I love helping leaders build spaces of psychological safety, trust, and belonging. Together, we co-create interventions upending the sting of social exclusion experienced by those of us most likely to feel invisible, discouraged, disconnected, and shamed in group settings.

Tragically, even in the powerful Belonging Movement we are building, I encounter leaders on the verge of giving up on their vision for a belonging society due to caring more about external results and impact while sacrificing their emotional health and well-being, which diminishes the true impact they can have.

That's why I spent the past two decades working in-and with many leadership teams researching, testing, measuring, evaluating, and changing promising practices that help leaders create the conditions for team safety & trust. What I have learned along the way is now enshrined in my bestselling books, Belonging at Work and Imagine Belonging.

Beyond the Archive is a live panel discussion you don't want to miss. It amplifies the power of LGBTQ+ history, and how the lessons learned from the struggles and triumphs can support us today as we navigate the new pressure.

I’m excited to welcome you into our space. Together, let's grow our #BelongingMovement!!

A Chicago-based People & Culture Strategist and life-long learner, Monique is a self-described “right-brained culture nerd” committed to creating workplaces that champion authenticity, courage and accountability.

Her early career in social services paved the way to an extensive journey though hospitality, and most recently, real estate property management. A cross-function collaborator, Monique’s expertise ranges from leadership coaching to strategy development for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging,Talent Acquisition and Learning and Development. Organizations she served in leadership roles include Sodexo, Lettuce Entertain You Restaurants and Equity Residential. 

In addition, she is an active member of two business societies which keep her up to speed in a perennially changing industry, Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) and National Association of African Americans in Human Resources (NAAAHR).

Bennett has been making documentaries about social justice for more than 25 years; his films have been shown at The Smithsonian, The Kennedy Center, The United Nations, The British Museum, and at more than 200 workplaces committed to fostering a culture of belonging, inclusion, and authenticity.

He won a duPont-Columbia Award for his work on Eyes on the Prize II, the landmark PBS series on the history of the civil rights movement, and went on to co-direct Brother Outsider, an "electrifying" (MetroWeekly) portrait of the civil and human rights activist Bayard Rustin that premiered at Sundance and is currently streaming on Kanopy and Netflix; Electoral Dysfunction, an award-winning  documentary about voting in America that NPR described as “frightening and enlightening”; and Cured, an Emmy-nominated PBS documentary about the activists who persuaded the American Psychiatric Association to remove the diagnosis of homosexuality from its manual of mental disorders in 1973. 

The former Executive Editor of TIME Magazine’s education program, Bennett is the author or editor of five books, including LGBTQ Stats, an "indispensable" (Booklist) compendium of facts and figures on the LGBTQ+ revolution that he co-authored with his husband, David Deschamps. Most recently, he co-directed QUEER2QUEER, a digital video series featuring intergenerational conversations between LGBTQ+ activists that won the 2025 Award for Excellence in Digital Video from NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists.