stand-up at the Sydney Opera House, at the Enmore Theatre, on Tonightly, at Splendour in the Grass or just at gigs all around the country, supporting the likes of Wil Anderson and Zoë Coombs Marr. You might've also seen her on the "Lesbians" episode of ABC's You Can't Ask That. More likely though, you’ve seen her at a KFC somewhere shovelling popcorn chicken into her face with gay abandon. A copywriter extraordinaire, she has a way with words like few others and currently lends her talents to Domain.

Facilitated by Tegan Acton (she/they)

Tegan Acton is a change practitioner with a passion for building workplace environments where diversity is seen as a strength and inclusion is seen as a business imperative. They began stepping into their own authenticity as a non-binary person in their early 30’s and, as a result, have found their own voice in challenging gender stereotypes and social structures. They believe that when a workforce truly embraces inclusion and actively challenges the gender binary it creates space for innovations free from unconscious bias and non skill-based assumptions. They are an avid audiobook listener, staunch Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ally who believes in decolonisation, proud legal partner to their beautiful wife and cat parent of two extraordinary tuxedo cats.