Jarryd Boyd on pushing for intersectionality at Hinge and beyond

Jarryd Boyd, Public Relations Manager at Hinge | In conversation with Maggie Lee

Jarryd! We used to work together in the agency world, and you left me for Hinge. What’s your role there?

I'm the PR Manager, responsible for all storytelling efforts, proactively and reactively. It's about answering the question of how do we secure company-first news and then also, how do we navigate crises, issues, and unexpected moments? As a part of this, I get to come up with different campaign ideas that can have a positive impact on different audiences we're trying to reach.

What’s been your favorite project there thus far?

I was so proud of our Pride campaign last year. LGBTQ+ elders are twice as likely to be single and alone, and that stat struck me when I read it in a Human Rights Campaign report on the pandemic and how it's affecting the queer community. We ended up building a whole campaign around this insight. We connected it to how without queer elders, we wouldn't be able to have Hinge serve as a meeting place for young queer daters of today. With video dating also really popular during the pandemic, we donated a dollar for every video date toward SAGE, the oldest, largest organization in the US supporting LGBTQ+ elders. Beyond that charitable campaign, our team was also having a lot of discussions around social assets we could share for Pride. I was just so proud and amazed that one education moment turned into a beautiful content moment that I know a lot of people felt seen by.

How have you been able to shift your career in a queer direction? And how often is it you pushing for that shift, versus others pulling you in as a queer Black man whenever the work touches on identities?

It's actually been really natural in terms of my career trajectory. In college, I was the public relations chair for the Pride Student Union on campus, which was a great way for me to blend my major and passions. Once I entered the workforce full time, there was a natural progression toward bringing my fullest self to work each day. That’s not to say I haven’t had to code switch at times. I have in order to survive and get my fullest self into the right rooms where decisions were being made.

In regards to the second part of the question, it's a combination. No one's necessarily tokenizing me — it’s not, “Hey, queer person, get over here and come queer this up.” The reality is that if there's not a person of color or a queer person in a room, then rarely is anyone advocating and championing our community, our interests, and topics we’re excited about — beyond when it's in vogue during Pride or Black History Month every year. So for me, it's been something as small as pitching out an announcement to queer or Black media outlets to bring them along the journey. Maybe they're not going to cover the news, but I do want us to communicate with them beyond when it's convenient for the brand. During the three and a half years that I was at Praytell, I hit a stride with advocating for this with clients, bringing them campaign ideas that include underrepresented groups as part of the overall year-long planning, not just Pride. We can cast a queer couple for anything. We can research queer dating trends. There are other queer organizations to support beyond the Human Rights Campaign, Trevor Project, It Gets Better, and GLAAD, if you're just willing to do a little bit of homework. There are also other moments throughout the year to support besides Pride, whether it's Bi Visibility Day, Trans Day of Remembrance, or National Coming Out Day.

There've been a lot of awkward conversations along the way, and a lot of explanation, but I think it's so important. Look at where we are this year. So many companies are just finally waking up to the fact that they need to cater to other audiences beyond a white, conservative one. It’s really about consistently pushing — pitch an idea here, pitch an idea there, see if you can educate stakeholders, even if they don't buy into the overall story or campaign idea.

I have to guess that at Hinge, gender and sexuality are natural topics in most conversations. Where do the challenges come in with making sure LGBTQ+ people aren’t left out?

When you're pushing an agenda, you're also trying to make sure that the conversations are as rich and diverse as possible, and sometimes that requires perfect timing. So much of our storytelling is based on data, which means we run a lot of surveys. I have to make sure to bring up potential story angles before we run a survey or analyze data, because if we don’t get that data, I don’t have the story. When planning data stories with a brand, I try to think about the intel we might find on the other side. It’s a lot of, “Can we also break this down based on race or sexuality?”

It might be uncomfortable to be the person reminding and poking, but you just have to do it. You have to keep moving the needle, and once you’re comfortable doing it in your own team, consider doing it beyond your team. Tell the social team to look at that cool influencer you saw because you’re probably following more queer accounts as a queer person. Show the marketing team what that other brand did and get their wheels turning. With any team member, wake them up to more consciously and proactively thinking about race and sexuality and gender as a part of their day to day work like you do.

My first instinct when I think about dating is never cis heterosexual dating. So I guess if you're not queer, the opposite would be true. Does it feel crucial that Hinge has LGBTQ+ employees on staff for that reason alone?

I think it comes down to even how I talk to my own friend groups about dating. I was telling them about a guy I went on a couple of dates with who paid for both dates. To me, it was an “Oh My God” moment. But they were like, “What? How's this a big deal?” I'm like, “No, you don't understand that in queer dating, we're always all splitting the dates.” You would think that he offered me a kidney, it just felt really sweet. If you’re not consistently talking to anyone about what it’s like to date as an LGBTQ+ person, you don’t have the nuances for storytelling around it.

I wonder, too, if someone doing PR around LGBTQ+ issues can’t succeed as an introvert, then. Talking about your personal dating life and understanding the nuances of others’ requires some level of extroversion.

It's funny because we don't necessarily sit at Hinge all day, everyday talking about our dating lives. Even when we do, we’re doing it within a certain bubble of people there. But as a queer person, I do think in order to queer up a space, I need to open up about my personal experiences, otherwise I can’t educate. Same with being Black. By opening up about my experiences, I also enlighten my coworkers on different perspectives. So some extroversion is certainly helpful.

Also, reporters are just everyday people who are dating.  A lot of their coverage is so personal to me. I secretly love whenever I find out that a reporter is queer. I might look someone up and find out that they’re queer because of their Twitter bio. Those are the things that get me excited day to day, but I also call it out to the teams: “Hey FYI, their pronouns are they/them.”

Doing the research on journalists you're pitching is such an important part of PR that if you messed up their pronouns, you're probably not going to land that coverage.

Right. And other people at the company might not have realized that it’s that important, so it’s an education moment. Using the job’s responsibilities and intricacies to help others learn and enforce the importance of it all is a benefit of being in my position. And I mean, I have messed up at times as well. It’s important to take feedback, see where you went wrong, and say thank you.

I've been seeing a lot of social graphics around how to behave when you stumble. For example, here's how to respond when someone corrects you on their pronouns. It’s almost like a PR guide to being a decent person in 2020. 

Brands and people can learn from each other with that. I worked with a lot of brands while working at different agencies, and it’s often a gut reaction of different people to want to defend the brand when it’s called out for something. All brands want to be the authority of their industry, but they sometimes fumble with recognizing their mistakes around diversity, equity and inclusion, owning up to them, and learning from them. Also, based on my identity, I’m turned to as an authority on Black or queer topics. I have to make sure people recognize that I’m not the end all be all.

Workplaces might assume that because you’re from an underrepresented group, you know all about your underrepresented group. I’m also educating myself day to day, just like they’re educating themselves. The only way I'm as knowledgeable as I am is because I take the time to do the research. When you see an interesting article, bookmark it, read it thoroughly when you truly have the time, and then share around your insights later. Listen to people when they share their experiences. I'm not a Black woman, so I can't speak to their experiences. I can only speak to what I’ve been told by Black women. Even though I’m part of the LGBTQ+ community, I can’t speak for trans people, I can only share what I’ve heard from trans people and what I’ve learned. The same even goes for other gay Black men’s experiences. I can’t speak for the whole group, I can only speak to my experience and the experiences that have been shared with me. It’s very important to me that I'm not taking up someone else's space or someone else's voice, and instead am being an ally to their experience and trying to illuminate their voices. Anyone—and any brand—can do that, too.

Can you also speak a bit to the persistence and patience it takes to educate others?

When it comes to speaking up for underrepresented communities, you can almost never raise something once and let it go. You have to resurface your learnings, resurface your insights, keep asking questions, keep pushing ideas, and just generally not be afraid to just sound like a broken record. But yes, that can be tiring! I somehow always have the energy, though. (laughs) 

One of the greatest things you can know about me is that if I feel like I'm right about something, but the conversation dies down, I will always share around a new article to resurface my point. A lot of times with my work, I will add a whole appendix to a POV. “Here's the recommendation, but also if you want to take the time to read it, here are 20 articles that are relevant to this and support what I just said.” It shows that this comes from a credible source beyond me. With that, you're letting them know that a lot of people are talking about this, and if they don't care about it, they're going to get called out on it at some point.

Over your time in the industry, has it gotten better? Have people paid more attention than when you first started your career?

Have you seen Black Lives Matter this past year? All of a sudden people were like, “What can we do now? How can we be better?” 

For a lot of my queer and Black friends at different companies, for the first time, we are feeling very listened to. And now, we don’t have to speak in the really polished, professional, walking on eggshells way we’ve always had to. We can just real talk for the first time in a meeting room and say, “Yeah, I've experienced that.” We can say a brand’s response sounds like white guilt and make the room talk about that. Let me tell you, if I were to say, “I don't like that response ‘cause it sounds like white guilt,” in a meeting a few years ago, I would be in trouble.

If you can find the resilience to stay in this career path, you get more power and have your voice heard over time. But a lot of us have had a hard time sticking it out and not getting disheartened while our voices are stifled. So I think in 2020, as horrible as it was, a lot of space for our voices to be heard for the first time opened up.

You’re known for being an amazing mentor. Can I just ask you to spill any advice at all that you have for anyone looking to queer up their job?

Keep your own bank of ideas. You never know when an idea's going to come into play at the right time. It just comes in handy at the most unexpected times.

If there's something that you're really passionate about, hone in on that idea, research it, and create a high level POV and recommendation about it. It should be read easily in like one page, but then have an outline of all the research and the supporting data points behind it. That way, when you hand it over, it speaks for itself.

You need allies. You should have people that understand the institution that you're working at, how to navigate it, and how to find the right language to get something heard. They should workshop your ideas with you, but let you keep ownership and not dilute your words. That is the important part of having an ally.

Also, I believe in having paper trails. If you shared an idea and are waiting on a response, have it written down that it was your idea. Send an email recap of the top three takeaways and what can be done next. Also send an email to your manager that explains if your idea was well received or not, and don't be afraid to ask them for feedback and see if they might help you push for it. If you have that paper trail and it comes up down the road, you can be like, “Here's my writeup on it from a year ago, you can use it now.” 

Lastly, sometimes you're going to want to queer up a space that doesn't deserve you, and you simply do what you can to push the needle while you're there. Some days you're there for a paycheck and other days you're there to make progress. It's self care at the end of the day, because you’re playing a really long game.