Jim Fielding, Ex-Head of Disney Shops, on the Struggles of Making It as a Queer Government

In keeping with Yahoo Finance, there are solely 4 brazenly homosexual CEOs atop Fortune 500 firms. That’s up from zero in 2014, when Apple’s Tim Cook dinner got here out. But it surely represents lower than 1% of the cohort, nicely under the 7% charge of People basically who identification as homosexual, lesbian, or bisexual. Is there a glass ceiling for homosexual executives? And in that case, are some queer bosses nonetheless opting to remain within the closet to keep away from damaging their careers? To attempt to reply these questions, we invited Jim Fielding, an brazenly homosexual entertainment-industry government, to be a visitor on The New World of Work. Fielding has thought quite a bit about these questions and has determined to share his personal story and perspective in a just-published guide, All Pleasure No Ego: A Queer Government’s Journey to Residing and Main Authentically. He was president of Disney Retailer Worldwide; president of client merchandise and innovation at twentieth Century Fox; world head for client merchandise and retail improvement at Dreamworks Animation; and CEO of the Clare’s Shops chain. He at present serves as president of Archer Grey’s Co-Lab division, specializing in constructing companies by way of enterprise investments. However regardless of that spectacular resume, it hasn’t at all times been straightforward. Within the interview, Jim talked concerning the bullying he endured as a younger man, the years he spent dwelling a closeted double life, and on how he in the end developed the arrogance he wanted to be his genuine self at work.