Happy Pride Month 2026.

I mean that. Not as a greeting card. Not as a brand moment. As a person who spent decades figuring out how to say those two words without flinching — and who now says them like a prayer.

June is here. Pride month is here. And something I've been building for a very long time is finally here, too. But before I tell you about any of that, I need to share something with you that I wrote recently. It's from a speech — a commencement address I wrote specifically for Lavender Graduations, the ceremonies that honor LGBTQ+ students and their achievements.

It starts with three words, and I want you to hear them as if I'm standing in front of you right now.

I see you. I need you to hear that, because some of you have spent a very long time wondering if anyone does.

My name is Jim Fielding. And standing in front of a room like that — at a Lavender Graduation — is something the twenty-year-old version of me could not have imagined. Not because I didn't dream of moments like it. I did. But because the twenty-year-old version of me was still trying to figure out how to exist in a world that hadn't made space for him yet. He was trying to be small enough to fit. Quiet enough not to draw attention. Straight enough to survive.

I grew up in Toledo, Ohio. A wonderful, unpretentious, working-class city. It is also not the place where a young queer kid in the 1980s had a lot of role models. I did not see anyone who looked like me, who loved like me, in any position of leadership or visibility. Not on television. Not in business. Certainly not in the boardroom.

So I made a decision that a lot of you have probably made, too. I decided to make myself palatable. I would be so good at my job, so competent, so pleasant, so non-threatening, that nobody would need to deal with the full truth of who I was. I would outwork the discomfort. I would out-achieve the prejudice. And for a long time, that strategy worked. I rose through the ranks at Disney, DreamWorks, Gap, 20th Century Fox, Claire's. I became a Fortune 500 executive. I ran global businesses.

And I was exhausted. Not from the work. From the hiding.

And then, somewhere along the way, I started telling myself something. Every morning. It became a mantra. I would look in the mirror and say: You are exactly who you were meant to be, and you are doing exactly what you were meant to be doing.

I did not believe it at first. Some mornings I still don't. But I said it anyway. Because the act of saying it — of insisting on your own belonging before the world confirms it — that is what makes you undeniable. Not the title. Not the applause. The quiet, daily decision to claim your place.

That's an excerpt. The full speech goes deeper — into chosen family, into what "It Gets Better" really means when you stop waiting for the world to hand it to you, into the global career that taught me being queer was actually my greatest leadership advantage. I'll share more of it as the summer goes on. And if you're affiliated with a university, organization, or community that hosts a Lavender Graduation or Pride celebration and would like me to deliver this in person, I would be honored.

If you recognized yourself anywhere in those paragraphs, I see you.

It comes straight from Learning #3 in All Pride, No Ego, and it's the emotional spine of the Lavender speech I excerpted above. But it's also a response to a specific moment. We are living in a time when Pride flags are being removed from monuments, rainbow crosswalks are being painted over, and the word "pride" itself is being treated as provocation. That's not politics. That's erasure. And it requires a response.

Here's what I've learned as an elder in this community: our light has two purposes. The first is to shine it on ourselves — to be visible, to be whole, to take up space. The second is to shine it on others — to amplify voices, create pathways, and make the road easier for those coming behind us.

My Pride talk is built on four pillars: Resilience. Amplification. Safe Spaces. Pride Legacy. It's customizable for corporate audiences, nonprofit communities, universities, and everyone in between.

I'm booking Pride keynotes, panels, and workshops through the end of the year. If your organization wants to do more than put a rainbow on the logo this year, let's have a conversation.

Here's the question at the center of everything: What if your armor is keeping you from shining brightly?

Leading humans is hard. Doing it while hiding parts of yourself is impossible. The League of Radical Kindness is a community for people who are ready to drop the act, lead with their authentic superpowers, and build the kind of trust that transforms everything — their teams, their organizations, their lives.

And it has its own cast of characters.

Meet the Lorklings.

Seven characters. Seven roles. Seven ways that radical kindness shows up when you're doing real work with real people. Whether you're the one grounding the team (that's Moss), sparking a new idea (hello, Zing), weaving people together across difference (Twill), or mending what got broken along the way (Nomi) — there's a Lorkling that mirrors how you lead at your best.

I built LORK because I spent thirty-five years in rooms where kindness was treated as a liability. I'm done with that. And I think you might be, too. This is just the beginning.

More details, programming, and content coming all month.

Buy one for yourself. Buy one for the person you thought of while reading the "I See You" section above. You already know who they are.

THE QUOTE:

THE JIMISM:

This month, it's the only Jimism that matters.

In Community and Conversation,

Jim

P.S. This is a very personal issue of this newsletter. If it landed for you — if you saw yourself in any of it — I'd love to hear from you. Reply to this email. I read every single one.

And if someone forwarded this to you and you're not yet subscribed: welcome. You found the right place. We do this every two weeks. No performance. No corporate polish. Just honest conversation about leading better, living kinder, and refusing to dim your light.

Happy Pride. I see you.