"Coming out and closeting is, is I always say, not a one time deal. It is a part of being queer. There's a continuum between coming out and closeting, that we are always negotiating with everybody we meet every moment."
"Well, what's my place in the world? I'm, I'm this like, you know, Catholic, Italian American. Nebraskan who loves Egypt speaks decent Arabic, what help can I be in the world? What bridge can I become?"
Voices of Diversity guest Dominic Longo Ph.D is Founder and Managing Director of Flourishing Gays. Flourishing Gays is a consulting company where his flagship program is a leadership development program for highly accomplished men in the LGBTQ+ community.
His desire to be a bridge in the world is simple but the roads he has taken are complex and diverse. Stay tuned as Dominic talks to us as a Voice of a Flourishing Gay Man.
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"Coming out and closeting is, is I always say, not a one time deal. It is a part of being queer. There's a continuum between coming out and closeting, that we are always negotiating with everybody we meet every moment."
"Well, what's my place in the world? I'm, I'm this like, you know, Catholic, Italian American. Nebraskan who loves Egypt speaks decent Arabic, what help can I be in the world? What bridge can I become?"
Voices of Diversity guest Dominic Longo Ph.D is Founder and Managing Director of Flourishing Gays. Flourishing Gays is a consulting company where his flagship program is a leadership development program for highly accomplished men in the LGBTQ+ community.
His desire to be a bridge in the world is simple but the roads he has taken are complex and diverse. Stay tuned as Dominic talks to us as a Voice of a Flourishing Gay Man.
Resources
Connect with Us
Welcome to the Voices of Diversity podcast. I'm your host Rocki Howard. And the purpose of this podcast is to humanize diversity, one story, one conversation at a time for listeners to understand the significance and the impact that racism, bias and inequity have on real people. Our Voices of Diversity guests share the challenges we the underrepresented face in the corporate world, the media's eye, and the overall world we live in. I believe that through sharing, listening, understanding, and committing to take positive action, we can together impact the diversity narrative, one story, one conversation at a time. And by changing the narrative, we can change the world
Dominic Longo:Coming out and closeting is I always say not a one time deal it is a part of being queer. It there's a continuum between coming out and closeting that we are always negotiating with everybody we meet every moment. Well, what's my place in the world? I'm I'm this like, you know, Catholic Italian American Nebraskan who loves Egypt speaks decent Arabic. What's what what help can I be in the world? What bridge can I become?
Rocki Howard:Voices of Diversity guest Dominic Longo, PhD, is Founder and Managing Director of Flourishing Gays. Flourishing Gays is a consulting company, and their flagship is a leadership development program for highly accomplished men in the LGBTQ plus community. Dominic's desire to be a bridge in the world is simple, but the roads he has taken are complex and diverse. Stay tuned, as Dominic talks to us today as a voice of a flourishing gay man. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening from wherever you are in the world and welcome to the Voices of Diversity podcast. I'm your host Rocki Howard, and I identify as she/her/black/Christian/GenX/wife/mom. And I'm so excited to bring Dominic Longo to to the mic today to share his story with us. Dominic, can you introduce yourself to our audience and tell us given the multiple dimensions of diversity? How do you identify?
Dominic Longo:Hi, Rocki. Great to be here. Thank you for having me. So he/him/his, I am a cis gay man. I am American, New Yorker. I am Catholic. I am an intellectual and scholar. I am a theologian. I am a spiritual person and a practitioner of leadership development, diversity, equity, inclusion and executive coaching. And much more, of course, like all of us.
Rocki Howard:Much more, and it's one of the reasons why we have you here today. I'm so sad that we only have 30 minutes because, you know, when we first chatted, we could have gone on for hours. So I just want to give our audience a little bit of the taste of the brilliance that you bring to us. And I think let's get let's dive right in. And I think for context of the conversation you've identified as a gay male, I love to hear the brief story of your coming out story like did you come out early in life? Did you come out later in life? Tell us a little bit about that.
Dominic Longo:Sure. Well, I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska in the 80s in a very, you know, Catholic world. Catholic grade school, all boys Catholic High School, eventually went to a Catholic University in Boston. Being gay wasn't a social option. Yeah. And although by the end of high school, I sort of had intimations like, Oh gosh, there's something to explore there. I had been living completely you know, normal, teenage, confused, straight life and what's kind of like, okay, when I go to college, I'll explore this well, even in college, I didn't really know how I missed you know, I don't know if I was just straight or square or what. Anyway, I didn't find that way really. And until I lived abroad in the years after college the first two years I was a volunteer, high school teacher in an all boys French immersion Jesuit school in Cairo, Egypt, Oh, wow. And living there in this very different world learning Arabic etc. I was in a different politics of gender, a different politics of bodies and, of course a different regime of sexuality. And it was actually another American, a lovely guy that I met at my Catholic Church in Cairo where they had mass in English, who was a US Marine, and doing, you know, guard for the US Embassy in downtown Cairo. And we had, you know, our It was really my first boyfriend, although we weren't even comfortable with that term. Yeah, that kind of blew both of our minds. I mean, I had dated women and been in love with a woman all through college and, but that was the beginning of my coming out. And there's, there's more, of course, that story coming out and closeting is, is I always say, not a one time deal. It is a part of being queer. There's a continuum between coming out and closeting, that we are always negotiating with everybody we meet every moment, as we're doing here in this introduction, in a way this sort of emblematizes you know, queer life. Oh, you know, who are you? Well, that's always a question to sort of, like, where do I place myself on this continuum?
Rocki Howard:Oh, and I'm gonna want to come back and visit that a little bit with you. I thank you so much for sharing that with us. And, and it led to something else that I'm fascinated by, right? Because you started out and you said, Look, I grew up in Omaha, I'm a white man, you know, how does a white man who grew up in Omaha, wind up studying Arabic and Islamic studies? Tell us a little bit about your education journey. I just think it's fascinating.
Dominic Longo:Well, yeah, the thing that comes up is you asked that question is actually partly my racial identity or my sense of, you know, identification as white and I do navigate the world is wide. And I have come to start saying, you know, I'm recently white. That and what I said, I'm Italian American, my family on my dad's side is from Sicily. Okay. And, you know, I've recently been reflecting on my grandfather's life, who was born in Omaha, but speaking Sicilian, as his first language didn't learn English, like my grandmother until they were in kindergarten. They weren't white. They weren't part of the white club. They didn't, you know, get white privilege. They weren't part they were on, they were on the shit end, excuse me of white supremacy. Right. And, and then somehow, like, kind of around the time JFK was elected president as a Catholic, that Italians came into the white club.
Rocki Howard:Yeah. Because back in, and I don't know, the historic timeframe. But there were lots of communities where Italian people lived right next door to my people. Right. And we were classified and considered in the same class. Right. So I know that for a fact.
Unknown:Yeah. I mean, we were not enslaved. It isn't, you know, it is different. There's it there's, I'm reading Isabel Wilkerson's book Caste right now. And she, you know, she talks about Latinos and Asians in America as a middle caste, whereas indigenous and black folks being, you know, murdered by genocide or enslaved, in the lowest caste.
Rocki Howard:Absolutely, it's not and equiovolent Right. That's right.
Unknown:That's right. Right. And so my experience of my body and my identity in this society in which we are a part, is a recent member of, of the white club. And I recognize that and there's, you know, there's, I'm Sicilian I'm, and I'm actually later in my life did become an Italian citizen as part of this journey. But you know, Sicily is an island in the middle of the Mediterranean. And listen, my grandparents were a big part of my life and they you know, they lived thank God to quite late in life and, and I got many years with them, so hearing their stories about who they are and how they, you know, identify it's part of what brought me one day to Egypt and to be a you know, on the other side of the Mediterranean, and, you know, becoming part of Egyptian society. So, my education journey though, in brief, it started with languages I mean, I fell in love with foreign language started with French freshman year of high school I grew up completely monolingual and something like fireworks went off in my brain the first day of high school when you know, Father Brennan came in, this little, you know, Irish American, diminutive priest, speaking French the whole time. Fireworks, something amazing in my brain happened well I added Latin sophomore year of high school in college, I then added German, and then ancient Greek, and then Hebrew. Wow. So I had, you know, Cairo at the age of 22, having those languages, at least in different levels of proficiency, and then went on and did a little bit more of Spanish and Italian. And then, you know, later, Persian and Turkish, and, you know, so I became a very polyglot. And it started really with, in a way, big claim, reclaiming, let's say, my Mediterranean identity.
Rocki Howard:I love that. I have to ask this question. Right, I just have to ask the question. And that is, that's fascinating to me. When you were studying Islamic Studies, and Arabic, did you come up against people that kind of, did you come up against a different type of bias or people like, why are you studying this? I'm sure. I'm really curious.
Unknown:Well, I mean, part of why I did those studies, was first of all, because of Islamophobia. You know, I mean, and even going into Cairo not to study I went to Cairo to teach first, I mean, and be of service in a developing country. And yeah, I did want to learn Arabic, but it was to be part of that of contemporary Egypt. It wasn't some arcane academic pursuit. And I went there because they were our enemies. That's at least what my you know, our society told me in the 90s you know, the Cold War was over the Soviets weren't our enemy anymore. There were no Soviet like the Soviet Union has done. So when I took you know, as a Christian, like, this mandate this very, very challenging. Love your enemy. like, Well, okay, that sounds really poof radical, who's my enemy? Well, I took the answer to be from what society told me the Arab Muslim cause it was so okay to demonize the Arab Muslim in the in already in the 90s, late 90s before 9/11 You know, there's demonization, of course of women, of black folks, of Jews, of Mormons. But it's not acceptable anymore. It happens, but it's not acceptable by our mainstream in the 90s. Already, it was acceptable to demonize the Muslim Arab and so I was like, I'm gonna go love those folks and see what happens. So that's what brought me to Egypt and then 9/11 did happen after shortly after I came back to the US and I was doing a map my first master's degree. And it was some years after that have like the picking up the pieces and and if the devastation of that, well, what's my place in the world? I'm, I'm this like, you know, Catholic, Italian American. Nebraskan who loves Egypt speaks decent Arabic, what's what what help can I be in the world? What bridge can I become? And that's what led me to actually do more serious, serious Islamic Studies. Before I was 29 or so I'd really had just done a little bit of Islamic Studies. But then I enrolled in a Ph. D. program at Harvard and Arabic and Islamic Studies at the cusp of age 30.
Rocki Howard:Wow. Wow. And I know, so let's dig into your career a bit, because I know then you were able to teach and use that, I believe, right? So So tell us you also have an equally diverse and fascinating kind of career trajectory. And I'd like for you to tell us a little bit about your career, and maybe how you answered that question for yourself about what's my role in all of this? How do I show up in this?
Unknown:Yeah, well, I really had a two track career like a parallel tracks in a way, like they seem completely different one professional, you know, which is like, I was just thinking about this. After I got from high school, I was an intern at the First National Bank of Omaha, which is like the largest private bank, privately owned bank in the in the country, I think, and putting on a suit and kind of pretending to be an adult. And you know, well, that continued, you know, in a sense, I began I did international marketing, I did International Business Development for a big irrigation company in Omaha. This was in my 20s. And then later, I became a management consultant. I was at McKinsey, and that was, in many ways, my greatest kind of professionalization experience. So many kinds of things I did with McKinsey, first in the Dubai office in the Middle East, and then later, in the Mid Atlantic region of the US here around New York, New Jersey, DC. The other track of my career has been academic, you know, so I mentioned already was a teacher out of high school or out of college, and then I went back to Boston College and a master's degree in comparative theology to really unpack and read my way out of the lived experience I had had already in Egypt, that picked up that academic track picked up at the end of my 20s when I started this, you know, PhD program that typically took people like eight years, and I was like, Okay, I guess. But I wanted to keep growing as a whole person, that was one of the values I got, really from Jesuit education. And I didn't know how I knew that I had learned a lot and gained a lot through my professional experiences. So it was when I was back in Egypt, doing a year of intensive advanced Arabic at the American University in Cairo that McKinsey was recruiting on campus for the Dubai office. I thought, oh, I can do that. And it'd be like a really nice break to put on a suit again, I remember remind myself that I'm an adult, and you know, do work, and it's with other people, and whatever. So that is how I started going kind of back and forth between my PhD studies and the management consulting. And then later, I graduated in 2010, or 2011, rather, went back to McKinsey, but here in the US doing organizational development work, doing leadership development, for different kinds of companies, and actually, you know, for government agencies as well. And then I thought, you know, I want to be a professor before I get, you know, too, too long in the tooth. And so I actually, then left McKinsey took some time off. My parents also both died in a very short period there. So it was kind of a rethinking, retooling, you know, kind of moment for me and I was also about 40 years old or so, then I did the academic job search, and I became director of a Muslim Christian dialogue Center at a Catholic University. And, you know, got to be a professor for for some time and love that in so many ways, and brought my leadership development hat into the university setting, made a you know, sort of my first friends with a diversity Equity and Inclusion practitioner, a scholar of leadership, who really a white woman who specialized in whiteness, and, and also in gender. And I brought, you know, my religious scholar hat, and I brought my gay self to that conversation, she and I co taught some, some wonderful courses. So, in these last years, I have I left the university job, I started my own company called Flourishing Gays. And as you know, I do now leadership development and executive coaching, from LGBTQ perspectives. And some, you know, diversity and inclusion consulting work for companies that often are just starting their DNI journeys
Rocki Howard:So I want to go back and I want to pick up a couple of things, right? So when you in the beginning said I was driven by I want to go love my enemy. And what then that particular time in history said is, here's the worst enemy I could find, right? To being immersed in the culture, learning the culture, making a conscious decision to deeping deepening your relationship within that culture to actually teaching. Did you I want to just wrap back and obviously you found out that, you know, Islamic people are not your enemies, and Muslim people are not your enemies. Was was teaching your way of reconciling. This is what I've learned. And I love this particular culture, not because they're my enemies, but because I actually have found deep affinity for it? Like, how did you reconcile that? How do you make that reconciliation?
Dominic Longo:Yeah, well, I mean, I became bicultural living in Egypt. First when I was 22. I was still I was still formative moment in my life. I was becoming an adult. I, you know, I spoke decent French and I knew not a lick of Arabic when I showed up there. But I was teaching in the school with half Muslim boys and half Christian boys. You know, so I joke Muslim Christian dialogue in that setting was called recess.
Rocki Howard:Common language, right?
Dominic Longo:No, you know, whatever. So, no, I didn't I mean, I never experienced it myself in the enmity against you know, my, my beloved Muslim students or friends or peers or Arabic teachers or, you know, and yet it's the political discourse that we were all inbedded in and that it was overlaid over us. That was this enmity stuff. So as I came back to the US and then you know did that first degree studying Islam a little bit studying politics and religion in the contemporary middle east and some of those courses this was in my master's degree in my early 20s I came to understand something about these overlays i had to understand studied a lot more on the heart level and the experiential level living there and then with 9/11 it's like oh man being a bridge between these two worlds the Islamic world the Christian world the Arab world the so called western world America you know and Islam I mean you know Samuel Huntington had this famous article about the clash of civilization and the bloody borders that Islam has well this kind of really hateful and bigoted bigoted discourse just needed needs still an antidote.
Rocki Howard:I love that I love that
Dominic Longo:Yeah so so I in my life might the truth of that recess with those kids the truth of the the friends and the mentors that I had in Egypt was something I could speak to not on some kind of discursive political sophisticated level but from my heart and your mind body I love from my as a human being.
Rocki Howard:I absolutely love that tell me this so now you know you have a consulting company that's called Flourishing Gays right and i'd like to um it helps me ask another question or prompts me to ask another question is was founding Flourishing Gays a way for you to support other gay men and other people who are underrepresented in that way do you feel the responsibility to do that?
Dominic Longo:Well what I would say is this becoming myself to the extent that I am now myself has been a real journey. And there has been heartache and loss and suffering and and vulnerability and confusion and and yeah I mean and 've had I had a very serious experience of depression in my mid 20s so you know psychotherapy has also been and continues to be a wonderful support actually in my life even if I'm I think very mentally well now but there's the introspective journey of challenge and growth and finding myself and creating myself it's just been a journey and it's a journey that I embrace and actually early in my life I embraced you know my own growth and development was the principle of like making my decisions in life from the time I went off to college so today you know my focus is on developmental coaching it's on leadership coaching it's on growing people and organizations to be themselves more fully that's in in short what flourishing means to me it just so happens I'm in i'm in this body I'm in you know this six foot tall too often these days close to 200 pounds you know a little bit of a belly but otherwise you know pretty healthy body in America i'm attracted to and fall in love with other men all the time I'm somewhere on that continuum between you know gay and straight i'm not like on the far side of either you know and there are particularities to the developmental journeys of queer people and of gay men of bisexual men of queer men all three of those labels in certain ways apply to me and I'm happy to identify as this turns out there are not too many people who are focused on supporting those the developmental journeys of queer people there are many people who are aware of even or really ready to value or appreciate those particular challenges and opportunities that people have well I am in that sub position. I do have that awareness. I have lived that life and here I am you know at middle age with the journey i've lived suited and ready poised to be of help to be of support to other yes men but also others who are trying to find their way on their journey.
Rocki Howard:I love that
Dominic Longo:Nobody's doing it nobody's doing the work I mean as far as I know this is the only you know offering of sort of coaching or leadership development in the world that's customized for highly accomplished men in the LQBTQ community.
Rocki Howard:So let's stay there for a minute help us understand from even your personal point of view, right? Because you've worked in some pretty traditional environments. What do you think, can you share any challenges you've had specifically or maybe share a particular challenge that you've had, in terms of those particular work environments that you feel were directly related to you being gay?
Dominic Longo:Well, you know, in straight society, I mean, in society at large, we're in straight society. You know, that the simple question that gay gay folks often talk about how difficult it can be, how was your weekend? What do you do this weekend? That people the office asked guile, you know, totally guilelessly without any meaning to pry or making anyone uncomfortable. No, they're trying to create a connection. They're trying to be welcoming, trying to, you know, have a friendship or collegial relationship? Well, you know, is it in so many environments that I've worked in, and of course, at different stages of my own journey of being somewhere on that coming out to closeted continuum? They have the answer to that question. You know, it's like, it had to be a lie. It had to be an obfuscation. It had to be a shadowing a sort of throwing up smoke to, you know, divert attention somewhere else. It's not that somebody was trying. No, it wasn't like, Oh, that's a bigoted question. Of course, it's not. But because we are in mashed in a heteronormative world that and structure that just assumes, well, of course, you know, boys date girls, girls date boys, you're going to get married, you're gonna have kids. That's, that's what we're all made for, isn't it? That's, that's destiny. And yes, today, it's, you know, I've, you know, like you, we've lived through this, this legalization of same sex marriages. So it's not as heteronormative in the legal structures as it once was, but on a kind of lived experience. So I know that some answer to...
Rocki Howard:I think it's absolutely right, right, people are just now starting to get comfortable with, tell me about you and your partner. So it's not an assumption that because I look at you, and you look like he/him, that your partner is a female, right? Like, it's all of those kind of societal norms that are moving that do cause I think a bit of stress in the work situation and to your point, depending on the environment, and where you are in that continuum, the emotional tax that you pay, trying to decide where you want to be based on the environment, the client, the person, be intent, you feel it is something that people are still navigating, it's a fair callout. So tell m this, right. And I'm, I'm es ecially interested to have t is answer come from you, becaus I can't believe we've alread blown through, like almost our 30 minutes. But you know, ominic, our platform is to giv a voice to people who are un errepresented. This is your t me, what would you like to say to people about what it feels ike to walk through the work w rld to walk through corpor te America, as a queer man?
Dominic Longo:I want to speak to some of those same queer men as well as to those who are not because, you know, I think there's a society gives us a prefabricated life, maybe a set of prefab life models to live. And many of the gay, bi and queer men that I work with, have have molded themselves into that prefabricated structure in order to make partner or become executive vice president, or whatever other or make good tenure. They have stripped away perhaps some of what's clear about them in the north in the different sense, not the sexual sense. And I think actually, that pertains to, of course straight people too. So in if they can find the hope and courage to step into themselves. And, again, the speak to the highly accomplished in a way, especially the courage to remake their lives as their own truly, and not living into that prefabricated mold I think not only is a path to life, to freedom for them but actually can be inspiring to all folks of whatever gender or identity or sexual orientation.
Rocki Howard:That's awesome and I believe you have a monthly workshop that can help people with that right do you want to tell us about it?
Dominic Longo:Well yep this called The Flourish and it is for all people LGBTQ folks who want to flourish more in their lives or at work and for all those who support us in that whether you know HR managers or PD managers or D&I practitioners or coaches or therapists or just straight allies you know the fundamental conviction is that queer flourishing benefits all and so in this hour it's you know it's a noon lunchtime kind of eastern hour on friday on a friday there's one on March 19th for example we come together we exchange we learn, we learn from each other well in my website flourishinggays.com, I have a part called The Flourish which you know gives you a place to register and and details about it but yeah if there is something about queer flourishing that I truly believe can benefit everyone.
Rocki Howard:I love that we'll make sure that the details are in the show notes so people won't have to search for it they just need to click. Dominic I'm so grateful for you teaching us today and talking to us and I don't think I ever plan to say this but thank you for being a voice of flourishing gays.
Dominic Longo:Thank you Rocki real pleasure
Rocki Howard:Thank you for listening to today's episode. The mission of this podcast is to give a voice to diversity. I believe that the interactions between all voices, minority and majority, can change the narrative of how the world communicates. And by changing that narrative we can change the world. Join our mission to humanize diversity one story one conversation at a time by sharing our episodes especially with those who are privileged and in positions of power. Help the Voices of Diversity podcast be a catalyst for courageous conversations and most importantly for change. I'm your host Rocki Howard.