Standing Up and Helping Out: How Hywel Anthony Supports Colleagues Through the Pride Alliance

Hywel Anthony lives 20 miles north of Cheltenham, in a rural landscape that reminds him of his childhood home in Cwmbran, about 60 miles to the southwest in Wales. Aside from the rolling green hills and the sheep that surround both places, there’s a significant difference between his life then and today: He now lives openly as a gay man.

Rural Wales in the 1960s and ’70s was not a particularly safe space to be gay. From a young age, Anthony knew that if he was going to be his genuine self he would have to leave. So when he was in his 20s he started applying for any London-based job he could. In 1986 he found one with Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise as a value-added tax (VAT) inspector and moved to the city. Little did he know that it was the beginning of a 40-year career in VAT work.

Anthony didn’t come out right away. Looking back, he recalls the fear of being disowned by his friends, family, and colleagues. “It’s terrifying,” he explains. “We impose on ourselves all of the doom and gloom, all the horror stories that happen to other people, and you assume they’re going to happen to you. That kind of keeps you in the closet for longer than you maybe need to be.”

It was love that got him to come out in 1991. To his relief, he was met with acceptance. And as he moved forward in his career, he looked for jobs where he felt safe — which was one reason he chose to join GE Aerospace 18 years ago this month.

Being Visible 

In his role as global indirect tax leader, Anthony is constantly solving puzzles. VAT is essentially the equivalent of sales tax in the U.S. — a transactional tax on goods and services, charged at every step of the supply chain, ultimately influencing pricing at the end point for the consumer. But the VAT rate presents a veritable vat of variables. It differs in every country and can vary depending on a number of factors, as can the liability to pay it. Anthony is in charge of managing GE Aerospace’s VAT advisory and compliance in every country where the company is based — 26 in all — making sure it pays what it owes while remaining as financially efficient as possible. 

“It’s very involved, but it’s super cool,” Anthony says. “I need to understand: Who are we selling to? Why are we selling to them? What are we buying? Where are we buying it from? How does it get to them? And then I need to talk to the commercial folks, to finance, to legal. This intricacy is what gets me excited about VAT.”

On top of overseeing the company’s VAT concerns, Anthony is the co-lead of the Standard Work and Practices Committee of the Pride Alliance. The committee aims to standardize and streamline how the alliance works, whether that’s improving resource accessibility or putting on Pride-related events. 

The group has evolved over time. “In the early days of Pride Alliance, before we were as organized as we are now, if there was an opportunity to volunteer or participate, it often came down to whoever was willing to step up,” he says.

Anthony stood up time and again, eventually becoming the hub leader for all of the U.K. “Someone’s got to do it,” he says. “And I love it. I don’t feel like I have a choice, because I would be suppressing my passion. I couldn’t be me and not stand up and be visible.”

It takes serious commitment. In some parts of the world, it’s harder to educate, offer support, and increase visibility, because being queer can mean imprisonment or death. While there are many LGBTQ+ individuals living successfully in such countries, legislation can make it dangerous for them  to live their genuine lives openly. Some don’t feel safe doing so at all. For those people, Anthony has made the Pride Alliance a well-known safe space where employees can confidentially reach out for help. 

As he sees it, inclusion is an important part of making GE Aerospace a place where people want to work and build their careers. “If we all thought the same way, the business would stagnate very quickly,” he says. “When we value inclusive teams and diverse perspectives, we create an environment where people with different backgrounds and ways of thinking generate new ideas and contribute to business success.” 

A History of Pride

Though Anthony has been out for years, he says that “every time you meet somebody new, it’s a new coming-out experience.” Indeed, his work with the Pride Alliance has helped him gain confidence. Now, if someone presumes he’s straight and asks if he’s married, he wastes no time correcting the record. “I’m married to Paul. Been married to Paul since 2009,” he tells them.

While Pride Month is a time to celebrate, Anthony also sees it as a time to reflect. Now 65, he notes that it’s important to remember the history of the LGBTQ+ community and the progress it’s made. He cites the Stonewall uprising in the United States in 1969, and how Pride initially started as a fight for rights. “For me, it has come from a protest to being a celebration to now going back into a little bit more of a mix,” he says. “There’s still an element of protest, saying, ‘We’re here and we’re not going away.’”

It makes him think of his first local Pride March in Gloucester, just west of Cheltenham. He had been to marches in London, but he stopped attending because they felt too commercial. In Gloucester, they just walked through the streets as people hung out their windows and the townspeople did their weekend shopping, with everyone just clapping, waving, and cheering for the community. “That kind of acceptance,” says Anthony, “was a real breath of fresh air.”