Katie O’Brien Duzan, the Democratic nominee for Texas House District 94, while serving as a vice president at software company Khoros, Duzan oversaw the company roll out an extensive diversity, equity, and inclusion program that included mandatory employee training, identity-based employee groups, pronoun initiatives, and expanded benefits for gender-transition-related procedures.
Khoros’s own 2021 Annual Impact Report says the company began its DEI push in 2020 amid what it called the “world-changing Black Lives Matter movement.” The company hired a director of diversity and inclusion and said it made immediate policy changes throughout the organization before expanding the program in 2021.
The initiative extended into employee training. More than 300 Khoros employees enrolled in programs addressing microaggressions, implicit bias, and bystander intervention, according to the report. Khoros also said it conducted mandatory DEI training for one of its largest customer-facing teams and planned to expand the training throughout the company in 2022 so employees would be “sharing a similar understanding.”
Khoros also created diversity committees for its North American, European, and Asia-Pacific workforces. Those committees incorporated DEI material into new-employee onboarding and added pronoun fields to the company’s internal Atlas platform. A separate Khoros post encouraged employees to list pronouns such as he/him, she/her, and they/them on their profiles.
The company also established four employee affinity groups, grouping employees based on racial and sexual orientation. Those employee groups also provided feedback that led Khoros to expand its healthcare benefits. The company specifically reported providing coverage for “gender confirmation procedures” (more commonly known as sex change surgeries) for employees. Elsewhere in the report, Khoros said that beginning in 2022, it offered expanded gender-confirmation benefits meeting standards established by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.
The company’s DEI effort extended beyond its own workforce. Khoros published guidance for customers operating online communities, recommending users disclose information, including gender pronouns, race, ethnicity, age, and religion. The guidance also advised community operators to establish rules addressing discriminatory or culturally inappropriate speech. Khoros also published a blog post stating that using “He” and “She” pronouns was a mistake because “gender is a spectrum”.
Duzan is seeking to succeed Republican State Rep. Tony Tinderholt in House District 94. She won the Democratic nomination without primary opposition. She now faces Republican Cheryl Bean; Election Day is November 3.