On Monday, a rainbow flag was raised for the first time in front of the Otowi Building on the Los Alamos National Laboratory campus, flapping alongside the U.S. and New Mexico banners. Lab officials said it will fly for the remainder of the week.
It was another sign of change at the lab, which in previous years has undertaken different pride representations, including decorating the windows of a prominent building with rainbow-colored Post-it Notes in 2017.
CJ Bacino, the laboratory’s diversity officer, said a Los Alamos lab LGBTQ staff and allies group called Prism brought forward the idea of raising the flag this year to help mark Pride Week in Los Alamos County.
LANL and Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque both are affiliated with National Lab Pride, an organization founded in 2016 with roughly 80 members representing 14 of the Department of Energy’s 17 national laboratories.
Tom Gallant, a program manager at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, said National Lab Pride was formed to foster a better sense of belonging, as well as information sharing, among the Department of Energy’s lab workforce. And Bacino said LANL “has a pretty robust diversity and inclusion strategy in place,” including recruiting, retaining and creating a positive work environment for a variety of groups, including the LGBTQ population.
