Parmesh Shahani is an author and a passionate advocate for LGBTQ inclusion in corporate India who has guided many of the country’s leading companies on their inclusion journeys. He founded and ran the award winning Godrej India Culture Lab for a decade, between 2011 and 2021.
His first book Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be) Longing in Contemporary India (Sage Publications) was released in 2008 and re-released in June 2020 as an updated edition and his second book Queeristan: LGBTQ Inclusion in the Indian Workplace (Westland Business) was released in August 2020.
Parmesh holds an MS in Comparative Media Studies from MIT. He is a TED Senior Fellow, a Yale World Fellow, and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. He is a member of the FICCI taskforce on diversity and inclusion and a board member of KHOJ International Artists’ Association.
The conversation was very interesting where in Parmesh Shahani explains the difference between ‘Gender’ and ‘Sex’, elaborating he explains that gender is the organ that we have and sex is our behavior with it. Parmesh also talks about his journey and coming out of the closet and telling his family the truth about his sexuality expressing that it was not easy but his family gracefully accepted him. In the conversation, Manvendra Singh Gohil who is an Indian Prince also talks about his journey and how he gets calls and messages every day about the people who are facing the same situations as he was facing he also says that there would be a movie made on Parmesh life.