For Civitas executive director Bryce Cariel, hosting an award ceremony to recognize LGBTQ+ community leaders is long overdue. Civitas is a Louisville-based nonprofit that supports LGBTQ+ businesses across Kentucky, Southern Indiana and southwestern Ohio.
Its inaugural Award Gayla this Friday will honor entrepreneurs in the Ohio Valley region for their impacts on the communities they serve every day.
LPM News’s Giselle Rhoden spoke with Cariel about the upcoming awards ceremony.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
What made you want to put together an award ceremony?
Our goal for the ceremony is to recognize the knowledge and celebrate LGBTQ businesses in our region. I am the executive director of Civitas, which is the LGBTQ regional chamber of commerce. We cover the whole state of Kentucky, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Southern Indiana.
The NGLCC is the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, and we are an affiliate of the national chamber. So there are 55 other affiliates throughout the country, and then 11 internationally. We started Civitas in January 2020, right before the pandemic. We got everything set up, and then, of course, had to shut down for the pandemic. About two years later, I had joined the board, and I saw that they had a need for someone to drive the chamber forward. There's not been another LGBTQ award ceremony, recognizing and acknowledging the LGBTQ community. We saw a need and we wanted to try to fill that gap.
The inaugural Awards Gayla announced 30 nominees for the event. So who are they and what are the categories?
We have five different categories. We have Certified Business of the Year, Community Engagement of the Year, Nonprofit Excellence of the Year, Corporation of the Year and Entrepreneur of the Year. We put the ask out to the community: “Do you know someone who is deserving to be recognized for their engagement with the community?” We've had nominations open since the first of November, right after Halloween, and nominations just closed last week.
Any people that we might know, people that might stand out?
We do have nominations throughout the region too. So, while it's primarily Louisville-based, we do have some nominees from Cincinnati, Ohio, Lexington, eastern and western Kentucky.
Also, Kevin Grangier [of Louisville] has been nominated, owner of Bell Noble Entertainment Group, Grassa Gramma, Le Moo, Village Anchor. Corporations of the year: We've had three nominations, one being Humana, the other being Suntory Global Spirits and also Fifth-Third Bank. We are going to have the mayor. Mayor [Craig] Greenberg’s going to make attendance. Morgan McGarvey, our U.S. House Representative will be in attendance as well. So it's great to have the local business owners and all forms of government to come together for a night of celebration. One thing that we are super, super excited about: Justin Nelson is the founder and CEO of the NGLCC, and he will be here attending our inaugural gala event. So, we're super excited to have him.
When is the awards gala? And how can people get involved and learn more?
You can check out our website. It's civitaslgbtq.org. We have all of our information on there underneath our awards tab, and you can find out more about attending. The event will be next Friday, March 14, at the Frazier History Museum. We have a VIP reception from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Programming will begin at 6:30 p.m. and run until 9 p.m., and then we will end with the dance party.
Do you think you'll have one of these again in the future?
Yes, yes, we do plan to do these yearly. We have a couple cornerstone events. So this will be our primary cornerstone event for our foundation. And then we also are a part of Derby Diversity Week, and we do an event called “Wigs and Kicks.” We're super excited as a chamber. We have non-board members right now spread out across our region. We're excited to continue to grow our membership base.
When I came in as executive director, we were hovering around 30 members. We are now at 99 members. I think everyone deserves to be acknowledged and recognized for what they're doing for the community. So I think it's great that we're able to pull together a diverse group of people.
