Stanford Law’s LGBTQ rights student group “OUTLAW” hosted its first ever conference on campus in February to focus on issues of equality and advocacy in the workplace.

In the keynote address, Annise Parker, former mayor of Houston, discussed the recently defeated Houston Equal Rights Ordinance and the challenges of enacting LGBTQ workplace policy. And experts from NATO, the U.S. State Department, and law firms led panels on important workplace issues. SLS-affiliated panelists included Beth Van Schaack (BA ’91), the Leah Kaplan Visiting Professor in Human Rights, and Cathy Glaze, JD ’85 (BA ’80), former associate dean for student affairs and now the Title IX coordinator for Stanford University.

“We wanted to focus on issues that professionals confront in the workplace and effective strategies for advocating for LGBTQ people, which are particularly pertinent in the wake of same-sex marriage equality,” says Tripp Zanetis, JD ’17, the OUTLAW conference chair. “There really is so much to be done.”

Students from the Bay Area and across the country attended the conference, explains Zanetis, noting that OUTLAW formed an informal partnership with Harvard Law’s Lambda group for the SLS conference and that they expect to support each other’s future conferences—with another one in the winter or spring at Stanford Law and one each fall at Harvard Law.