Syndication 
Attendees watch the annual Capital Pride parade in 2024. The organization is the host of this year’s WorldPride, which will include events held May 17 to June 8. Photo courtesy Patrick Magee
“We’re hopeful,” said Valerie Sumner, owner, VRS Meetings and Events Inc., told Convene several months before WorldPride Human Rights Conference, June 4-6, which she has been helping to organize as part of WorldPride, taking place in Washington, D.C., May 17 to June 8. Actually, beyond hopeful while navigating DEI headwinds and uncertainties — “radical joy is our mantra,” Sumner said. “We are going to be joyful. We are going to celebrate this whole community and the work that the community does in spite of all that’s going on around us. We’re doing it with thoughtfulness and we’re doing it [while also being] realistic.”
An expected 2,000 conference attendees will split their time at sessions held at both the National Theater and neighboring JW Marriott, where security will be a priority. A lot of sessions, Sumner said, will center around how to get involved in the Pride movement and make a difference. In addition to a strong educational program, the conference will have a physical community hub, with a lot of conversational areas for people to get together. “We’re being very deliberate about having multi-translation capabilities for people coming from different countries and speaking different languages” as well as offering neurodivergent accessibility, she said. In addition, the conference will feature wellness rooms and provide “opportunities for people who just need to talk to a professional,” whether it’s a therapist or psychologist or social worker, who would then give them a referral “for what their next steps might be,” she said. Overall, “we want to be as welcoming as we can be.”
On the PCMA ELI webinar, “Driving Social Change Through Business Events” in March, Natalie Thompson, vice president of diversity, equity, and inclusion, board of directors, Capital Pride Alliance, organizers of WorldPride, also leaned into the “radical joy” mindset. “Pride is about radical joy as well as [realizing] stuff isn’t great. We are a global community and if one of us is suffering we are all suffering,” she said. “I think in this political time, our focus is really on safety and security and around messaging because it’s just not safe and so having conversations with our trans siblings, having conversations with our immigrant siblings, many of us who live at the intersection of these spaces, what does allyship look like within the LGBTQ community so that we can have these events and folks not feel like they are being threatened to participate or to engage.”
Thompson said that what happens after the Human Rights Conference will be the way organizers measure its success. “We are asking people to walk away with a call to action and we are going to be following this call to action,” she said. “And so right after this event, we’re going to ask them: So, you participated in this event, you’ve met with these leaders within this space and you’ve been able to have some conversations and understand where you fit within the human rights space. What are you going to do with it? Our goal is to track that and be able to share that with other WorldPride groups globally so that we can see how an idea from this conference is able to grow.”
In a statement to USA TODAY, Capital Pride Alliance shared that only one corporate sponsor, Booz Allen Hamilton, had pulled its backing from WorldPride 2025, which is expected to attract more than 3 million attendees globally. “We are confident, however, that we will have the support necessary to have a successful and safe WorldPride that meets this moment,” Capital Pride’s statement read. “That support includes individuals, families, organizations and businesses from across our community, and corporations that truly celebrate diversity and value equity and inclusion for all. Many in our community are extremely vulnerable right now, and standing up for them, with those who stand with us, in this moment is what we all need.”
On the Program
Keynote speakers for the Human Rights Conference include Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, the spiritual leader for 86 Episcopal congregations in D.C. and four Maryland counties — the first woman elected to this position; Phyll Opoku-Gyimah, British political activist and founder and CEO of UK Black Pride; and Paula Gerber, a law professor at Monash University in Australia and an internationally recognized expert in international human rights laws relating to LGBTQIA+ people.
Panel discussions cover everything from housing solutions for Black trans women to issues around immigration and migration, health care, and the art of the drag.
Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene.
On the Web
Learn more about WorldPride.
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