Allan Gilmour waited until he retired as Ford Motor Co.’s vice chairman in 1994 to come out of the closet.
“I concluded that I would be a controversial person and attention would be diverted to me, and that had little to do with selling cars and trucks,” Gilmour, 71, said Tuesday at the Colorado Business Council’s Diversity in Business Conference and Expo.
Gilmour left the company after being passed over for Ford’s chairmanship. In 1997, he told The Advocate magazine that he doubted that persistent rumors about his sexual orientation doomed his bid to be chairman.
Ford chief executive Bill Ford later asked him to come back to work, and Gilmour returned to the company in 2002 to become chief financial officer and vice chairman. He retired again in 2005.
Though his coming out made news in both corporate and gay circles, there were no objections in Ford’s boardroom to his being rehired, Gilmour said.
“I think that shows – or we hope, anyway – that this particular difference is now irrelevant,” Gilmour told The Advocate.
The conference was an all-day series of events, which included seminars on financing small businesses and effective website marketing and networking opportunities. It was the second year the CBC, Colorado’s gay and lesbian chamber of commerce, presented the event. It also was sponsored by the Colorado Women’s Chamber of Commerce, the Rocky Mountain Indian Chamber, the Colorado Black Chamber, the Hispanic Chamber and the Asian Chamber.
The corporate world has changed – and become more accepting of diversity – since he joined Ford 46 years ago, the white-haired Gilmour told a crowd at the Adam’s Mark Hotel downtown.
But the advancement of gays, minorities and women is still hampered by a glass ceiling, he said.
“We are making progress, but we have a hell of a long way to go,” he said Tuesday.
Gilmour said that when he joined Ford as a financial analyst in 1960, the corporate world had little use for openly gay workers.
But by the end of 2005, 247 companies in the Fortune 500 provided domestic-partner health benefits, and 82 included protections for transgender employees in their nondiscrimination policies, according to the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender political organization.
Workforce experts agree that demographic shifts in the population make it imperative for companies to hire talent – wherever they find it.
Staff writer Tom McGhee can be reached at 303-820-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com.
Al Día: Para leer este artículo en español. denverpost.com/aldia
