In honor of Pride Month, the OneHaas Alumni Podcast is pleased to welcome Lucas Chagas Vital to the show. Lucas is a graduate of the full-time MBA program and a principal in corporate strategy and development for Intuit.
For Lucas, growing up gay in Sao Paolo, Brazil wasn’t always easy. He knew he was gay from a young age, but between attending conservative catholic schools and starting his career in the conservative banking world of Brazil from over a decade ago, he worried he wouldn’t be accepted if he came out at work. So he set out to find a more welcoming and accepting culture for LGBTQ people, and found one at Berkeley Haas.
On this episode, Lucas joins host Sean Li to talk about his childhood in Sao Paolo, his fulfilling experience with Q@Haas as co-president, and how he’s continued that advocacy work since then through inclusion programs at Intuit and other workplaces.
*OneHaas Alumni Podcast is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:
On his decision to leave Brazil for the U.S.
”So I was not out in the work place. I grew up attending a Catholic school and a Catholic university. And even though I was out earlier than many back then, because I came out in junior high school, I was gay-bashed with my two lesbians friends, so there were a lot of stories of coming out and being back in the closet and getting discriminated against and working through that. And when I learned more about the difference of the reality here, at least 10 years ago, that was one of the things that motivated me a lot, right?”
On the work that still needs to be done for LGBTQ rights
”Our rights should never be taken for granted, right? Because the LGBTQ+ rights and any other minority rights, they can be lost at any time… Definitely as a cisgender gay man, I acknowledge the better privilege that we have when we compare with the transgender population, right? They are in the front. They are the ones who have so much more attacks and hate and we’re hearing more and more right now. So how can we be an ally for that?”
On celebrating Pride
“ Thinking about the Pride month ahead of us, I feel that Pride Month, it’s not only for fun and parties. I think Pride Month, it’s how we got here, right? …I remember when I got here in the US and I was so excited with all the Pride initiatives, and I used to hear a lot of complaints of people saying, “Oh, but there is so much corporate all around.”
And I said, “Yeah, but the first Prides, most of the early Prides actually that I went to in Brazil, we didn’t have any corporate support, and we did not have that much visibility. We didn’t have that much support, and we had to hide a lot” So there are positive things that we can think about how far we got here”
On his time with Q@Haas
“ I spent most of my time at Haas, apart from recruiting, at Q@Haas. So we had a very active group of people…So we organized many events…one event was called Not Your Gay Best Friend, to help break all the stereotypes of just being “the gay best friend”, which for me was very interesting as well because it was also a very American culture thing to learn.
And then of course, the Coming Out Week, which was a big event. The Coming Out Monologues was actually my first time telling my coming out story to a big audience, and in English.”